Jessica Lyon was back on Tuesday, February 3rd with another Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video, and this one focuses on the use of the Auto-Replace function, and how it might well be more useful than people might appreciate.

As explained in the video, Auto-Replace can be found under Preferences > Chat > Text Input in Firestorm, and generally under chat in other viewer supporting the same Auto-Replace functionality. It is shipped with two lists: Spelling Corrections, which offers corrections for common spelling errors, and Abbreviations (which is the list I actually use and have customised myself).

The Abbreviations list converts commonly used abbreviations such as bbl, afk, gtg, etc., into their long-hand equivalents (be back later, away from keyboard, got to go, etc.), just by typing-in the abbreviation followed by a space.

So far so good, nothing especially exciting there. But did you know, using Auto-Replace you can:

Create a custom greeting you can use when working as a greeter or host, or simply on meeting people?

Combine abbreviation entries to create statements?

Use abbreviations to display SLurls and URLs in chat without having to type them long-hand?

Export / import your lists so you can share them with friends or easily copy them between the computers you use with SL?

If you didn’t – then this video is certainly for you, as Jessica reveals all!

Note that you can use Auto-Replace like this in any viewer that supports the same Auto-Replace functionality as found in Firestorm, including the official SL viewer.