Overview

FastFox will actively track and replace keywords in all applications as long as it is running, even when it is minimized to the System Tray. For example, when you type the shortcut qbf into an application, FastFox will then replace it with the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Shortcut keywords are case-sensitive. Please note: Older versions of FastFox did not have case-sensitive keywords, so if you are upgrading FastFox but still using an older abbrev.dat file, you will have to either upper-case the shortcuts you type or edit them if you want to change them to lower-case.

For text shortcuts (both simple text and formatted text), the expansion occurs when a white-space key is entered after the shortcut. But, what if you want an expansion to occur immediately after some text, and without any white space? For example, suppose you have a shortcut called "yo" that expands to "-year-old", and you want to produce the text "7-year-old". If you type "7yo" you get no expansion. But if you type "7 yo" you get "7 -year-old" with a space. You could instead, type "7", then a space, then a backspace, then "yo". This will expand to "7-year-old". An easier way to get the desired result is to define a Command shortcut. Macro shortcuts work without having to type a whitespace key. For example, you could define a Ctrl+Q shortcut to produce "-year-old". This would allow you to avoid typing an extra space and backspace.

Main window

The main window displays a list of shortcut keyword/expansion pairs. Each pair represents the shortcut keyword that will be matched and the text that will replace it.

Menus

The menu categories for FastFox are as follows:

Hotkeys

FastFox has several "Hotkeys" that you can use while your cursor has focus in the FastFox application window. The Hotkeys give you quick access to various settings within FastFox. Although not truly a hotkey, Ctrl+Shift+T is provided by default to insert the current system date into your document.

Automatic case sensitivity

For this feature to work you must turn on Expansion Casing. To do this open the options dialog, select the "General" tab, find "Expansion Casing" and check the item "Typing shortcut as all caps expands text as all caps". This option only works for Simple Text shortcuts.

If this feature is on Fastfox will automatically upper-case the expansion if you upper-case the shortcut when you type. At the time you create the shortcut, it is not case sensitive, but when it is time to expand it, FastFox will take as its cue whether you upper-case the shortcut when you type it. If you type the first character in upper case, then FastFox will upper-case the first character in the expansion. If you type ALL of the letters in uppercase, then FastFox will upper-case the entire expansion. Please see the page on Automatic Case Sensitivity for a fuller explanation.