Using Mywe for text expansion (as pdf)
Introduction to Text Expansion
Background
Computers and software were introduced in our lives and businesses to take away many common time-consuming tasks and offer a higher level of business productivity and quality. And so it did. However as time passed by, there exist still many time-consuming and repetitive tasks, that are not treated sufficiently or even at all. As computers and software became increasingly popular these time-consuming tasks kept increasing and gradually became an essential part of how business is done. These days, one of the repetitive tasks is typing.
What is text expansion?
The basic idea of text expansion is to replace a small bit of text with a larger bit of text. Text expansion saves countless keystrokes by replacing abbreviation with commonly used text or content and saves a lot of valuable time.
Text expansion tool listens to everything user types. When you type one of pre-defined abbreviation, text expansion tool removes the abbreviation and replaces it with a longer text without requiring you to type the entire text.
Unlike software-specific text replacement features, text expansion works usually in any application user is typing in.
Time is money, save your valuable time
Regardless of typing proficiency, text expansion can save all an unbelievable amount of time. Text expansion is a great way to save time when you find yourself typing the same text repeatedly. Just cause you can type fast doesn’t mean you want to type the same thing over and over again. Once you learn how to use text expansion tool, it can streamline your time at the keyboard.
Watch the video for “typing faster” in action. As you can see from the video, there are more features than text expansion that you can use Mywe. Mywe supports word prediction, word/phrase autocompletion, phonetic input and fingertext in addition to text expansion.
Do not repeat yourself
If you need to carry out same repetitive task more than twice, you should probably think about automating it or finding a way to simplify it. What could I have done better or more effectively? By answering this question you should uncover ways you could have been more effective. This moment of reflection is one important step you can do to consistently deliver great work.
Terms
In Mywe terms, a “template” is what is displayed when you type the assigned key (abbreviation). For example, a key like “tyvm” might expand to the text template “thank you very much.”
However, many times the text you end up typing repeatedly has variable or optional content. This is where the advanced usage of “fingertext”. We’re going to discuss fingertext later in this article.
Use cases for text expansion
Let’s see some common use cases on how text expansion can help you. Signatures, addresses and commonly used texts can be quickly and easily expanded from user-defined keys. There are texts of emails or full contact information that are so frequently used that they could also be saved as templates.
There are many more examples. Let’s see some common use cases.
Canned email responses
Answering email can be an enormous time-consuming task. If you analyze your answering email habits you probably find that there are responses that you write over and over. If you are technical support staff and work for the troubleshooting of issues related to software, you may sometimes observe that a large percentage of the questions were the same.
One way to solve this problem is to create a text file with all the canned responses. Cutting and pasting is quicker than re-typing the same response over and over. This scenario would make a perfect candidate for text expansion. You can assign separate responses as templates for each type of response. Using text expansion copying and pasting becomes no more necessary.
Code snippets
If you’re a programmer, you can save yourself a ton of time by adding your boilerplate code to your text expansion tool. If you are using a text editor without IDE to write code, this would be a great way to save time.
Let’s see some other use cases for text expansion.
- Ready-to-execute complex database queries
- Templates for database names, table names and column names
Address, phone number, email address and signatures
Text expansion can make typing email address, street address and phone number a lot easier. You can assign for example a key like “addr” to expand out your address.
Another common use is email signature. Text expansion can help you solve the problem of needing multiple different signatures for your email. For example, you could define certain email signatures for certain customers and assign appropriate keys like sig1, sig2 and so on to the email signatures.In some cases there is nothing worse than misspelling (e.g. clients’ names), whether it’s in emails or copy you’re writing.
Let’s see some other use cases for text expansion.
- Clients’ and institutional organization names, which are made up of long words.
- Email addresses for work, friends or different clients.
How to setup up text expansion in Mywe
As you can see from this article, there are a ton of possible use cases for text expansion. It’s an incredibly useful utility that will save you a lot of time, but like any tool it’s only effective if you use it correctly. Let’s see a couple general best practices for you to keep in mind as you implement Mywe into your personal workflow.
The most important thing for text expansion is to organize the templates in a logical manner and use a consistent naming convention for templates so that you do not need to struggle to remember the keys.
Manage templates
There are several ways to define templates. Keep in mind that you don’t need to actually memorize the template keys as they can all be inserted using the intelligent autocompletion in Mywe or you can use the categorized menu.
Save template
Let’s see how you can use Mywe as text expansion tool to create your templates.
You can edit your templates through text expansion menu or use standard editor. You can highlight the text you want to reuse with mouse and use menu or drag-and-drop to save it as template. It takes initially a little time to set up and get in the habit of using it, but the payback is quick and substantial.
A template can be saved in one of the 4 available formats. The 4 formats are “text format”, “rich text format”, “Microsoft Word format” and “binary format”. Formatting texts, images, tables or other content elements can be saved in other formats except “text format”.
Watch the video for “Save existing content as a template and save existing content as a template by drag and drop” in action.
Mywe standard and structure editor
Features
Ultimately, you need to figure out what methods are best for you. Take a look at your normal workflow and figure out exactly what you’re wasting the most time. Text expansion makes a lot of sense for anyone interested in efficiency. Mywe is powerful and does a lot more than just simple text expansion.
Apart from text expansion feature, it has a built-in dictionary of words and phrases sorted by usage frequency for word/phrase autocompletion. It also has a ton of advanced features for power users.
