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If you’re like me, Wikipedia isn’t just a resource, it’s a source of entertainment. I spend hours clicking through articles, learning everything from topics that concern me (music and social media) to niche subjects that could not be further from my field of expertise (Alexander the Great and Narcissus). While I do spend quite a bit of time on it, I have struggled to find a suitable desktop Wikipedia experience.

Today we’ll take a look at Wikibot, a simple and straightforward app that brings Wikipedia browsing to the desktop.

Interface

The first thing to note about Wikibot’s interface is that it very much looks at home on your Mac. The design is similar to standard OS X apps such as iCal and Address Book. The only buttons reside along the top toolbar, and they include Back and Forward buttons that maintain a congruent navigating experience to that of a web browser, as well as a sidebar on the left that lists the ‘table of contents’ for quick navigation of a particular Wikipedia article.

A search bar is prominently displayed front and center. Through the use of right-click menus, Wikibot even allows you to open multiple articles in tabs.

The main viewing pane formats content from Wikipedia in an easy to read layout. It is customizable from the Preferences menu, allowing you to choose one of six fonts, in seven sizes, and 37 languages. You can also select a color theme (standard, sepia, and night). Still, while the interface is clean and easy to use, it could certainly use some sprucing up. I personally think those big orange navigation buttons are somewhat unsightly!.

Wikibot also includes an image viewer, accessible by clicking on an image from an article. The images are zoomable, and can be played in a slideshow.

Features

Now you’ve got a desktop Wikipedia reader right on your desktop. It works just like the webpage, right?  Wrong. What makes Wikibot shine (aside from it’s really slick icon) are the three important features that make a dedicated desktop client worth having over a bookmark in your web browser.

As a big fan of using a current article to branch out and learn about something new, I have to note the “Categories” list in the sidebar. Chances are, the article you’re looking at belongs to a series of categories of Wikipedia pages. Simply click on one of the Categories in the sidebar, and a pop up window will show you a scrollable list of articles in that same category for your knowledge-expanding pleasure.

The second feature that is definitely worth discussing is the Favorites menu, which is more of a subset of features than a feature in itself. The Favorites menu (obviously) allows you to save articles as favorites, but that’s only the beginning. It can also give you access to your viewing history, as well as a bank of articles you’ve saved for future reading. Right clicking in an article (or on an article link) will give you a menu option to “Read Later.”  These articles are saved to the subcategory in the favorites menu.

One of my favorite features of Wikipedia is the random article link on the homepage. In fact, I enjoy this feature so much that I have a bookmark for it in my browser and I use that as my main link to Wikipedia in order to learn something new. The reason I bring this up is because I think it’s an important function that the folks behind Wikibot thought to include. Right on the menu bar is a random article button, loaded with all of the surprise education goodness of the link on the web page.

Conclusion

Wikibot is a fresh take on Wikipedia browsing. The interface could use some spiffing up, but it brings enough unique and useful features to the table beyond ease-of-access.

With a verbal community of users (at least on the App Store), I am confident that the developer will continue to improve what is a great concept. While most of the Wikipedia clients out there are desktop widgets or simply portals to the webpage, Wikibot has the potential to find its way into my arsenal of research tools.

There are plenty of ways to open and switch apps. There are app launchers, the dock, Spotlight, Mission Control, the Launchpad, and the Cmd+Tab app switcher. We all use a different method, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. For the most part, I simply use the dock, but one thing that I’ve never liked about it is that it’s very difficult to organize.

What if the dock could get some sort of feature that would make it more organized? Say, something like tabs that divide your apps into categories? Well, today we’re reviewing an app called Tab Launcher that does just that. Let’s take a look.

Getting Started

The first time you run the app, you’ll be greeted with a “Welcome” screen describing what the app does and how you should use it. Because of the nature of the app, I expected the installation process to be tedious, but it almost seems to be non-existent. You just buy it and open it.

Now, basically this app works as a dock, but organized in tabs. You could pretty much get the same effect by using folders on your dock, but Tab Launcher makes it much easier and more intuitive to organize your apps.

The Interface

By default, the app will show a few tabs peeking out of your right side of the screen, and if you hover your mouse over them, the “dock” will appear, allowing you to browse through your current tabs, one at a time. You can also arrange the apps and launch them, of course.

The dock and tabs are by default in different tones of purple, but you can change them as we’ll see later. As for the look of the app, it is pretty much identical to the dock, although you can change the transparency through the settings, and it’s a bit more colorful.

Working with Tabs

The Welcome screen will teach you that you can drag-and-drop tabs to arrange them in the order that you want. You can keep them together, or spread them over the screen. This also works with the apps, and even with the dock itself, which you can change between the right, left, and bottom side of the screen.

By right clicking inside of a tab is where you get technical. There you have all the configuration settings: adding new tabs, renaming old ones, changing colors, adding separators, even changing the font color of tabs.

Adding New Apps

The most effective way of adding new apps to the Launch bar is by opening your Apps folder and dragging and dropping apps into your preferred tab. You can have as many tabs as you want, so you can also go into as deep of a categorization as you want to.

