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Software and other cool stuff.
 Breevy: A text expander that lets you insert long words or phrases and launch apps, websites, and more just by typing abbreviations. |
 IcyScreen:
Automatic screenshots. Have them saved, e-mailed, and uploaded. |
Breevy 3.20 was released today, with a cool new macro added, %(Launch), which allows you to launch / open programs, files, and folders from within "regular", non-launcher abbreviations.
The ability to launch apps, files, and folders after typing an abbreviation has actually been available since almost the very beginning; however, prior to this version of Breevy, you could only launch things by creating a separate launcher abbreviation for each app, file, or folder you wanted to launch. In other words, for each separate launcher abbreviation, only one thing (program, file, folder, or website) could be launched, and no text could be outputted by Breevy prior to or after the launch since it wasn't a text abbreviation. Which is perfectly fine if you only want or need to launch one thing.
However, what's cool about the new %(Launch) macro is you can use it to launch multiple things all from within a single, non-launcher (text) abbreviation.
For example, say you wanted to have Notepad and Firefox launch whenever you typed a certain abbreviation (such as .lnch). To do this, just click New Abbreviation in Breevy, set the abbreviation to .lnch, and set the abbreviation's replacement text to:
%(Launch "C:\Windows\notepad.exe")%(Launch "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe")
...and the next time you type .lnch, both Notepad and Firefox will launch automatically.
Not only that, but the %(Launch) macro allows for powerful scripted interaction between programs, as you can instruct Breevy to interact with the programs you launch by outputting text, simulating special key presses with the %(Key) macro, and so on.
As an example (Note: You'll need to enable the Continue outputting replacement text even if active window changes in Breevy's Preferences -> Cool Stuff in order for the examples below to work), the following replacement text instructs Breevy to launch the Windows calculator, wait one second for it to load, and then enter a simple calculation into the calculator and have it show the result (700):
%(Launch "C:\Windows\system32\calc.exe")%(Delay 1s)5+4-2*100=
As another example, the following replacement text instructs Breevy to launch Notepad, wait one second for it to fully load, and then enter the text "Hello, world! This text is being typed in Notepad." into it. It then instructs Breevy to save the file (by simulating a Ctrl+S key press) to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\file.txt (replace with the path to the documents folder on your system if you want to try it out yourself). Finally, it instructs Breevy to open that newly created file in Firefox by passing the full file path as a parameter to Firefox's executable:
%(Launch "C:\Windows\notepad.exe")%(Delay 1s)Hello, world! This text is being typed in Notepad.%(Key Ctrl+S)%(Delay 1s)C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\file.txt%(Delay 200ms)%(Key Enter)%(Launch "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -parameters "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\file.txt")
Pretty cool, isn't it? 
For more info on the %(Launch) macro, check out Breevy's help file. Also, a little tip: the easiest way to enter the %(Launch) macro's syntax is to click the blue arrow next to the Replacement Text box of your abbreviation and select Launch a program if you want a program to be launched, or Launch a file or folder if you'd like a file or folder to be launched/opened. A dialog will then appear allowing you to quickly browse for the program, file, or folder path to launch as well as configure the other available options. After clicking OK, the correct syntax for the macro will then be inserted for you into the Replacement Text box automatically.
You can download the latest version of Breevy from our website here.
Enjoy!
New in Breevy 3.18 is the ability to "embed" abbreviations within another, using the %(Abbreviation) -- or %(Abbrev) for short -- macro.
For example, say you have an abbreviation, myname, with the replacement text John Doe (or whatever your name is).
You can then have another abbreviation, for example ggreet, with the following replacement text:
Howdy, my name is %(Abbrev myname). How's it going?
Which Breevy would expand to (assuming the abbreviation myname's replacement text is set to John Doe): Howdy, my name is John Doe. How's it going?
Instead of %(Abbreviation) or %(Abbrev), you can also use %snippet% -- which is the syntax used in TextExpander -- and it'll work exactly the same.
Breevy 3.17 was just released. New in this version is a useful improvement to the existing %(Input) macro: re-usable "variables" (optional, of course).
Perhaps the best way to explain how they work is with an example. Say you have an abbreviation mynameis, with the following replacement text:
Hello, my name is %(Input myName) and I live in %(Input country). I repeat: my name is %(Input myName) and I live in %(Input country).
(You could also use the %(Fill) macro in place of the %(Input) macro above, as both can now be used interchangeably.)
In the above example, after outputting the text preceding the first %(Input) macro, Breevy would pause and allow you to enter your first name, and then after you pressed Tab, it would continue expanding and then pause to allow you to enter the country you live in. After you pressed Tab again, however, whereas before Breevy would pause for you to enter your name and the country you lived in all over again the second time, in the new version there's no longer any need to re-enter your name and country again: Breevy "remembers" that you typed them earlier and will output them automatically for you, without pausing.
Breevy's %(Input) variable "memory" is cleared after the abbreviation is finished expanding, so even if you were to type the same abbreviation again, you would have to re-enter your name and country -- but only once during the expansion, of course.
Also, the new functionality is optional; you can still just use the %(Input) or %(Fill) macros without variables/identifiers, like so:
Hello, my name is %(Input).
The new version can be downloaded here. Enjoy. 
New in Breevy 3.09, released today, is the ability to disable individual folders (previously, you could only enable or disable all folders -- by changing Breevy's status to Disabled in the main window or with the toggle status hotkey.)
Disabling folders is super easy: just right-click the folder(s) you'd like to disable and select Disable.
Abbreviations inside of the folders you have disabled won't be expanded when you type them. Also, disabled folders have a gray folder icon next to them instead of a yellow one:
To re-enable a disabled folder, right-click it and select Enable.
As usual, you can download the new version from Breevy's main page. Enjoy.