Category: Mac

Automation is one of my favorite topics. There’s something about sitting back and watching my Mac perform tasks for me that makes me smile every time.

Today we’re going to take a look at Task Till Dawn, a simple and free little automation tool that will allow you to schedule files and applications to launch automatically.

What Is It?

As I mentioned in the introduction, Task Till Dawn is an app that makes it easy to schedule certain tasks to fire at a given time. What you do with it is limited to your imagination and skill level.

There aren’t any built-in actions, instead you simply choose a file to run. This can be an application, file, Applescript (sort of, more on that later); anything you want.

Getting Started

When you first open Task Till Dawn, you’ll see a list of your currently active tasks. If you haven’t set up any tasks, this list will be empty.

As you can see, the interface is fairly barebones. It’s not flashy or super attractive, but it is highly functional and has a nearly non-existent learning curve.

To add a new task, hit the “New Task” button. Remember, at this point you already have to possess something to add. Obviously, if you’re not familiar with scripting or automation, the app’s appeal will be minimal.

However, keep in mind that you can use Task Till Dawn to launch files and applications, so even if you’re not an avid automator you still have some options. For instance, let’s say you write invoices every Friday at 3PM, Task Till Dawn could easily launch your template files and required applications automatically at that time every week.

Setting Up a Task

To test out the app, I whipped up a basic script to remind me to work out. Basically, all it does is tell my Mac to audibly speak the current time and tell me to get my butt to the gym. With Task Till Dawn, we can set this script to fire at specific times every week.

Once we hit the “New Task” button, the window below pops up. Here we can name the task, add a description and choose the file to launch. In this case I chose my work out reminder script.

Next, it’s time to tell Task Till Dawn when to fire the action. The default options here allow you to choose whether you want the task to run at a specified interval (say every three hours), at a specific time of day, manually or whenever the app launches.

For my workout script, I chose to run it at a specific time of day. Since I wanted it to run at 7:30PM, I entered 19:30.

Extended Settings

As the task currently stands, it will run every day, but let’s say that I’m lazier than that and only want to work out on certain days of the week.

To tweak my action settings even further I click the “Extended Settings” tab. Here I can apply a delay, activate and deactivate certain weekdays, set the task to run on a certain day of the month, and limit the number of times the task will run.

As you can see, I set my task up to run only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Once you’re all done with the task, it will show up in your list back at the main screen along with some information on how many times it has run.

Worth A Download?

Task Till Dawn is one of those applications that does only one thing. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, just a simple one or two step process for setting a file to fire at a specified time.

In my own use, I felt like Task Till Dawn had just the right balance of options and simplicity. It’s super easy to use and does what you want in a fashion that reminds me of Mac utilities of old.

It’s not quite perfect though. For instance, after setting up my AppleScript, I found that Task Till Dawn simply opened the script in Script Editor rather than running it. I changed the file to a “Run Only” script, but apparently the app isn’t compatible with those, which forced me to convert once again to an application. This is easy enough, but it’s annoying that an application that seems so perfectly ideal for running scripts isn’t smart enough to just run a script when you select it without forcing you to jump through the right hoops.

Further, I think tossing in a few basic but handy actions would go a long way toward making the app accessible to a much wider audience. For example, maybe some alarm clock functionality could be built in so that you can easily set up iTunes to launch and play a given song at a certain time.

Overall though, it’s a pretty useful little app that automation nerds like myself will be happy to keep around. Keep in mind that it’s completely free so you should definitely check it out if you’re looking for a way to launch files at specified intervals.

Conclusion

To sum up, Task Till Dawn is a nifty utility that allows you to launch files and applications at a specified time or interval. The setup is super simple and the app functions nearly exactly as you’d expect it to.

If, like me, the limited AppleScript support is a serious downside for you, check out LaunchOnTime from the Mac App Store. It’s free, has very similar functionality and works better with scripts.

Leave a comment below and let us know which app you use for scheduling actions on your Mac. How does it stack up to Task Till Dawn?

If you, like me, are a word nerd, there’s a good chance that you’ve already run a search for ‘dictionary’ in the Mac App Store. Doing so brings up a number of dictionaries in various languages, a few games, language courses, and a surprisingly small number of English dictionaries. Perhaps developers know that all Macs are shipped with the New Oxford American Dictionary baked right into the operating system, so they shy away from duplication.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the built-in dictionary app is limited – likely adequate most of the time, but still limited. For this reason, now and then you might find yourself calling upon a higher authority and refer to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which is widely held to be among the world’s best and most definitive references. That’s when you’ll be glad that WordWeb Software has brought this tome to the App Store.

Join us after the jump for a look at how the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary works, and how it might be a useful and even enjoyable addition to your Mac.

