TFN#69: 🪜 My go-to site for symbols

Do you remember the late 2000s when mobile phone adoption was on the rise and people had just begun using texting? Forwarding and communicating over sms all the time.
Some of my friends used to be pro at texting different smileys. For example, 😀 for laughter, 😉 for winking.
Look at this cheat sheet:

Nowadays, due to high smartphone adoption and communication beyond texting, we use emojis without using these symbols.
But, I don’t want to talk only about these emojis because regular work doesn’t require such emojis much.

In day-to-day work, we need some simple symbols and they’re difficult to find.

The Microsoft Word nightmare

For years, I have struggled to find symbols/special characters to insert into my Word documents.
Look at this window. If you’ve been there, you know what a nightmare it is to find a simple arrow symbol.

If you need specific punctuation symbols, you have to open this window to insert the character in the document. (Honestly, to get an Em Dash, hitting Alt+Ctl+Num- is not a short key, it is the opposite of a short key = it is a long key!!)

So, I began using copychar.cc​

It is a simple website listing all the characters that we need in different categories. To use any character, just click them once and done! The character would be ready to be pasted anywhere you want.
This is the home page listing all popular characters from people.

I use these characters regularly:

If you’re using a Windows PC

You can also bring up an instant symbols window from the system by pressing “Window Key + Dot”. I use this mostly for emojis.

So, I hope this helps you in your regular workflow.

If you’re using some other website or tool, Hit Reply and share it with me.

Reads of the week:

​Link​
I followed a rabbit hole and came across this essay by a couple of computer science researchers and programmers. They’re trying to solve the current problem of the software that we use on a day-to-day basis. The idea of local-first is not new, in fact, all software used to be local-first in the beginning, but with the advent of the internet and the lucrative incentive of keeping software as a service, the local-first approach has vanished.

This essay explains what most of us ignore in our daily lives. At the end of reading the essay, you will feel a bit of dissatisfaction with the current software that we use. Because the essay shares with us the vision of what is possible.

By the way, the main reason I came across this essay was another beautiful vision document shared by Maggie Appleton in her Home-cooked Software and Barefoot Developers. It’s a must-read for anyone building software or making decisions regarding software.