Fingertext
- Fingertext provides tab triggered text editing and supports multiple hotspots definitions in templates.
- Hotspot (placeholder) is indicated by , where default is the default value of the hotspot or can be seen as hint. Embedded hotspots are not supported. The <> is silent place holder for the tab key to jump to.
- Hotspots are triggered by tab and user can keep the default value by pressing “tab” key or replace the default value with a new value.
- Fingertext is particularly helpful when entering variable text, such as the name in the form.
Watch the video for “fingertext”.
Word/phrase autocompletion
- Word/Phrase autocompletion uses partial matching search. If a word/phrase in the dictionary contains the typed text, the word/phrase is displayed as one search result in suggestion window.
- Typing assistant supports English language by default. The autocompletion feature for words and phrases is based on built-in static dictionary as source for search. User can add new word or phrase into user custom wordlist.
- The built-in dictionary consists of two parts (files), one part is used for word autocompletion, another part is used for phrase autocompletion. The dictionary contains about 94000 words and 9400 phrases. Words and phrases are sorted by usage frequency.
- Autocorrect feature can be extended by using plugin.
Watch the video for “word/phrase autocompletion”.
Phonetic input
- Mywe provides intelligent phonetic input for a word based on hyphenation information.
- Key (Abbreviation) for a word is built by using the first two characters of the first syllable and the first character of following syllables. If e.g. a word contains part of a saved hyphenation text, the word is displayed as one result in suggestion window. For example, the word “program” can be typed with the input “prg”.
Watch the video for “phonetic input”.
Hotstring
- Hotstring is a feature which replaces a key with larger text content. User needs always to type the key completely when using hotstring in comparison to autocompletion.
- In addition to simple text replacement, hotstring can perform regular expression replacement as well.
Watch the video for “hotstring”.
Desktop manager
- Sometimes user has more windows on their screen than he can deal with at once. Desktop manager provides useful features to arrange and manage windows in order to solve this problem.
- Virtual desktop (Workspace), autohide, live window, transparency, z-index are the 5 main features of desktop manager. In addition, desktop manager provides tools such as resizing window and changing window position to change window settings.
Watch the video for “desktop manager”.
File manager
- File manager allows user to administrate and access various resources. User can integrate new resources by drag and drop to toolbar.
- File shortcuts, folder shortcuts, program shortcuts and links can be integrated within the file manager menu via configurations. For example, user can use program shortcuts and links to perform functions like launching applications and websites.
- File system autocompletion allows user to search for files, folders on local NTFS drives by name and deliver the results within just seconds.
- Clipboard history enhances Windows clipboard by giving users instant access to the latest clipboard contents. The last 20 clipboard entries can be accessed via clipboard history menu.
- Mywe enhanced Windows explorer to include additional functions like preview depending on the selected files or folders.
- Website preview allows user to preview a link in one preview window and filter out uninteresting pages in advance based on the preview.
- Website autocompletion provides an intelligent way to browse websites in any application by predefined queries.
Watch the video for “file manager”.
Tool
Mywe provides several tools to support user at work in addition to the main features. These tools are CPU usage monitor; Clipboard manager; File system monitor; Screen magnifier; Screen ruler; Screen clock and countdown.
Watch the video for “tool”.
Case study
Below is a case study of a team of 10 people in a small size company.
After using our products for 1 month, we compared time usage of their daily tasks. The average time has been reduced by more than 50% of the time previously needed for performing the common tasks. This means reduced time for common tasks, and more time to run the core business.
Task | Time spent before (hours) | Time spent after (hours) | Time saved after |
Common typing and typing frequently used text | 2.00 | 1.00 | 50% |
Finding and navigating folders or files | 0.30 | 0.15 | 50% |
Searching in internet | 0.25 | 0.1 | 60% |
Word processing | 0.20 | 0.1 | 50% |
Starting applications and opening shortcuts | 0.15 | 0.05 | 66% |
Value Proposition
- Mywe as a powerful and user-friendly productivity tool helps employees work smarter and save a lot of time. The price of our software enables organizations to get higher cost-effectiveness and a maximized return on investment (ROI). The strategic value of changing organizational behavior at large far outweighs the immediate benefits and supports employees to improve service productivity and increase customer satisfaction.
- Mywe helps employees increase efficiencies and improve work quality not only with its superior typing and editing capabilities but also with more extended features and functions for the advanced users. Extended features are windows manager, other helpful tools or programming by plug-in for custom features.
About Us
Feng Qiao Software helps organizations assess how to improve their productivity and works with them to achieve their vision. We have a unique innovative way of doing things. It’s how we innovate and deliver value for our clients. We develop and implement product to improve our clients’ efficiency. Ultimately, we enable our clients to become high-performance organizations.
Our key differentiators in the marketplace include:
- addressing key business and technology issues
- innovation
Our business strategy is to use our expertise in technology to help clients improve their productivity so they can deliver their products and services more effectively and efficiently, and grow their businesses in existing and new markets.
Contact information
Feng Qiao Software is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany
Feng Qiao Software, Mainzer Landstrasse 49,60329 Frankfurt, Germany
We are a Microsoft BizSpark member.
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To learn more at: https://software.mywe.co/
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To download free trial of our product at: https://software.mywe.co/download/
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Product demonstration video: http://youtu.be/dodBD5teLV8
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