Getting started

Once you’ve downloaded the Shorter Oxford Dictionary from the App Store, its two volume icon will rest in your dock. It’s a pretty hefty download, as you’d expect of such an authoritative and substantial source, coming in at 150mb. Let’s start with the headline information:

• the app includes over 600,000 words, phrases, and definitions
• over 80,000 illustrative quotations showing words in use
• 85,000 recordings of spoken pronunciations
• 100,000 etymologies (fun!)
• full text search, including pattern search for when you’re uncertain of a spelling, and bookmarking.

The basic app window consists of three sections: a wide search bar across the top with back and forward arrows to help you move through previous searches, a word list down the left hand side, and definition text on the right.

As you type in the search bar, the app offers possible matches:

How it works

Look up a word, and the right hand panel displays a definition and variations, phrases demonstrating the word in use (when available), and a brief outline of the word’s origin. Then words are in transition, with their primary meaning shifting – ‘Tweet’ anyone? – there will also appear a discussion of ‘Word Trends’, which is usually both informative and entertaining.

Within the definition text, words that are themselves definable in the app can be clicked in order to jump to their definition. There is also a setting in the app’s Preferences that allows you to toggle underlining of such words:

In cases, as above, where words have more than one sense, you’ll notice that some numbers have appeared at the top right of the main window. Click on these to jump to the alternative senses.

Accessing thousands of spoken pronunciations is easy: click on either the musical note alongside the defined word, or on the speaker icon alongside the search bar. I found at first that I couldn’t hear the pronunciations, but with the developer’s help I tracked this down to the fact that the recordings are played back as Alert sounds rather than as ordinary audio, and I needed to increase the Alert volume in the Sound Preference Pane.

Where there is no spoken audio, you can often see a helpful guide to pronunciation by clicking on the phonetic guide next to the word. This will display an overlay guiding you in correct pronunciation.

Essential for those with little ones, there is an option in Preferences to block the display of vulgar or offensive words, and to exclude them from the list of suggested words. This setting is on by default (Switching it off gives access to a whole lot of other words, reminding us how much of English derives from the Anglo-Saxon tradition!).

Pattern Search

The pattern search feature allows you to find variations on words. So, searching for ‘*dog’ brings up 115 matches, ranging from ‘Australian cattle dog’ to ‘yellow dog’; and ‘d?g’ gives 5 possible matches, including ‘dog’. Of course, such pattern matching comes into its own when you’re looking for longer words – say when you’re trying to complete a crossword puzzle and have only the third and fifth letter:

The placeholders for pattern search are as follows:

• * for multiple characters
• ? for single characters
• @ for vowels
• # for consonants

The app includes a full text search, so that you can find all instances of particular words or phrases. You can hone this by combining words with basic Boolean ‘and/or/not’ operators.

In use

Most users don’t want a dictionary to draw attention to itself. It’s meant to be a more or less transparent reference, from which you can learn what you need when you need it, and then return to what you were doing quite quickly. We’ve probably all read sections of dictionaries at one time or another – either out of interest, because we wanted to learn something in particular, because we simply found ourselves hooked and time passed, or because we have some form of OCD. Mostly, though, we tend to dip in, get what we need, and then close the dictionary and move on.

OS X’s built-in New Oxford American Dictionary is a great example of an unobtrusive reference. Whenever you want to define a word, you simply select the word and hit [cmd]+[ctrl]+[d], and there’s your definition in an elegant tooltip.

So why would you bother with another dictionary? Well, take ‘tooltip’:

By contrast, select the word, ctrl-click, and select ‘Shorter Oxford English Dictionary’ from the Services menu, and… Well, oddly, you’ll get nothing. But I’m about to go on to talk about some other offerings from WordWeb Software, including their Oxford Dictionary of English – and instead using the Service for looking up words in that app, you’ll get this definition:

(The reason for this disparity between the Oxford Dictionary of English and Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is that the former has been updated more recently – and so you will find some words here that haven’t yet made their way into the SOED.)

The range of words it includes is, of course, the most compelling reason to go with a standalone dictionary. Since the built-in dictionary includes pattern searching and etymologies those are not arguments for switching. And, in fact, the New Oxford American Dictionary is a much better looking app, while the Shorter Oxford is functional, but inelegant.

Alternatives

The eagle-eyed among you may have noted that in all the screenshots there are two tabs: one titled SOED, the other ODE. This is because I have both the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English installed. The Shorter Oxford is more extensive, but, at $32.99/£22.99 also more expensive.

The Oxford Dictionary of English is just $9.99/£6.99, and works in exactly the same way, but includes only:

• 350,000 words, phrases, and definitions
• 67,000 examples of words in use
• 75,000 spoken pronunciations
• 11,000 encyclopaedic entries
• and the same pattern search, bookmarking, and history features.

