Keyboard shortcut in background app?

[brookfloyd]

Before purchasing the powerpack for Alfred, I'm trying to figure out if it will successfully do what I'm wanting.

 

I have an app that I use and is always my active, front application. However, there's an app that I also always run in the background that does certain functions for me throughout the day. There is one particular feature in this background app that I turn on and off a lot with a keyboard shortcut. But I have to switch to the background app to do this and then have to switch back to my main app.

 

What I'm hoping Alfred can do is setup a global keyboard shortcut that I can press in any app and it will turn the command in my background application on and off. So as I'm working in my foreground app, I can hit that command and the function in the background app will turn on/off. It would be ok if in doing this, the background app comes to the forefront, but it would be even better if it just always stayed in the background. It's not an app I ever need to see. I just need to toggle that function on and off while using my main app.

 

Hopefully I've explained it clearly enough.

[vitor]

Does the background app have any type of scriptability support, something like applescript? Even if not, it should probably be doable. I’d have to run some tests, but it is likely it could be done with a bit of non-pretty but functional code — in applescript tell the background app to come to the front, press the keyboard shortcut, and then pull the initial foreground app to the front again; even easier since it’ll always be the same.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Vítor