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TUAW's Daily Mac App: Moom
Window managers are numerous on the Mac, with most relying on keyboard shortcuts or edge snapping. Moom is different. Moom integrates into the existing Apple UI by providing a pop-up menu when you hover your mouse over the green "maximize" button in the top left-hand corner of your window. Clicking on one of the Moom menu options moves and zooms (mooms) your window to the desired sector of the screen. By default you've got horizontal and vertical half-screen configurations as well as full screen. If you want a quarter screen window, you can click and drag on the default Moom buttons to define the desired quarter. Sending the window to another monitor is as easy as dragging one of the buttons in the desired direction of the monitor. A grid below the buttons allows you to quickly define a new size and position by selecting the squares required. If all your Mooming gets a bit crazy, you can move the window back to its original position with the revert arrow. You can also define custom mooms in the settings, which are then accessible via a drop-down menu from the Moom pop-up or menu bar. Moom also includes robust support for keyboard shortcuts, including binding of window sizes and positions to individual shortcut keys. Moom takes keyboard usage one stage further with a keyboard control mode in which you can move the window around with the arrow keys, moom a window to any of the half-screen configurations, send it full screen or centered and even send it to the next monitor. Moom is also able to run as a menu bar icon, a standard OS X program or even "faceless" (hidden). We've covered a few other window management utilities on TUAW, but it's safe to say Moom is one of the best. For US$4.99 it's going to be one of the first apps I install on a Mac from here on in. If you're not convinced, give the free trial a go from the Many Tricks website.
Witch window manager on sale for 48 hours
The folks over at Many Tricks have put Witch on sale for US$10 (normally $19) until 7 AM Pacific Time on Friday, January 28. It's been awhile since we talked about Witch on TUAW, but it's a perennial favorite utility to switch between windows. Witch shows you not just which applications are running, but it also shows you all of the different windows that are running in those applications. For example, right now I have three different windows open in BBEdit; if I use Cmd+Tab switching to move between applications, I can switch to Safari and then back to BBEdit, but Witch doesn't just let me switch to BBEdit, it allows me to specify that "I want to switch from Safari to the BBEdit window that has the article I'm writing about Witch." If you haven't seen it in action, you can download a free trial from the Many Tricks website, which also has some screenshots available. Witch is available for purchase either through the website or through the Mac App Store.
Rob Griffiths leaves Mac OS X Hints
I have to admit that I don't always use them, but I do always enjoy reading the hints over at Mac OS X Hints -- there probably isn't a more eclectic or helpful mix of random hints about how to use your Mac or iPhone available on the Internet. So I was saddened to read today that editor Rob Griffiths (who always adds in his confirmations and other testing on the various hints posted) is leaving the editor's position. He's moving on to join Peter Maurer at Many Tricks, where he'll handle the business aspects of the company. He mentions that they're working on "some good stuff in the pipeline, especially for the upcoming iPad." As for Mac OS X Hints, the site is owned by Macworld, so it will continue to run under the oversight of a new editor, who will have the benefit of Griffiths around for training as long as necessary. But it will be a little bit of a disappointment to not see the little "robg" notes on the hints in the future. Good luck to Rob on his next venture, and here's hoping his successor keeps the site up as an endless fount of interesting tips and tidbits about all of these Apple products we use.
Opaque Leopard menubar solved
The famed annoyance of the translucent Leopard menubar has finally been solved. Steve Miner has posted a tip that involves changing an environment variable by editing a plist to make Leopard think it's running on an older Mac that doesn't support the translucency. Once done, it will make your menubar solid white. The guys at Many Tricks (of Butler fame) take this to the next level with Menu Bar Tint, which places a pleasing tint gradient over your now blindingly white menubar, and thus returning your Leopard desktop to harmony. So there you go, if you just what an opaque menubar, run Miner's trick; if then want it to look better, have a look at Menu Bar Tint.Update: Gruber points out that commenters on Mac OSX Hints have discovered that Miner's original tip includes a kind of scaling factor. Apparently a setting of 0.63 gives you a greyish menubar "like the opaque menu bar Leopard shows on systems with older video cards." Doing it this way does not require you to have Menu Bar Tint running all the time, and yet apparently still gives a gradient (see below).
Non-transparent mod for Leopard's new menubar
If you've seen any pictures or movies of Leopard's (mostly) final UI in action from this week's WWDC events or the new Leopard section at apple.com, you've probably noticed that Apple has introduced a new design to their menubar, Desktop and Dock (watch the video to see these new toys in action). The new Dock features an updated design with some eye candy that some might find more useful than others, while the menubar has gone semi-transparent in an effort to place more emphasis on an uncluttered desktop and allowing users to feature their favorite photos and desktop images.As usual, when an OS maker dabbles with revamping some of their most standard UI conventions, not everyone will want to hop on the train for a ride. Peter Maurer and the crew at Many Tricks (makers of apps like Butler, Service Scrubber, yFlicks and more) are apparently so uninterested in taking a trip with the transparent menubar that they produced what is quite possibly the first non-transparent menubar hack for Leopard. Being that I am but a lowly professional blogger, I have no copy of Leopard on which to tinker with this mod, but given the historic quality of work from Maurer and Many Tricks, I would imagine it's written well, and the source is even provided for those who would like to have their way with this modification.Now that we've seen the true Leopard in action and a mod for part of its UI has appeared less than a week after the unveiling, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the Mac community - particularly the developers who have the power to make modifications like this - will lay down their opinions through work like Maurer's.
Peter Maurer Up to Many (new) Tricks: yFlicks
Peter Maurer is an interesting Mac developer. He's a German medical student who also happens to write really excellent Mac software in his spare time, probably most importantly Butler. He's already developed and sold several excellent apps such as TextExpander (was Textpander), MenuCalendarClock (was Calendarclock), and now yFlicks (was Clip Show); however, instead of selling yFlicks to another company this time he's decided to start his own: Many Tricks. He has always offered free licenses to people who have contributed to the pre-commercial versions of his software and he continues this laudable practice with yFlicks. Those who contributed to Maurer for Clip Show prior to Jan 12, 2007 are eligible for a free license for yFlicks.yFlicks is a video player based on QuickTime. In some ways it looks sort of like an iPhoto for videos, allowing you to "play videos in fullscreen mode, organize your videos in groups, search them, rate them, and browse them in preview mode." In addition, like TubeSock and Tubular it allows you (with Perian) to download videos from YourTube or Google and then export them to your iPod.yFlicks is €15 (~$19) and a demo is available.[Edit: reverted to a language I actually know and clarified upgrade policy]
