Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
QuicKeys is a powerhouse macro covering that can do wonderful thing for your work flow .
Startly Technologies ’ $ 60QuicKeyshas quite a pedigree . Long before OS X was a glimmer in Steve Jobs ’ eye , QuicKeys was helping Mac user automatise repetitive tasks . QuicKeys is now at variant 4 and is today ’s most powerful — and , occasionally , complicated — macro usefulness for the Mac .
Library has four subdivision : Shortcuts , Abbreviations , Toolbars , and Clips . The Shortcuts Elvis is where you create your macros . Abbreviations is where you delimitate QuicKeys ’ text - expansions ( a la Ettore Software’sTypeIt4Me ( ) and SmileOnMyMac ’s TextExpander ( ) ) . Toolbars are dock - like palettes where you could salt away QuicKeys shortcuts , as well as launch applications , files , and folders ( making QuicKeys something like TLA Systems ’ DragThing ( ) ) . Clips is where you store schoolbook and in writing clippings for quick and easy insertion .
A QuicKeys Web action.
The Scopes section is where you may define the applications in which macro can be used . The Online section is a small web internet browser windowpane into the QuicKeys Website , where you could download macros create by Startly and other QuicKeys drug user . ( There ’s also a tutorial orbit , and access to Support and Community section of the website . )
Below Scopes and Triggers is an input signal domain where you actually create your macro instruction , step by step . QuicKeys ’ build - in accumulation of gradation is comprehensive , from fundamentals you ’d expect ( menu selection , mouse click , windowpane manipulation , and text processing action mechanism , for example ) to more powerful options such as loop topology and decision point that make macros conditional .
For model , I created a macro for Microsoft Entourage that grabs the contact information from a selected message , tot it to the destination rule book , assign it to the merchandising family , and then moves it to a brochure reserved for marketing messages . When I first created it , the macro froze when Entourage threw up a message say that the transmitter was already in the address Holy Writ . But I was able to go around the problem by adding a decision gradation that told QuicKeys to keep an eye out for that alert message and , if it popped up , to abort the macro .
QuicKeys also lets you record macros , by following your key stroke and mouse moves in real time . The result serial of recorded legal action often require by and by redaction — exchange black eye chink with menu commands , for example — but the transcription can give you a running starting at build a complicated macro .
Speaking of complicated macro , although QuicKeys provide heap of tools for creating them , they can be cunning . For lesson , with my merchandising macro instruction , QuicKeys plainly would not recognize a hierarchical menu . However , the Menu Clicks pick allowed me to select the menu command by its position . read how to do this need a trip-up to the 200 + page manual .
Also , when I created the decision step to arrest that error window , QuicKeys was well-chosen to checker for a window but asked me to identify its type . ( Any Type of Window ? Document Window ? Palette Window ? ) I also had to specify whether it was the independent window , a focused window , the foremost windowpane , or any grade of windowpane . The correct reply ? Window Type : Palette Window . Window is : Focused Window . Window State : Exists . Only the manual and test - and - misplay helped me figure out that one .
Another tricky but useful - when - it - works feature article is Web Actions . You use Web Actions to identify element on a Web varlet — checkboxes , text areas , and buttons , for example . Based on that , you’re able to automatize the cognitive operation of filling out WWW form . For instance , I help moderateMacworld’sonline forums and part of my job is banning spammers . Doing that with our meeting place software requires typing in a spot of text that explains why someone is get the boot , enable a handful of radiocommunication clit options , and chatter the Ban ’em Now button . It ’s tedious . With QuicKeys ’ Web Actions , I can do all of that with the press of a key compounding .
A QuicKeys World Wide Web action .
The “ when - it - works ” caveat is important . QuicKeys looks for entropy imbed in the internet page ’s code for this characteristic to body of work , and that information ca n’t always be regain . If you ’re well-situated rooting around in the viscera of Web pages , there ’s a good prospect that you may provide QuicKeys with the information it want , but you have to have it away what you ’re doing .
Finally , though Startly is well within its right hand to do so , it imposes a electronic internet license check feature that I do n’t handle for . This characteristic ensures that you run QuicKeys on only one computer at a prison term . When you attempt to open fire up a second copy on a networked figurer that ’s also running QuicKeys , you ’re propel to step down one of the written matter . QuicKeys is most efficacious when it ’s running all the time , so this put a serious crimp in your productivity . In the software program existence , it ’s more often than not accepted that run a transcript of an software on your desktop calculator and laptop is hunky-dory . Not so here . And there ’s no deduction on that second copy . If you want another license , it ’s also $ 60 .
Macworld’s buying advice
Licensing and protective covering issue aside , QuicKeys is a powerhouse macro practical program that can do wonderful things for your work flow . It ’s not the easiest utility to use , but if you take the time to con its elaboration , you ’ll make your Mac a more rich ( and less deadening ) machine .
