I Love TextExpander
I downloaded TextExpander a few weeks ago, but didn’t try it out until yesterday. And I have to say that once I figured out how it works (they could use some help on the sell), I immediately fell in love with it.
Basically it works in three ways:
1. A Shortcut Tool In other words, if I type “sig” in any application it will insert my email signature (Handy for messages outside of your email client). Or I can use it for common information that I need to share, for example, if I need to provide my mobile, fax or conference bridge number (the latter two I can never remember), I’m able to type a quick shortcut that I define like “mmobile” or “confbridge” and it fills in the rest.
I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, so this comes in handy for not having to stop what I’m doing to look up common information that can’t seem to fit in my head.
2. An Autocorrect Tool When I saw this in action, was the moment I fell in love. I make a lot of common spelling mistakes. TextExpander has a built in collection of dozens of common spelling errors and can immediately fix them. Similar to how Word autocorrect, but now its in every application!
3. An Autocomplete Tool TextExpander also has a bunch of built in shortcuts to common HTML phrases, like head, img, link etc. TextMate has these built in, but I find myself trying to trigger TextMate shortcuts anytime I’m writing HTML in something like a blog post.
Try it out. If you aren’t convinced it will even track the number of characters it has saved you from typing and you can decide if it is worth $30 bucks.
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