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New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter

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mouser:
i wonder if there are any hotkey tools that display a fullscreen semi-transparent overlay of hotkey assignments when you press windows key.
might be kind of cool..
ie you're an app, you press winkey and up comes full screen overlay with big text showing each available hotkey and describing what it does.

might be kind of fun to make such a freeware hotkey tool.

mouser:
an alternative way to view my suggestion:
what if we took the hotkey tools out of my proposed program.

what about just a program called:
"Pop-up Cheat Sheet"

you'd give it a hotkey (yes, the irony is delicious).

and when you activated it, it would check the current active program/window, and display a (big-text fullscreen?) overlay showing shortcuts and hotkeys relevant for that program (and system in general?).

if this sounds like a fun idea, AND IT DOESNT ALREADY EXIST, might be a fun dc program.
we could even make it so it would be easy for people to post and share cheatsheets.

so that someone who is an ultraedit user could for example make an ultraedit cheat sheet and post it, and users could just download it and add it to their collection.

what do you think?

nudone:
i think that potentially is one of the greatest ideas for a util ever.

if you make it so that the cheat sheets are easy to make by anyone then i can see it growing into a program that everyone with a computer could use.

i have a few html type cheat sheet poster things for sticking on my wall and a few that you just lay on your table - i don't use them as it's too much messing about - but to have something there that works with the program you are using would be almost essential.

to me, it seems like one of those ideas that are so obvious now you've said it that it should be included with all software anyway - just like the help files.

if you can make it so that it has adjustable transparency and is just as easy to hide as it is to start up then i think it will make more sense than using just another standard window that has the cheat sheet information in it.

there are certainly a good few cheat sheets i'd like to write straight away for such a thing. i think you should do it before someone else makes it and takes over the world with it.

(could you include a quick key or button that would swap to another page of the cheat sheet so that you could have multipage cheat sheets?)

mouser:
nudone, i think we are thinking on the exact same wavelength.

1) should be super easy to make new cheat sheets that look good.
2) should be super easy to share cheat sheets, with a nice repository where you can find them (maybe on-click download of new cheat sheets).
3) attention paid to making it look nice on screen, ie big nicelooking text (option for graphics and fancy stuff if desired).
4) should pop up and dissapear quickly so as to interfere minimally (i was thinking something like its visible full screen while you hold winkey down alone (or maybe press once for show, again for hide), but we could talk about other options, like being able to pin it open, dock it to side of screen, resize window, etc.).

multiple pages of cheat sheets makes sense to me, as does the ability to select cheat sheets on demand (ie even if it auto brings up the cheat sheet for current app, might be nice to be able to select to view different sheet pages on demand).

im thinking that the smartest approach to this is to use html for the formatting, with a nice little mini html editor.
this would probably yield the best combination of flexibility in formatting cheat sheets, with text font size changing abilities, tables, and graphics, and would have added benefits of being able to view the pages on the web.  if we are able to use css style sheets it might offer a nice way to have different display themes.

should be easy to view your cheat sheet set and disable/enable different sheets (for example there might be 10 dif. ultraedit cheat sheets and you might want to disable the ones you dont like).

should be easy to customize a cheat sheet you downloaded to modify hotkeys that you have customized.

maybe we can set it up so that you can define different regions of the display window; ie main window would show cheat sheet for current app, but you might want a left sidebar or a top or bottom panel showing your custom system-wide hotkeys.

nudone:


that is a brilliant set of features straight away - html layout with CSS ability and user costomisable edits to the cheat sheet: ingenious.

only one thing i'd comment on is the holding the 'winkey' down feature - wouldn't that keep bringing up the windows 'start' menu also?

it all sounds fantastic, mouser, i can't wait to see the first version - and start creating cheat sheets.

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