Not exactly a software review, but this new trick is so exciting and useful it was just pleading to be mentioned! On Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later (and possibly earlier?), hold down the control key on your keyboard and scroll to zoom the entire screen in and out! This works on recent PowerBook, iBook, MacBook
It's encouraging to see Google expanding their Mac software offerings with Google Notifier. Notifier lives in the menu bar and provides notifications of incoming Gmail and Google Calendar events. As email arrives, a black translucent window appears with a summary of the message; it automatically fades after a delay or when clicked upon. In addition to mail, Google Calendar events can now get your attention more readily by playing a sound and popping up on your screen. The menus also provide a summary of recent mail and upcoming events including links to the appropriate Google pages.
Unfortunately, the app is not without its quirks. First of all, rather than being a "real" menu extra, Notifier is actually a normal application located in the Applications folder. This means it doesn't behave as other menu extras do - e.g., ⌘ (command) clicking and dragging the icon doesn't allow repositioning or deletion as it does with other menu extras. The colorful icons are also against Apple's standard menu shades of grey, and a little too big - hence they look slightly out of place.
Notifier checks for updates every minute, but this setting is not customizable in the preferences. When waking the computer from sleep, it often checks before the internet connection is fully active and annoyingly reports an error condition in its menu icon.
Even given the flaws, this program is a good start and worth taking a look at if you use Gmail or Google Calendar. Things can only get better from here.
by David Sawyer McFarland. After reading this book, it's amazing to think that people still willingly use Internet Explorer; IE is so badly written that the CSS book mentioned an IE rendering bug nearly every other page! Mentioned bugs for all other web browsers combined probably totaled about 3 times in the entire book. Thus, if you're viewing this page using IE 6 or earlier, do yourself a favor and download a nice free standards compliant browser like Firefox or Opera.
A useful program for software developers, but the casual user won't find much to use it for. Extremely simple and to the point - this program displays characters as they are typed along with their key codes in hex, dec, and the ASCII number. Lower rating due to the 'unmacness' of an empty File menu and grayed out Preferences which don't work, but the app itself still gets the job done. A Windows version is available as well.
Quite possibly the best efficiency enhancement available for Mac OS X! One of the main drawbacks of modern operating systems including Mac OS X is the difficulty of finding things - especially applications. Spotlight is a step in the right direction, but still far too slow for true harmony. The dock can hold a limited subset of commonly used applications or even a folder for hierarchical browsing, but these methods fall short as well. Searching visually for a given app can be time consuming and frustrating especially for those less commonly used.
Launch Bar is another application from the NeXT days which aims to solve this problem. To access a given application, simply type ⌘ (command) space, and then the first few letters of its name. A list of close matches will pop down from the menu bar; if the desired choice is at the top, hit return. If not, type a few more letters or use the arrow keys (or mouse) to select it. What could be simpler?
Extensive preferences for what to index are available as well as support for opening or viewing far more than just applications. Web site URLs, folders, files, address book entries, system preference panes, bookmarks, etc.. You'll wonder how you ever lived without this wonderful app!
Note, see also Quicksilver which was reviewed after LaunchBar.
"Afloat. Light as air." An unusual user interface enhancement which adds several new options to the Window menu of all Cocoa applications. The namesake "keep afloat" option forces the current window to float over all other windows; something which is occasionally useful. When a window is kept afloat, it is translucent unless the mouse pointer is placed over it, at which point it becomes opaque. Another menu option lets you arbitrarily adjust the transparency level of the current window. Probably the most useful enhancement is the ability to move any window by ⌃⌘ (control command) clicking and dragging anywhere on it rather than on the title bar as usual.
Requires installation of the free SIMBL framework (included with download) for loading additional code into Cocoa applications. Due to this "hack," it is possible that installation of plugins like Afloat could adversely affect the security or stability of your system, so proceed with caution.
