SmileOnMyMac Blog

It all got started when I was typing the word “fête”.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” I thought, “if I didn’t have to go searching in the Special Characters palette for the e+circumflex every time I wanted to type “fête” or “crêpe”?” So I started adding these accented words to my TextExpander snippets. The abbreviation was the word without the accent mark, and when I typed it, it would be replaced with the accented version.

Once I had created a few of these, I thought it would make a handy snippet group for some folks. I came up with a short list of words, and then I discovered this Wikipedia article: List of English Words with Diacritics. I picked the words that seemed most useful to me and created a snippet group.

List of the Accented Words Snippet Group (PDF)

If you download TextExpander 2.3, you can easily add this Accented Words group by clicking on the plus sign (+) under your snippet list in the TextExpander Preference Pane, and choosing “Add Predefined Snippet Group.”

The great thing about snippet groups that are hosted online is that you can make additions. If you have any suggestions for accented words to be added, email them to me. If you have ideas for other useful snippet groups, or have created one yourself that you want to share, just let me know.

Olé!

We just released TextExpander 2.2. We added a new snippet group of CSS definitions (created by me!) that you can use. To do so, click on the plus sign (+) below the snippet list and choose “Add Predefined Group”. “CSS Snippets” has been added to the list.

It’s always an fun intellectual exercise for me to develop a new snippet group for public use. Trying to anticipate how people will use the snippets is a challenge. I think it’s important for the abbreviations in a group to have a common leading character so that they are easier to remember. The HTML snippets all use the comma. The logic there is that Shift + comma produces a left angle bracket, the leading character in HTML tags. For CSS, I used the semi-colon. It’s easy to reach on the keyboard, and a semi-colon is used a separator for CSS property definitions. And, as is important with all TextExpander abbreviations, no actual words begin with a semi-colon.

Here’s a PDF with the CSS abbreviations and snippets. (You did know that you can print your snippets and abbreviations as a handy list, right? Command + P to print a group, Option + Command + P to print all groups.)

A few notes on these snippets:

• All the abbreviations begin with a semi-colon
• There are abbreviations for basic HTML selectors, like ;body, ;h1, ;ul, ;em, which expand into CSS for the corresponding tag, and reposition your cursor in the middle
• There are the commonly-used properties, like ;color, ;lheight, ;fsize, and ;border
• There are also some “packaged” snippets, like ;sans, ;serif, ;fs10, (font-size: 10px;), ;lh16 (line-height: 16px;)

Anyway, give it a whirl and let me know what you think! Any suggestions for additions would be very welcome.

We just released TextExpander 2.1 this week. It now supports one-character abbreviations. If you use a delimiter to trigger your expansions, you can turn any letter or character into an abbreviation for a snippet.

We also improved the performance and reliability for really fast typists. I say “really” fast, because I am a fast typist, and I never had a problem with TextExpander not keeping up with me. I just tested myself at 10 Fast Fingers, which I found via a b0rg_tech’s blog post, “Saving Seconds.”

Want to challenge me?
70 words

I just came across this neat tip on developer David Smalley’s blog. It uses AppleScript to generate a tinyURL with a TextExpander abbreviation.

(If you’re not familiar with Tiny URL, it’s an online service that converts long URLs into short ones more appropriate to share in email and microblogs.)

I am no AppleScript maven, but it sounded pretty cool. I’ve been using Tiny URL a lot lately since I started using Twitter. So I consulted Greg, whose works on TextExpander development, to see what he thought. His response:

This does work, and it’s quite convenient. Here’s an easy way for you to import this:

And he sent me the AppleScript wrapped in a TextExpander Group. You can download it here:
http://www.smileonmymac.com/textexpander/tinyurl.textexpander.zip

Download and unzip it, and then add the group in the TextExpander preferences pane.

Then you’re set to follow Greg’s instructions:

You select a URL, copy it to the Clipboard, then type “tinyurl” (and your delimiter if you’re not doing instant expansion) then wait a few seconds and “tinyurl” will be replaced by a tiny URL.

If you’re a real geek, you can grab the AppleScript from the original blog post and create your own AppleScript snippet in TextExpander.

I just got a short tip from Austin in Carlow, Ireland:

I have all my abbreviations ending with “z” so that there is little chance of them getting confused with a word I don’t want substituted. It makes them easier to remember, and not many words (quiz is the only one that springs to mind) end in z.

This is the first tip where someone has suggested using the last character in an abbreviation to differentiate it from actual words.

