Filesystem navigation with TextExpander

I just added a TextExpander group called “Filesystem” to my TextExpander project page. It’s just a small set of paths that I find myself typing often in support emails, but here’s the cool part: they also work in “Go to folder” mode in Finder dialogs.

If you’re not familiar with “Go to folder,” it’s a keyboard geeks way of navigating in Finder. From a finder window or any save/open dialog, just type Command-Shift-G to get a little dialog where you can type a path directly in POSIX syntax (~/Library/etc.). You can also bring it up just by typing the tilde symbol (~). Tab completion works to a minimal extent, in that it’s case sensitive and generally guess wrong if there is more than one possible completion. Handy nonetheless.

With these snippets, and any that you add, you can just type things like ~apps to jump to your Application Support folder. I have a few that get more specific, but they’re not really general-use, so I kept them separate. The group is more of a starting point than any kind of complete library.

You can download it from the TextExpander project page or, better yet, install it using the url provided there with the “Install from URL” option in TextExpander.

I also added some new snippets to the Characters set, and made some handy changes/additions to the CSS3 set. For example, it doesn’t automatically insert a “#” in the color field anymore, so you can use RGBA without having to backspace. It also adds a field in that snippet’s fill form for “inset” shadows. If you don’t want inset, just leave it blank, but if you do, fill it in with “inset” and you won’t have to manually edit that on all three lines after you insert. There’s a new snippet for RGBA colors, and an entire set of Webkit scrollbar mods you can use. Have fun.