PopChar: Video Review & Giveaway

Posted by Michael Mistretta on 01/24/08 in MacApper Videos, Featured, Productivity, Giveaways, Office, Utilities

PopChar Have you ever been writing something on your Mac, and found that you needed to use a special character? Whether it be a foreign currency symbol, obscure accents, or even another language, PopChar is here to help. PopChar is a little application that sits in the background on your Mac. When you need to insert a special character, all you need to do is click the little “P” in your menubar, and PopChar will appear. It offers every single character that you will ever need - both ASCII and Unicode.

PopChar strives to get to your recently used characters with ease, and find specific ones you are looking for all in a simply beautiful interface. It’s really quite unique. In this video I will show you how I use PopChar, and if you can answer the question after the jump, you will all have a chance to win one of 3 licenses generously donated by the guys at Ergonis.

First take a look at the video.

PopChar Video Review [5:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Answer one or both of the following questions to be entered for a chance to win a license of PopChar:

How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

or…

What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

Thanks again to Christoph at Ergonis for supplying the licenses for the giveaway. The contest closes January 30th at midnight EST, and the winners will be announced shortly after that time. PopChar is available from Ergonis for $29.99.

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15 Comment(s)

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MJ Valente said on

January 24th, 2008 at 6:53 am

Q: How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

A: I use PopChar both as character viewer and as symbol inserter, but mainly the latter. Given its characteristics I don’t use it on all my projects, only on the more specialized ones that need certain characters (normally mathematic symbols or greek characters). Btw, the new zoom capability (to see the characters) is quite useful!

Q: What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

A: First, I’d like to see a Contextual Menu (or Services Menu) where to include my chosen (i.e. most used) characters; this would make the process of inserting the characters much more fluid (if in Services we can even set shortcuts). Secondly, inside the PopChar general window I’d like to see a new sub-window where we would be able to write a small phrase and see it on the different (chosen) fonts, as mean of comparison.

Aslam said on

January 24th, 2008 at 7:01 am

What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

I would switch it from being a menu item to a dashboard widget. This is the perfect thing for the dashboard. My menu bar is already crowded with iStatMenu menus that show my my processor usage, network bandwidth, etc. Having this on the dashboard would be brilliant though.

Aslam

Bruno Casarini said on

January 24th, 2008 at 7:03 am

I’d like to see some translucent black huds - like the the ones in iPhoto’s edit mode - so they could float around in my screen.

David said on

January 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am

How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

Like you mentioned, I’d use the HTML feature. When ever I need to find the HTML entity for that symbol, I usually have to search around the internet for it. This app would make thing so much simpler.

PJ said on

January 24th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Q: How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

As an engineer and scientist, I often find myself needing special characters and access to Greek letters. When using traditional software such as MS Word, it makes it redundant to always have to go by the Insert -> Special character menu. It’s redundant, and when using Office 2004, there’s always a little access delay between clicking on the menu option and the proper screen coming up. Having access to such an application would greatly increase efficiency and just make a smoother and more coherent work flow when working on reports/documents/etc…

Shane Smith said on

January 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

Q: What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

If you could group font families so scrolling is less.

something2sea said on

January 24th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

How could PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?
PopChar would fit into my daily workflow by making it really easy to find the html code for certain characters, along with inseting non-formatted text symbols like you showed us in the video (an area where the built in character browser fails).

What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

instead of a menu icon, giving PopChar a global shortcut and have all it’s settings in a system preferences pane, to make it feel more like an OSX feature, not an “addin”.

2stupid2knowIt said on

January 24th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

I n addition to highlighting recently used symbols, maybe the first group should a a recently used group so that they show up at the top as soon as the app open, no scrolling. Similar to a smart folder.

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dB247365 said on

January 24th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

I would love love love to include this app in my daily workflow. The last time I needed to look up a special character I had to do a search in the Mac Help docs. Didn’t find the answer. Then I went to Google. Would have been way faster to click on the menu bar! Anything I can do to speed up these kinds of tasks leaves more time for the creative work in front of me.

Rees Maxwell said on

January 24th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

Sorry to rain on PopChar … but remind me how this is better than the NATIVE Mac OS X app called “Character Pallet”? Simply open System Prefs, go to International then the Input Menu tab, and click on Character Pallet.

Now you’ve got the same thing. You’ll see an American flag in your menubar (unless you use a different keyboard layout which would show a different icon representing that).

Simply click on the flag, choose Show Character Pallet, and you’ve got the same functionality as PopChar.

Apple was designed with fonts very much in mind .. and this functionality has been a part of the operating system in one form or another since, oh, System1. (KeyCaps gained in functionality, and then Character Pallet took it’s place in OS X.)

Greg Healy said on

January 25th, 2008 at 12:19 am

@Rees Maxwell: Michael pointed out many things in his review that PopChar can do, that Mac OS X’s Character Pallet cannot do. Also, I find that PopChar is MUCH faster than OS X’s character pallet, as I find it stalls quite a bit when I try to use it.

Alaina said on

January 25th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?:
I am a student who is taking Spanish and French. This will help me do my abundance of homework and not make it such a nuisance. I wont constantly have to google to find the answer.

-I would make this a dashboard widget.

Thank you :]

Bill Andersen said on

January 26th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

I used to use PopChar in the old System 9 days, but don’t have it right now. If I did, it would be a big help, looking up accented letters.

I create ads for clients in English and French (in Canada) and also in Spanish for a South American company. It’s a small world!

joshspazjosh said on

January 27th, 2008 at 1:33 am

How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

It’ll help me find the accented letters when I’m typing in foreign languages, as well as helping me out with HTML coding.

ErichD said on

January 27th, 2008 at 5:56 am

How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

If it could come out of the menubar, or perhaps add a “favorites” list in the menu bar menu — I have way too many iconsup in the menubar, and they each need to add utility!

What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

I’d love for the window to be organized more like Overflow (from Stunt Software) — except have the window be translucent always. This way, there’d be clear categorization on the left of the palette, allowing for quick navigation.

Of course, if this translucent window was customized to my heart’s content - showing me the categories and symbols I want to see, without having to scan through ones I don’t need, that would seal the deal!