The Butler Did It
September 22, 2007
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I love Butler. Let me tell you some of the ways I use it.
Most of my function keys are used to launch my most-used apps and documents; I won’t go through them all but as an example: F1 is for browsers. F1 on it’s own launches Safari, Cmd-F1 launches Firefox, Shift-F1 opens my own site etc.
F2 is for all my text editors and viewers. And so on and so forth. F16 through 19 are for Butler menus. One has a zillion text snippets for pasting; things like web page templates, email addresses, HTML code etc. Another is for apps that I consider second-level, that I don’t want to rummage for in the Applications folder. Another brings up my system preferences as a menu.
Butler creates a pasteboard of the last 15 or so things that I copied to the clipboard. Cmd-B pops up a list of those items for pasting.
I use Ctrl-Shift and various keys to control iTunes, even when it’s completely hidden. I can skip back and forward, skip a few seconds (by running scripts), pause, select playlists, see what’s playing, rate, you name it.
I assign the numeric keypad to give single key access to various parameters in apps. For example: there are lots of apps where I want to change the size of the text I’m viewing. I simply assign them all to numeric 2 for smaller and numeric 3 for bigger. That re-assignment only applies when those particular apps are frontmost.
I use Butler to speed typing. Ctrl-Shift-M for “I’m ” or Crtl-C for “.com” and so on. I use the screen corners for closing windows or apps; for opening folders; for hiding windows etc.
I have shortcuts for closing the current edited window without saving; for saving the current window (with selected text as the name) in a particular folder; for selecting all text and opening it in a particular editor etc.
Follow the link below to learn more about the app, and see some illustrated tips.
