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As a citizen of the web, you frequently enter repetitive information about yourself into forms.

Do you have to write the same text multiple times per day? For instance when replying to business emails, writing blog posts or commenting on them on the Internet. If that is the case you might have considered using tools that let you create text shortcuts that you can simply paste into your texts to speed up the writing?

The Google Chrome extension Popchrome adds this functionality to the popular Internet browser. Popchrome uses shortcuts for text that can be used in most web forms. The extension ships with two of them pre-installed. The abbreviation today can be changed into the current date, while sy into Sincerly yours.

The conversion itself is pretty straightforward. You write your message or post normally using the shortcut code. Once done you use the shortcut Ctrl-Space to turn all shortcuts on that particular page into the text that has been associated with them.

This works very well on most sites and forms on the Internet. The extension seems to be incompatible with some secure sites. It did not work at the Google Web Store nor Google Plus. It worked fine on the other hand on the Gmail web site when composing email.

The extension would not be of real use without the ability to add and configure new shortcuts and text snippets. This is done in the extension options.

You can create as many new text snippets and abbreviations here as you want. These become active after you click on the Save button in the options.

A click on the Help tab lists variables that you can add to your text snippets. Support right now are only date related parameters (day, month, years or a combination thereof).

The text substitution shortcut can be changed under the Settings tab. Here it is furthermore possible to disable sounds and animations that are not really needed for the extension’s functionality.

Popchrom could be an interesting extension for Chrome users who regularly have to write the same text snippets in the web browser.

Chrome users can install Popchrom directly from the Google Chrome web store.

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Having an extension like Mega Button for Chrome to access often used features faster is nice and all, but it is not the fastest way to work with the browser. Shortcuts are faster, and they additionally do not add buttons or other clutter to the browser or menus.

Google Chrome comes with a set of shortcuts for many features. These shortcuts are hard coded in the browser and cannot be changed in the preferences or options. Users who want to change existing shortcuts, or add new shortcuts to the browser need to look at third party extensions to do so.

One of the best Chrome shortcut extensions is Shortcut Manager, which has been in development for quite some time.

Shortcut Manager is probably the most versatile shortcut extension for the Google browser currently. It adds an icon to the Chrome address bar, which can be hidden once the initial configuration has been completed.

A right-click on the icon and the selection of Options opens the shortcut configuration screen. Here it is possible to create new shortcuts in the browser. Shortcuts can also be exported and imported which is handy if Chrome is used on multiple systems, or if different editions of the browser are installed on the same system.

You create new shortcuts by clicking in the Shortcut key form and then a shortcut key that you want to use. The extension will display a notification if the shortcut is currently already mapped in the browser. You can still go ahead and override the original mapping or select a different shortcut if you want to keep the original shortcut.

It is possible to set each shortcut to work with specific web addresses only, or globally. Nothing needs to be changed if it should work globally, if not you need to enter an url so that the shortcut is only working on websites that match the pattern. You could for instance create shortcuts that only work on secure sites that begin with https://*, or shortcuts that work on Google, Bing or Ghacks.

The action defines what is done when the keyboard shortcut is activated. Two options are available. It is possible to select one of the predefined browser actions or load a JavaScript file and execute it afterwards.

Most users will likely pick the predefined actions. Here is a short selection of what can be selected out of the box.

• Tab actions – Open tabs, close tabs, select tabs
• Page actions – Go back and forward, reload, view source
• Inner page actions – Focus elements, scroll or print
• Cursor actions – Insert free text, go to the front or back of a text form.
• Window actions – Open or close windows
• Screen capture – Capture the current tab
• Chrome pages – Open Extensions, Downloads, History

One of the things you could do is to use the “open my favorite page in a new tab” action to load websites or Chrome internal pages with shortcuts.

The second option can be used to execute JavaScript code. This opens an interesting option for users who work with bookmarklets as it is possible to add their code directly as shortcuts in the shortcut editor which means that it is no longer necessary to click on the bookmarklets button to execute the code, as it is now possible to use the shortcut instead.

You may need to restart the browser before the shortcuts become available. A left-click on the extensions icon displays the currently configured shortcuts with options to open them in the shortcut editor.

Chrome users who like to work with shortcuts should definitely take a look at the Shortcut Manager extension.

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