SmileOnMyMac Blog

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.

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!

Most of my working day, I am sending emails to two people: Greg and Philip, SmileOnMyMac’s co-founders and software developers. After reading Send: The Essential Guide to Email, I decided to more consistently open the emails with “Hi Greg,” “Hi Philip,” and sometimes, “Hi Greg and Philip,” to be a bit less cold.

A lot of us have a mental block against setting up TextExpander snippets for really short things like these phrases, which are 10, 12 and 21 keystrokes each (when you include hitting “Enter” twice, as I invariably do.) You have to use a minimum of 2 keystrokes to trigger the snippet expansion, so how much time do you really save?

This week, I decided to add “Hg” and “Hp” to TextExpander, as well as “HG” for “Hi Greg and Philip,”. And I got curious about how much time would this save me.

Over the past two years, I’ve sent 1145 emails to Greg, 532 emails to Philip and 839 emails addressed to both of them. Subtracting the 2 keystrokes for the abbreviation, I came up with 30,421 keystrokes I could have saved.

When TextExpander calculates how much time you save, it assumes you type 400 characters/minute. But I knew I couldn’t type the “Hi” phrases at that rate, so I tested myself. (Among other things, the iPhone has a great stopwatch…) At the rate, I actually type those phrases (200 characters/minute), I could have saved 2 hours and 32 minutes.

The happiness of finding something else I won’t have to type out over and over again: priceless.

We just added a new snippet file for TextExpander users to download: an autocorrect snippet file courtesy of the nice folks at TidBITs. The TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary contains over 2400 misspellings that TextExpander can automatically correct.

Adam Engst, TidBITS publisher, and Micah Alpern put this massive resource together for a MacHack conference years ago. They originally created it for Eudora Mail users, but put it into the public domain so others could use it. Taking our cue from Ergonis Software, which released a version for use with Typinator, we decided to make a TextExpander-friendly version available as well.

This dwarfs our current autocorrection offering, which I compiled last year. That file contains about 100 of the most common misspellings. The TidBITS file is exhaustive – it has 15 variants of misspelling just the word “necessary.”

I’m sure there will be a lot of users who want to avail themselves of this industrial strength correcting, but I’m going to stick to using the original file myself. I just don’t want to load thousands of snippets into TextExpander.

Of course, as the erstwhile spelling champion of Ojus Elementary School, maybe I don’t need quite so many correction snippets.

… can be hazardous to your relationship. That’s what TJ, a regular contributor of TextExpander tips, found out. From his blog, in which the TJ household has finally upgraded from dial-up internet:

So I’m sitting on the bed with my laptop, and Tracey is working on the Desktop. We’ve been here for several hours — in fact I don’t remember the last time Tracey was up this late.

A few minutes ago she turned around and said “What’s that noise?”

We then had the to-be-expected conversation of me asking What Noise? followed by her trying to imitate the sound and then me mocking her. She claimed the sound was coming from my computer. I told her it was all in her head.

I thought it was over until a few minutes later she said, “Right there! That noise! What was that?!?!”

“Oh” I thought, realizing exactly what it was (and that her impression of it wasn’t all that bad, I just no longer “heard” it because I was used to it…

It’s the sound TextExpander plays by default when you use a shortcut.

TJ suggests one might want to disable that sound in TextExpander Preferences in the interests of domestic tranquility.

Maybe she needs a copy of TextExpander of her very own — then she’ll come to associate that sound with the pleasure of having saved time and energy.

We had a terrific response to our TextExpander survey! I expected that–we know you love TextExpander and have lots of opinions on how it can be even more useful. We’ve pulled together an excellent list of new features we’re going to work on. Of course the list is top secret, but I can tell you that as a TextExpander user myself, I am very excited about TextExpander 2.

I can share some interesting tidbits about TextExpander users. Most of you have modest size libraries (42% said they had less than 50 snippets) and have so far expanded fewer than 1000 snippets (60%). But there are power users: 10% have more than 250 snippets and 9% have expanded 5000+ snippets.

The most commonly-used snippets were “words or short phrases” (63% use them “a lot”), followed by “personal info” (49%) and “email signatures” (44%). 72% of you have your snippets expand automatically rather than using a delimiter character.

Whenever I create a user survey about current features, I always include the option “I did not know I could do that.” I don’t want people to say they’ve “never” used a feature when the truth is they don’t even know about it. Based on the response to this survey, we have to do a better job getting out the word on some of TextExpander’s most useful features, including: support for rich text formatting, images, and built-in macros like date, time, cursor positioning, etc. (Date was by far the most used built-in macro with 61% reporting using it, nested snippets was the least used at 9%.) So look for even more tip emails, FAQs and tutorials when TextExpander 2 is launched.

No survey is complete without a question about user satisfaction. And we’re happy to learn that TextExpander users are generally a satisfied bunch. 93% of you described yourselves as “very satisfied” or “satisfied.” Here’s to winning over the other 7% with TextExpander 2!

We’re starting to plan the release of TextExpander 2, and we’re very keen to have user input.

You can help by taking a short online survey or just send us an email at textexpander@smileonmymac.com and let us know what features you wish TextExpander had.

Or if you prefer, let us know in the comments!