Quick Tip: Use Automator/iCal to Open Web Sites at a Predetermined Time

I have a certain group of websites that I like to have automatically opened each morning when I get up for coffee. Yeah I know it’s not the type of thing that everyone will want to do, but I found a pretty neat way to do it, and thought I should pass it along to you guys. If you are new to Automator this may also serve as a really basic ‘getting started’ guide as well.

Open up Automator and choose a Custom project. Drag the following over to the right window:

• Under Library | Internet, drag over Get Specified URLs. Click the small pointer to open it up (if necessary), remove the default link to Apple and add entries for the sites you wish to open.
• Then drag over “Display Webpages” - nothing to configure there.
• Optionally, from Library | Utilities drag over “Show Growl Notification”, open it up and fill it in to give you a Growl notification when the sites have been loaded.

Go to the File menu, click Save as Plug-In, and save it as an iCal plug in. Whatever you type in the text box here will appear on your iCal calendar pages, and is also the name of the app file. In iCal set up the time you want this to fire and of course be sure to set it as a repeating event, if that’s what you want.

And if you don’t like the fact that it leaves Automator open in your menu bar, look at this post on macosxhints for instructions on how to fix that.

The nice thing about it is that if your default browser is Firefox then the links open in Firefox, not Safari.