When we first started posting TextExpander tips, we got a fairly extensive one from TJ on organizing abbreviations by context. That tip inspired me to use the forward slash (/) as the first character in all my abbreviations for URLs, i.e. /somm = http://www.smileonmymac.com, /gm = http://maps.google.com. [1]

I’ve started using “x” as a leading character for a lot of miscellaneous snippets, on the theory that not many words begin with “x”. I’d have to rewire my brain to think like Austin, using the last character as the differentiator.

What about you? Share your TextExpander abbreviation strategies in the comments.

[1] You might wonder how I can type my abbreviations without expanding them. The trick is to move the cursor using the arrow keys backward and forward once before you get to the end of the abbreviation. I learned this in a tip from Greg.

Shishir from India has an interesting way of using TextExpander:

Thanks for developing this great product. Being new to the Mac, I have been trying out a lot of programs, and just happened to run into TextExpander.

At first I started using as most people would - to produce recurring snippets while typing. But now I use it as a system where I can keep tidbits of information I need to memorize and recall them quickly. When I am studying, if I come across a definition I need to memorize, I just select the text and create a shortcut for it with the prefix ll (learn). This way when I am reading and come across a term I dont remember, I quickly type the shortcut in my scratch pad and am able to see the definition. This has really helped me memorize a lot of stuff.

This is a good opportunity to point out the new Hotkey preference in TextExpander 2 for creating snippets on the fly. You can designate the key combination you want to use for creating snippets from a selection or from the Clipboard in the TextExpander pane in System Preferences, under the “Preferences” tab.

Once you set the hotkey, all you have to do is select the content you want to make into a snippet and press the hotkey combination. The TextExpander pane will open and the selected contents will be pasted into the snippet content field. Assign an abbreviation and you’re done.

If you want to know more about the powerful design and printing capabilities of DiscLabel, check out the series of video tutorials we just posted on our website.

Produced by Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline, this series covers new design creation, iTunes and iPhoto integration, design editing, using special effects and clip art, among other topics. It’s a fantastic introduction to DiscLabel, but even experienced DiscLabel users may learn something they didn’t know.

I also highly recommend checking out ScreenCastsOnline. It’s a terrifically informative series of Mac-related tutorials. There are free tutorials that you can subscribe to via iTunes. There is also a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! membership that entitles you to view the entire library of screencasts as well as special members-only content.

I have been an Extra! member for several months. Don’s tutorials have gotten me through lots of tricky stuff on the Mac, including upgrading to Leopard. He really does have a gift for knowing how much detail to provide–enough so that you do learn how to do something, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed.

Michael Mistretta at MacApper has posted a very good video review of TextExpander’s features. It covers the new TextExpander 2, so it makes a great sequel to Merlin Mann’s demo at MacBreak.

MacApper will also be giving away two copies of TextExpander:

In order to enter this giveaway, you must comment on this post with 3 of the most repetitve phrases that you use every day. Make us laugh. Alternately you can add some suggestions on what features you would like to see with TextExpander.

Some of the TextExpander abbreviations that have been posted certainly made me smile…

TextExpander is coming to retail! You should be seeing it at your local Apple Store this month. It’s priced at $29.95 (same as the download version), and the box includes a CD with the software and a Quick Start card.

Send us your photos of TextExpander in the Apple Store. We’ve got lots of good photos of PDFpen. Now we want TextExpander!

The first person to send me a photo that we can post will win their choice of SmileOnMyMac software plus the fabulous limited-edition SmileOnMyMac coffee cup!

I finally got around to implementing one of the most fun new features in TextExpander 2: the ability to set a sound preference per snippet group. I always thought it would be great to have a different alert sound for autocorrection expansions.

Before the new version, when I was happily typing along and heard the default TextExpander sound (the classic TE “pop”), I would worry that I had typed one of my shortcuts by accident. I’d stop, look, and realize that once again, I had misspelled “accomodate”.

Now I’ve set up the Autocorrect Snippet Group with a different sound: “oops!” It was so easy:

1) I downloaded the sound at The Freesound Project, a huge collection of user-contributed sound files, made available under a Creative Commons License. (If you want the “oops”, it’s here.) Registration is free and is required for downloading.

2) I dragged the sound file “9020_WIM_oops.wav” into my home directory’s Library>Sounds folder.

3) In TextExpander preferences, I selected the Autocorrect group and clicked on the Sound drop-down menu. The “oops” was now one of the choices. (If the System Preference pane is already open to TextExpander, you might need to close it and reopen it.)

I think the possibilities are interesting and endless. If you’ve got a sound that would make a great TextExpander alert, let us know in the comments. Even better: upload it to the Freesound Project and give us the link!