If you do a lot of typing on your computer, you owe it to yourself to install a good text expander. You type a couple of characters, and you get a whole phrase. It's a fantastic way to increase your productivity and reduce repetitive typing (except for your abbreviations, of course). For those of you using Google Chrome, there's a slick new extension which puts a text expander right inside your browser.

Popchrom lets you set up custom abbreviations which it can then expand in any typing field. You can also edit existing entries and delete those that you no longer need. To access the options screen, just click the Popchrom icon -- which the developer was considerate enough to put in Chrome's Omnibar (instead of in the browser actions area). There's also built-in support for time and date variables.

Once you've got your abbreviations set, you expand them by pressing ctrl+space after you type (ds + ctrl+space = Download Squad). It's pretty awesome.

Popchrom currently has trouble with Google Docs, Wave, and some WYSIWG editing fields. However, it's well worth installing, even with those hiccups (which the developer is already working to resolve).

Popchrom is an awesome text expander for Google Chrome originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST.