Ergonis Software announced the immediate availability of Typinator 3 on Monday. Instead of a standard Mac OS X application, the new version is now a dockless background-only application with access via the menu bar.

"When we initially designed Typinator, we decided to make it a regular application, not a System Preference Pane, since this gives a wider scope for a comfortable user interface, and it seems that our customers like the resulting flexibility. However, it turned out that many users do not want to see Typinator as a regular application visible in the dock and the application switcher," said Christoph Reichenberger, founder and CEO of Ergonis Software.

"I am therefore more than happy to announce that Typinator 3.0 offers the best of both worlds. Typinator is now an invisible background application that is visible only in form of a menu status item. However, when you need to access Typinatoris functionality, it instantly opens up a full-fledged application window with no limitations in size, functionality, and comfort".

Typinator is a powerful, yet elegantly simple solution that works across all applications to detect specific sequences of typed characters and automatically replace them with text snippets, graphics, URLs, dates and special characters, according to Ergonis software.

The Typinator 3.0 upgrade is free for anyone who purchased a previous version in the last two years. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and is a Universal Binary. A single user license is priced at €19.99.