Each day as we work on our computers we perform thousands of keystrokes many of them relate to sentences and phrases we type repeatedly and often on a daily basis. You can definitely save yourself so much time by decreasing the number of your keystrokes through using keyboard shortcuts. I have already shared with you a collection of helpful keyboard shortcuts concerning Google Docs and Chrome and in today’s post I am sharing with you this excellent Chrome extension called TextBlaze.
TextBlaze is a text expander that lets you create smart text expansions. You can easily create custom keyboard shortcuts to help you save text snippets and templates to use on different places online. For instance, to type in your signature you can simply use the letter combination ‘/sig’. Similarly you can create as many letter combinations to perform digital tasks that would normally require you numerous keystrokes and so much time.
TextBlaze goes beyond text expansion to offer you the ability to program “your snippet with replacement patterns. For instance, insert the current date by including a few simple special characters in your snippet. Do you want to set a deadline 30 days out for a due date? That’s also easy to add with a text expansion. Text Blaze can also include fields in your snippets that you fill in when you enter your shortcut. Want to include a client’s name in your email template? Just make it a field and it will be repeated throughout the email just how you want it. You can even use fields to trigger dynamic calculations.”
Other interesting features offered by TextBlaze include: autopilot (lets you “fill out multiple fields with one snippet using Text Blaze’s simulated tab key presses and you can even simulate clicks on buttons to submit forms”; context menu (select snippets to expand from the context menu of TextBlaze by right clicking on an input field), shared snippets (this is especially useful for team work. Snippet folders allow members of the team to access and use the same snippets).
