Posts Tagged ‘Productivity’

Snippets plugin for Google Quick Search Box

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

QuicksnippetsiconQuickSnippets is a new plugin for Google Quick Search Box (QSB) that adds basic snippet management to the utility’s toolbox.

It is easy to use and quite clever.

First get the plugin from the developer’s Github site.

Copy the plugin file to your ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Quick Search Box/PlugIns/ directory, and restart QSB.

Then to add a snippet, all you need to do is activate QSB and type quicks and select the QuickSnippet Regist option:

Quicksnippets Regist

Enter the trigger and the snippet itself into the dialog box:

Quicksnippetscreating

I’ve found that cutting and pasting blocks of texts into the snippet box preserves the line breaks when they are activated later.

When you’ve entered all the snippet you want, dumping them into an email message or other document is easy.

Just activate QSB, and type the snippet’s trigger. The snippet appears in the list below:

Quicksnippetinaction

Select it and hit Enter. All done!

Obviously it’s not TextExpander, but for a lot of people it might be all the snippet management you need.

QuickSnippets is freeware and comes with more copious instructions in English and Japanese.

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Using Snow Leopard’s built-in text snippets in Mail.app

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

System Prefs 120pxText snippet apps like TextExpander or TypeIt4Me or Typinator can boost your productivity enormously, saving time and wear-and-tear on fingers. After Mail Act-on , TextEpander is the most valuable tool I use in order to Get Things Done fast.

Not many people know that Snow Leopard now offers a system-wide “text substitution” feature that does the same job as those snippets managers.

It doesn’t work in all apps (like, sadly, TextMate in which Hawk Wings is written and its code tweaked), but it works in mail.app, although it is turned off by default.

To turn it on, you need to open a new Compose window in Mail. Then select the Substitutions option from the Edit menu:

Textsubstituion Mail Edit Menu

The “Show Substitutions” option opens a dialogue with all the options:

Textsubstitutionmailprefs

“Smart Dashes” will automatically replace two hyphens with an em dash; Smart Links automatically hyperlinks email addresses and URLs; “Smart Quotes” makes your quotation marks curly.

The “Smart Copy/Paste” option in the Edit menu automatically decides whether a space needs to be added or not to anything you paste into a message.

Text Replacement is what we are interested in. Check it and then click the “Text Preferences” to open up the options in System Preferences:

Textsubstitutionsystemprefs

Here you can select some pre-made snippets and insert your own. I’ve added some of my email addresses, and my work email signature.

There are two ways to get the line breaks that you need for longer snippets like email signatures. Either press Option-Return at the end a line, or type it first into TextEdit, and then cut and paste the text into the expansion field on the right.

From now on, every expansion you trigger when typing an email is saving you time.

Enjoy the feeling. Use the extra time to get your inbox to zero , then go and spend some time with your kids. Or failing that, drinking buddies.

UPDATE: In the comments, Phil provides a link to a macOSXHints tip that lists some Terminal commands to unlock text substitution in more Coca apps. (Sadly, not TextMate though.) Thanks!

[This post was much improved by reading Rob Griffith's post on MacWorld ]

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Script to archive emails into Evernote

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Applescript 100pxJustin at veritrope has written an applescript that will quickly import emails from mail.app into Evernote , the web-based note and information manager.

It’s easy to use.

First, get the script from veritrope.

Like all Apple Mail-related scripts, the best place to store it is in your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail folder, so that it appears at the top of the AppleScript menu when mail.app is open.

Then find the email that you want to save into Evernote, highlight it and click the AppleScript menu on the right of your menubar:

Evernotescriptscriptmenu

The script grabs the email and shunts into Evernote. It loads the message first into Evernote’s Desktop app from which it syncs up automatically.

The script also presents a dialogue so that you can tag the email and select where to store it:

Evernotescripttagging

Chosing the “Select notebook from list” options retrieves a list of your existing notebook and also offers you the option to create a new notebook on the fly.

A nice Growl alert lets you know when it’s done.

The end result is a new Evernote note, nicely tagged-up and with a hyperlink back to the original message in mail.app:

Evernotescriptresults

Of course, it all goes much faster if you fire the script with a trigger in Quicksilver or set a keyboard shortcut for it with a utility like Daniel Jalkut’s excellent FastScripts .

veritrope also provides a fistful of applescripts for integrating Evernote with other popular apps like Yojimbo, NeetNewsWire, MacJournal, DEVONThink, even (of all things) Entourage.

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Clever miniMail plugin for mail.app re-released!

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Mini MailstandfirstScott Morrison of Indev Software (producers of the MailTags and Mail Act-on plugins) has released a souped-up version of the miniMail plugin, which he recently acquired from Olive Toast Software.

miniMail 2.0 retains all the goodness of the original–the ability to minimize Mail.app’s interface like you can in iTunes–but adds more features and flexibility.

The minimised interface is elegant and efficient, as you would expect from the developer of MailTags:

Mini Mail Interface

It is also fully integrated with Mail Act-on, allowing you to use the same keystrokes to file messages away quickly.

The plugin’s Preference pane offers options to control which mailboxes it monitors, text size inside the minimized interface itself and how it should expand again when double-clicked (to the mail mail.app window or a single message window):

Mini Mail Prefs

The Preference pane also controls miniMail 2.0’s new feature–multiple mini viewers.

You can now open a Message Viewer for a number of individual mailboxes and minimize them to keep track of new messages in particular accounts or even RSS feeds.

Here I am monitoring my work email in one miniMail window, my Hawk Wings email in another (one canny doctoral student sends his emails to both!) and the network status RSS feed of my ISP:

Multipleminimails

Very handy for keeping focus on important things whilst filtering out the rest.

miniMail is shareware (USD 12.95) and is available from Indev’s web site . Registered users of MailTags and Mail Act-on qualify for a USD 4 discount.

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Herald plugin brings notifications and quick actions

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Herald Icon StandfirstErik Hinterbichler has created a plugin, inspired by the well-loved MailAppetizer, that offers the same polished notifications when new mail arrives, and adds the option to perform some quick actions from the notification pane itself.

As an added bonus it’s ready to run in Snow Leopard now, while MailAppetizer is still being made Snow Leopard friendly.

It offers a customisable notification pane, with four icons on the bottom which allow you to delete, reply, open the message in amil.app or simply mark it read:

Herald Notification Screenshot

Herald comes in an installer package, but installs itself as standard plugin bundle in the Bundles folder of your Mail folder. It adds an additional pane to Mail’s Preferences.

The first tab allows you to specify whether the notification pane should be permanent or dismiss itself after a user-defined number of seconds. It also offers the option of opening the message in Mail’s main window or in a separate window of its own.

The second tab control the background and font colours and the level of transparency in the notification:

Herald Preferences Appearance

The third pane provides the ability to specify which mailboxes it polls for incoming emails, providing you with good control over just how bothered you want to be, and by what kind of emails:

Herald Preferences Mailboxes

If you like having your email in your face all the time, a utility like this will do the job very well.

Herald is donation-ware and is available from Erik’s web site .

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Today: Entourage’s “My Day” for everyone

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Today IconEntourage is unlikely to be the best loved application on an Apple Mail fanboy’s blog.

But it does have one feature I like, the “My Day” widget that presents the day’s appointments and tasks in nice little interface. As I’ve said before, reluctantly, it’s a good idea.

Today is an app that does the same thing. It brings the day’s events and jobs together in a handy little interface that is also functional.

Today ScreenshotIt copes well with CalDAV as well as “normal” iCal calendars, soups them up out of iCal and displays them nicely.

Moving the mouse over the items pops up a tool tip containing its notes.

Along the bottom of the interface, buttons allow you to add appointments and tasks directly from the app itself, perform other actions or print out the day’s activities in a handy hard copy.

The app’s preferences are fully-featured, and offer options for menubar display of the app, a global keyboard shortcut and whether or not to display it on top of other windows.

You can also stipulate which calendars to display.

A further pane provides the opportunity to set global alert styles for your appointments. So, for example, you could choose to get a fifteen minute email reminder on all your appointments, rather than hacking through iCal’s interface each time to set it individually. This looks like the most attractive time-saving option of the app to me.

An update (1.8) has just been released that promises improved performance and seamless compatibility with Snow Leopard (as it currently stands).

Today is shareware (USD 15) and is available from the developer’s web site .

All the gain of Entourage without the pain!

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Plugins add grunt to Google’s Quick Search Box

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Qsb IconWhile I was away, an interesting thing happened in the world of productivity apps for Mac. Nicholas Jitkoff, the developer of Quicksilver , was hired by Google to develop something similar for the company and its ever-expanding suite of apps. (Ars Technica carries the full story.)

The result is a sleek little app called “Google Quick Search Box”.

It has nothing like the power and range of Quicksilver, but it does provide a way to launch applications quickly and to perform a few other time-saving tricks:

Qsb Interface

As the name suggests, QSB is focussed on finding things. It doesn’t have the flexibility that Quicksilver enjoys, but it is good at searching. Of course, as one might expect, it excels at searching your Gmail archives and Google Apps documents.

But it can also find a bookmark in Safari or Camino and launch it, find a song in iTunes and play it, find a contact and display the information or start a new email to that person, and so on. It can find a document and offers the option to do one of six things with it:

Qsb Docs

A few weeks ago, extra plugins for the app began to appear, written by users, that expand its power and reach.

Aaron Ecay has written plugins for Firefox bookmarks, and two more that allow the interface to execute shell scripts and Applescript.

Martin Kühl has written plugins that access Leopard’s Services, search inside your Smart Folders and gain access to your Dock items. He makes these available on the github social coding web site where they are listed down the left-hand side.

(UPDATE: Nathan Parry has written a plugin for delicious.com that allows you to search and manipulate your bookmarks and tags.)

With these plugins QSB gains something like the power of Quicksilver.

For example, using Martin’s Services plugin, you can find a document, “tab” into it and type the first few letters of a Service to apply it to that object.

Here I am quickly emailing a text document to a student using the plugin:

Qsb Services

Google’s Quick Search Box is freeware and Leopard-only. Like all software that is still in development, and especially one that works together with third-party plugins, you will come across an occasional glitch.

The latest builds are available from its project page on code.google.com. There is also a Google Group that keeps you up to date with conversations between users and the development team, and with even better plugins that are sure to appear in short order.

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