Hey all, I'm the developer behind Shortcat. Feel free to ask me questions or give me feedback! I'm on a short holiday at the moment so I might not be able to respond super quick.
If you do use the app and it crashes, please send a crash report and a short description what you were doing. It helps me a lot figuring out what the problem is. I post up known issues at https://trello.com/board/shortcat-bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001... (public Trello board) so people can vote and comment on issues.
I strongly suggest reading the README as I haven't baked in a tutorial to the app just yet.
Oh wow, this is brilliant. My only problems with it are that it doesn't work with some applications, which is the perfect problem to have, because it means I can now identify applications that have accessibility issues that I didn't notice before.
Demand for accessible apps increases -> I become more productive and apps become more accessible for people that need them. Perfect!
Being able to define new shortcuts in real time is awesome, but half the battle. Helping me learn the shortcuts that are already there is the other half.
Can you guys add a feature that flashes on the screen the keyboard shortcut that already exist for an action performed via the mouse?
Even better if you can add a threshold for an action. For a trivial example, imagine just going to the edit menu and choosing cut/paste/copy. If I perform that action more often than once every 10 minutes, shortcat would flash a fairly large overlay on my screen showing me that shortcut. You could even make this progressive. First teach me any shortcuts for any action performed every 5 minutes for a particular application. Once I learn all those actions, expand the threshold one minute at a time until I learn a new action. Once I consistently perform those actions within the threshold via the keyboard, further increase the threshold until I learn all the commands.
Right now, I've implemented maybe 10% of the features I want to add. I'll be adding licensing soon, but given that most people probably wouldn't pay for features that's not there, I'm probably going to start at $12, then bump it whenever I ship a major feature. Early adopters will end up saving a bit.
The licensing will be cheaper when it's in beta too.
I actually had this idea before I came up with Shortcat. The problem was that there was no reliable way of linking an action to its keyboard shortcut without installing hooks into an application and tracing all the method calls and seeing which ones match up.
If you limited it to clicking the menus in the top where the shortcuts are defined, it's more doable but I personally didn't see much merit in that since I'm terrible at memorising keyboard shortcuts anyway.. :)
Amazing. This has instantly become a must-have utility for me after trying it out for just a few minutes. Easily the best new Mac utility I've seen in a very long time.
I noticed the mention of the "regions" feature in the README, so maybe you already have plans for solving this, but one thing I'd love would be to have a way to select something based in part on its proximity to something else. For example, imagine I want to click on the comments link for a particular story on the HN front page. It'd be more intuitive to me to type, say, "Shortcat#comments" to pick the item that matches "comments" nearest the item that matches "Shortcat", than to type "comments" and hit Control to select the correct link.
Regions needs a bit more thought, but it'll let you narrow down the search space easier when you're using a complex app like Xcode with a billion different scrollviews.
That's actually a pretty cool idea! I had ideas for sorting by depth in the element tree to current active or moused over element, but a proximity-based search would be interesting. What operator would you think is meaningful? I haven't got plans for '#' just yet.
I can see this being an OS X power-user/accessibility feature in the next major release. Enjoy your acquisition and/or idea being brazenly appropriated.
DNS Points to Prohibited IP
You've requested a page on a website (shortcatapp.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, it is resolving to an IP address that is creating a conflict within CloudFlare's system. If you are the owner of this website, you should login to CloudFlare and change the DNS A records for shortcatapp.com to resolve to a different IP address.
Any chance of defining a custom selection key other than ctrl? On my Macbook air, holding the control key with my pinky or thumb while I type is really awkward. Shift would seem more natural, as the pinky finger is already used to using this as a modifier, no?
Hmm, probably. I used to use Shift but the problem was there are languages where they need to use Shift to be able to type more letters (Thai for example), so it wouldn't let them type other languages. I could probably add it as an option though, but you wouldn't be able use capital letters, naturally heh
Any way this can be "downgraded" for Snow Leopard? I hate the iOSification Lion and Mountain Lion have gone through. I like my vintage Expose with the Dashboard disabled.
Small suggestion: In the case of selecting an item that's not the topmost, it would be nice if it was a one-step process rather than two (you need to first highlight with ctrl+letter, then activate with Enter).
Maybe a repeated press of ctrl+letter could actually activate the selection. Or maybe pressing and holding ctrl+letter for a short while.
Great idea and product. I will gladly pay for it. One of the biggest issues I had when transitioning from pc to mac was the lack of meaningful shortcuts. This would have eased the pain greatly!
I could not figure out how to click an element when using . to highlight all elements.
Very nice. On your readme page you mention that with sublime text nothing works. I presume the onus will be on Sublime text developers to make their tabs available to the assit API?
EDIT: On further inspection of README this is somewhat covered. /sleepy
So if I type in '.' and see the control I want to specify listed as 'C', how do I tell Shortcat to activate 'C'? I tried obviously typing in ".C" or just "C" but neither work.
I must be doing something wrong but I can't see how to select an element or button by the letter over it's highlight. Ctrl+Letter doesn't do anything for me. From the README, that seemed to be the way to do it?
If there are multiple highlighted elements on screen, Ctrl-Letter lets you select which element is highlighted green. The green element can then be activated/selected with Enter.
As others already suggested, the possibility of directly activating a specific element by shortcut would be great. Awesome app nonetheless!
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
If you do use the app and it crashes, please send a crash report and a short description what you were doing. It helps me a lot figuring out what the problem is. I post up known issues at https://trello.com/board/shortcat-bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001... (public Trello board) so people can vote and comment on issues.
I strongly suggest reading the README as I haven't baked in a tutorial to the app just yet.