You can also switch any app from tab to tab, but what you can’t do is have one app repeated in two different tabs. You can delete any app from the dock by right clicking it and selecting to delete it, or by simply dragging it to the desktop.

How Was It?

I admittedly expected this to run quite slowly and to severely affect my productivity (I have a white Macbook, speed isn’t its strong suit). But it actually runs surprisingly smooth and fast, even more than the normal dock. There aren’t many things to complain about with this app. It’s cheap, and it does exactly what it advertises. It works fast and doesn’t seem to have any noticeable glitches. It’s biggest downfall is that the problem it solves isn’t exactly a problem that most people have.

It would be nice to be able to completely hide the app, although I guess the main concept is that the tabs are always visible, making it easier and faster to select any app without having to hover over the dock to open and read the categories.

Don’t expect it to be very different from your dock. If you are happy with your dock, then keep it, you don’t really need this app. All it does is bring a different sense of categorization and order to the apps in your dock, but in some ways it could even be perceived as slower for your productivity, since you don’t really ever have a full quick view of all your open apps.

I’m not quite sure how you are supposed to use this app. Do you use it as a complement to the dock, or do you use it as a replacement for the dock? I guess it’s a matter of choice, and if you are interested in Launch Bar, I would suggest you try it for a few days in conjunction with the normal dock, just to see how much you really need it.

Conclusion

I thought this app would be overshadowed by Lion’s Launchpad, but it actually works very differently. Yes, the Launchpad is probably prettier and gives you more of a modern mobile feel, but the Tab Launcher is easer to set up and faster to browse and bring up.

The idea for this app is good, in fact, it’s great. But I don’t think the developers got the timing right by releasing this app just a few days after we got Launchpad with Mac OS Lion, which pretty much fills the same purpose as this one. Just like always, this is a matter of opinion and seeing what works best for you and your needs.

It’s time for another “Ask the Editor” post today. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their questions – it’s great to have the chance to help you out with your Mac-related queries and quibbles.

Today I’ll be offering some advice about apps for creating and managing bibliographies, keeping track of your finances and setting up advanced alarm actions. Read on for some awesome tips and tools to make your Mac experience even better.

I’m looking for a free Mac app that strictly helps you create citations and compile a bibliography, nothing fancy.

– Renee

Great question Renee! Bibliographies are something that countless students and writers are cursed with creating daily. There are so many rules involved and alternate styling guides that formatting mistakes are bound to happen if you do it manually. Not to mention it can take forever!

Back when I was in college, I always used KnightCite or some similar free web app, but there are some native options for this too.

For starters, both Word and Pages can help you generate and manage citations. Check out this page for a screencast straight from Apple on working with Citations in iWork. For Word, this process varies quite a bit from version to version, check here for a guide on citations in Word 2011.

Even with these options, there is still plenty of need for a simple, dedicated bibliography app like the one you mentioned. Fortunately, there’s BibDesk a free, open source Bibliography manager for Mac.

BibDesk will keep track of both the bibliographic information and the associated files or web links. Given your requirements, I think this is the perfect app for you!

I like the simplicity and aesthetic of iOS apps like Budgetbook, Saver and MoneyBook. Why aren’t there any Finance apps like that for the Mac?

– Sean

After a thorough investigation, I’ve decided that you’re right. There are a ton of really gorgeous finance iPhone apps but those for Mac tend to just borrow the standard OS X interface. They also tend to be quite cluttered and complicated. It would be great to see developers start to translate the experience of apps like Moneybook to the Mac.

In the mean time, you’ll have to make due with what’s available. The Mac finance app that I always recommend is Money, it’s simply one of the best options around for managing your finances on your Mac.

In the simple and attractive finance category the best is probably Koku. It’s very straightforward and easy to use and the reports are pretty snazzy. Check out our dedicated review here.

Is there an app that will act as an alarm, that will vocally indicate the weather, time and/or other things?

– John Holmes

Right out of the box, your Mac can speak the time. All you have to do is go to Date & Time in System Preferences, click on the Clock tab and activate “Speak Time.” Here you can set the interval and voice. I warn you though, it’s quite startling and a little creepy to hear a robot voice unexpectedly begin talking to you once every hour!

Unfortunately, there’s no option in that preference for speaking the weather. For this type of functionality, you should check out a little utility called iAlarm. For less than two bucks, you get a ton of functionality, including the ability to speak the weather, play a podcast or playlist, run an AppleScript or speak a custom message at times that you specify.

If you want to do even more with alarms, check out Alarm Clock Pro. At almost $20, it’s a little pricey, but for good reason. It can control nearly every aspect of your Mac that you could hope for and perform automated functions at a given time.

Didn’t See Your Question?

If you asked a question but didn’t have it answered today, don’t worry! I’ll do my best to get to it in a future week. I love a challenge, so feel free to ask some weird and wonderful questions…

If you’d like to submit your query, you can do so here:Online Form – AppStorm > Ask The Editor

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you agree or disagree with anything I mentioned today!

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Tweet to Enter

Entering is simple, all you have to do is click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet. That’s it!

We’ll announce the winners one week from today on Thursday, September 1st. Good luck to everyone who enters and thanks for reading Mac.AppStorm!