TextExpander, formerly known as Textpander and my third favourite time-saving app in Mail.app and elsewhere, has been updated.

The new version includes an option to use the old Textpander menubar icon, which according to the release notes has “quite a few vocal fans”.

User-definable delimiters (the keystroke which triggers the expansion) help you to simplify your workflow:

For example, I currently use spacebar for TextExpander expansions and the tab key for TextMate snippets. I could now change the TextExpander delimiter so that my “muscle memory” only has to remember one key for all expansions.

TextExpander 1.4 also offers better importing of snippet lists and the ability to sort snippets by the date they were created or last modified.

TextExpander is shareware (USD 29.95) is available from the developer’s web site .productivity, mail.app, apple mail, snippets, text, textpander, textexpander

TypeIt4Me is a snippet and text expansion utility like TextExpander (once Textpander).

These utilities speed up the typing in Mail.app and elsewhere to an unbelievable degree, and save me more time than anything else except, perhaps, Quicksilver.

Version 3.0 which was released yesterday is a major update. It is now a universal binary and its user interface has been completely rewritten in Cocoa.

Major new features include support for Rich Text Format in snippets and the clever ability to make individual snippets active only in particular apps.

The interface is clear and can be grasped as once by anyone who has used TextExpander. The preferences pane shows some of the app’s other features:

It can now import clippings files from TextExpander and Typinator and offers nested snippets, the ability to wrap the contents of the clipboard within a snippet improved support for images in snippets and more.

Devoted productivity nuts will be glad to know that they are no longer restricted to 2,700 abbreviations.

I noticed something else excellent straight away; TypeIt4Me does not suffer the occasional one or two second delay that afflicts TextExpander. Nice.

TypeIt4Me is shareware (USD 27) and a 30 day unlimited demo is available from the developer’s web site .snippets, text, productivity, typing, give your fingers a break, textexpander, typeit4me, text expansion

One of my very favourite time-saving, finger-sparing, productivity-boosting apps is on sale at MacZOT! today.

You can pick up a copy of TextExpander, the text snippet manager, at a 33% discount.

Nothing else helps me whip through my inbox as quickly (I don’t use MailTemplate) or manages my signatures as well in Mail.app and elsewhere.

On sale. Just for today. USD 19.95 instead of USD 29.95.

Drop everything. Go get it .

[Thanks, Marcel]textexpander, productivity, snippets, apple mail, mail.app, text, shortcuts

Merlin Mann recently posted about a nifty new full-screen word processor called WriteRoom, which by filling the whole screen removes many distractions and helps you to focus on the task at hand.

Very clever and most excellent for plain text work. But sometimes you need the textual grunt, coding smarts, snippets and features of an app like TextMate .

Help is to hand! On the TextMate mailing list , Martin Ström posted a note about a utility called Megazoomer , which can zoom many apps including TextMate to near-as-dammit full-screen mode. It requires the SIMBL plugin , also used by PithHelmet and other enhancement apps.

Intel Mac users might want to get a version which has been recompiled as a universal binary .

It adds a menu item to the Window menu. Click in when you are working in TextMate for the extra focus that full-screen mode provides. It doesn’t have the polish of WriteRoom’s layout but it does offer you the full power of TextMate’s features.textmate, productivity, fullscreen, SIMBL, text, hacks

On the Apple Discussion Boards, Steve Jones notes that Mail.app has the annoying habit of adding an extra return to paragraphs quoted in a reply.

It doesn’t happen all the time, and it seems to happen whether the reply is in plain text or rich text format.

I’ve noticed this myself and have shared the concern of another poster in the same thread:

I hope my original messages aren’t being displayed to the recipient like this, ’cause it’d really make me look like an idiot!

This is possibly not the most pressing issue facing a user of Mail.app, but it does nag away in the back of my mind.

Why is it so? Can anything be done to fix it?mail.app, apple mail, bugs, text, replies, extra spaces, looking like an idiot

A post on macOSXHints reveals a tip that was news to me.

If you want to forward selected attachments in an email you have received, highlight them, click Forward (or Command-Shift-F) and a new message appears containing only the attachments you have selected.

Of course, this is just an extension of the standard behaviour with selected text. Blocking a selection of text in an mail and then starting a forwarded message (or a reply for that matter), opens a new message containing only that selected text.

Still, I had never thought of applying it to attachments. Nice one.mail.app, apple mail, text, forwarding, attachments, messages, tips

If you didn’t read the comments on drunkenbatman’s “Talking Mail.app” interview , you might have missed a very interesting link posted by Chris Mear which explains why Mail.app quotes text in the way it does.

The format=flowed FAQ explains why text that once upon a time looked like the example on the left, now looks like the example on the right:

It also argues that this is a very good thing.format=flowed, quoting, mail.app, apple mail, text, email