[+] [-] GuiA|12 years ago|reply
Bug report: http://i.imgur.com/wTwXpx2.png
(your "reply" link isn't highlighted, but all others are)
[+] [-] kaeluka|12 years ago|reply
I've had it installed a while now and found that I almost never use it -- surprisingly.
One thing you could support to fix that: why can't I click on the menu bar of an application?
One thing that annoys me: whenever I cylce through open applications with cmd-tab, shortcat is there.
[+] [-] peatmoss|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Filligree|12 years ago|reply
How do I pay you for it? :-)
[+] [-] terhechte|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malandrew|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kps|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uncr3ative|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zura|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esusatyo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] white_devil|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pje|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|12 years ago|reply
"Shortcat -- killing mice, one at a time."
is just genius. Super-kudos to whoever came up with that.
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsync|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sealy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3stripe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christiangenco|12 years ago|reply
Demand for accessible apps increases -> I become more productive and apps become more accessible for people that need them. Perfect!
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malandrew|12 years ago|reply
Can you guys add a feature that flashes on the screen the keyboard shortcut that already exist for an action performed via the mouse?
Even better if you can add a threshold for an action. For a trivial example, imagine just going to the edit menu and choosing cut/paste/copy. If I perform that action more often than once every 10 minutes, shortcat would flash a fairly large overlay on my screen showing me that shortcut. You could even make this progressive. First teach me any shortcuts for any action performed every 5 minutes for a particular application. Once I learn all those actions, expand the threshold one minute at a time until I learn a new action. Once I consistently perform those actions within the threshold via the keyboard, further increase the threshold until I learn all the commands.
How much do you plan on charging?
[+] [-] watterssn|12 years ago|reply
Shortcat seems like a great complement to shortcutFoo! Very cool idea.
(disclaimer: I created shortcutFoo)
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
Right now, I've implemented maybe 10% of the features I want to add. I'll be adding licensing soon, but given that most people probably wouldn't pay for features that's not there, I'm probably going to start at $12, then bump it whenever I ship a major feature. Early adopters will end up saving a bit.
The licensing will be cheaper when it's in beta too.
[+] [-] jimmcslim|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
If you limited it to clicking the menus in the top where the shortcuts are defined, it's more doable but I personally didn't see much merit in that since I'm terrible at memorising keyboard shortcuts anyway.. :)
[+] [-] stereo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swift|12 years ago|reply
I noticed the mention of the "regions" feature in the README, so maybe you already have plans for solving this, but one thing I'd love would be to have a way to select something based in part on its proximity to something else. For example, imagine I want to click on the comments link for a particular story on the HN front page. It'd be more intuitive to me to type, say, "Shortcat#comments" to pick the item that matches "comments" nearest the item that matches "Shortcat", than to type "comments" and hit Control to select the correct link.
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
Regions needs a bit more thought, but it'll let you narrow down the search space easier when you're using a complex app like Xcode with a billion different scrollviews.
That's actually a pretty cool idea! I had ideas for sorting by depth in the element tree to current active or moused over element, but a proximity-based search would be interesting. What operator would you think is meaningful? I haven't got plans for '#' just yet.
[+] [-] jcromartie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alanctgardner2|12 years ago|reply
DNS Points to Prohibited IP You've requested a page on a website (shortcatapp.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, it is resolving to an IP address that is creating a conflict within CloudFlare's system. If you are the owner of this website, you should login to CloudFlare and change the DNS A records for shortcatapp.com to resolve to a different IP address.
Timestamp: Fri, 07-Jun-13 22:40:20 GMT
Requested URL: shortcatapp.com/0
Error reference number: 1000
Server ID: FL_29F5
Process ID: PID_1370644820.240-1-3281482
Edited to remove my personal info.
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] domodomo|12 years ago|reply
Any chance of defining a custom selection key other than ctrl? On my Macbook air, holding the control key with my pinky or thumb while I type is really awkward. Shift would seem more natural, as the pinky finger is already used to using this as a modifier, no?
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
Hmm, probably. I used to use Shift but the problem was there are languages where they need to use Shift to be able to type more letters (Thai for example), so it wouldn't let them type other languages. I could probably add it as an option though, but you wouldn't be able use capital letters, naturally heh
[+] [-] cyan_atrus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_ke|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaxbot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeroher|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colbyh|12 years ago|reply
A menu bar icon would be appreciated!
[+] [-] _chendo_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhickner|12 years ago|reply
Small suggestion: In the case of selecting an item that's not the topmost, it would be nice if it was a one-step process rather than two (you need to first highlight with ctrl+letter, then activate with Enter).
Maybe a repeated press of ctrl+letter could actually activate the selection. Or maybe pressing and holding ctrl+letter for a short while.
[+] [-] septerr|12 years ago|reply
I could not figure out how to click an element when using . to highlight all elements.
[+] [-] tomflack|12 years ago|reply
I'm based out of Canberra at the moment, but it's great to see local guys pop up on HN occasionally.
[+] [-] lostpixel|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: On further inspection of README this is somewhat covered. /sleepy
[+] [-] emehrkay|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodly|12 years ago|reply
/missed something obvious
[+] [-] mitchty|12 years ago|reply
That said, the video screencast doesn't show up in firefox sans flash player. Not a huge deal but thought you might want to know.
[+] [-] dantiberian|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbnio|12 years ago|reply
As others already suggested, the possibility of directly activating a specific element by shortcut would be great. Awesome app nonetheless!
[+] [-] shurcooL|12 years ago|reply
I've already been doing something like this in browsers for some time:
Cmd+F
Type
Enter/Shift+Enter to go next/prev result (or Cmd+G/Cmd+Shift+G)
When it highlights the link you want to press: Esc, Enter
Of course the beauty of this app is that it works outside the browser too.