If you have both dictionaries installed, they both show up in this tabbed interface, so you can compare definitions very easily. The Oxford Dictionary of English certainly gives you enough to get by, but in most cases, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary has much greater depth:

An even cheaper option, which interfaces in the same way as the two Oxford dictionaries is WordWeb Pro ($4.99/£2.99). This offers fewer definitions, but remains a very useful tool, and has a bigger dictionary than the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Conclusion

If you love words and appreciate a good reference book, then you will enjoy the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. It’s a venerable and definitive text. The app works well, though its interface lacks some polish. And since it’s so simple to access via your Mac’s Services menu (and – bonus! – via Launchbar if you have it installed), you can use it just as easily as the native dictionary. I don’t see myself going back. I’m delighted to have the Shorter Oxford on my Mac, and I’ve used it several times each day since I installed it a few weeks back.

What do you think? Would you pay for a dictionary app, when your computer ships with an at-least adequate one already, and when you can have online access to any number of dictionary sites for free?

Native Mac clients for social networks are a massive market – Twitter is the obvious example here, with a vast number of awesome apps. Even Instagram has a few nice solutions. But what about the biggest social network out there, Facebook? It has over 750 million users, and there’s no market leader for native clients.

Today, I’ll be having a look at what options we have if we want a Facebook app, if any of them are any good, and why this market desperately needs a game-changer.

Do We Really Need a Facebook App?

The short answer to this is “Yes. Definitely.” Facebook’s website is certainly usable, but by no means ideal. They regularly change up the interface, and quite often, things just don’t work.

As for Facebook Chat, it’s just horrible. For some reason unbeknownst to me, Facebook Chat seems to have replaced the perfectly good IM services like Skype, AIM and MSN. My biggest gripe with Facebook chat is the lack of notifications. If I’m working in Photoshop, and don’t have the sound on, I have no way of knowing if somebody has contacted me on chat. I may not go back into my browser for half an hour, and by that point, it’s too late and I’m labeled as a social recluse. Imagine a Facebook client that would alert me, via a subtle dock badge, when somebody tried to talk to me. Now that truly would be fantastic.

What’s On the Market Right Now?

There are plenty of Facebook apps in the Mac App Store, many of them falling into just a few categories. I’ll take a look a bunch of those categories, and if there’s any potential in them.

Menu Bar Apps

This section has the largest number of FB apps by far. Unfortunately, there’s almost nothing to tell them apart. I tried out seven or eight of these apps, and they are almost all identical, both in features and in interface. In essence, most of them are little more than a Fluid instance of the Facebook mobile site. Have a look at these screenshots to see what I mean:

But even if they do all look the same, that doesn’t mean that they’re bad apps, does it? Of course not, but, as much as I regret to say it, most of them are. This default design is clunky, with a poor hierarchy, making reading posts a very unpleasant experience. I personally don’t see much potential in Facebook menu bar apps, while a minimal feed may work for Twitter, Facebook is too media-heavy and has far too many features to be condensed into such a small window.

If I had to recommend a menu bar app, it would have to be Facebox Pro. The interface is basically the web app with a few elements placed elsewhere, so you have support for almost all features (including chat). It’s not perfect, but if you’re adamant you want a menu bar app, this free app is the one for you.

Chat Utilities

As I mentioned before, Facebook’s chat feature has a lot of negatives, and this is a huge market which developers really should be capitalizing on. At the time of writing, there seem to be only two apps which are solely dedicated to a better chat experience: Chatlet and FaceChat.

Considering that FB Chat is free, I anticipated there would be at least one free chat app, but that is not the case: both cost $4.99, with FaceChat offering “FaceChat+” for $9.99. I had a look at both of them in the App Store, and decided that Chatlet was the app for me. I subsequently forked out my hard-earned fiver, downloaded the app, and much to my dismay, it wouldn’t open. The same happened with Facelet, the menubar app from the same developer.

While they may be decent apps, the fact that they don’t work at all means I can’t recommend them at all. As for FaceChat, the screenshots in the App Store were enough to turn me off. The interface seems far too clunky when I can get essentially the same thing free in my browser.

It is also worth noting that IM clients such as Adium do have support for FB chat, but since Facebook rolled out its new chat, I have only been able to receive, and not send, messages from within Adium.

As I’ve said before, I’m willing to pay good money for a great chat app. Unfortunately, there aren’t any great chat apps out there. Yet.

Full Facebook Clients

This is the market which I feel developers should have the most luck with. Users don’t want a bunch of different Facebook apps running different parts of the service, they want a single app that will do it all. Looking into our options, there really isn’t much around.

In fact, the only app I could find which was in any way comparable to apps like Twitterific and Twitter for Mac was Clarity, a Facebook client which claims to simplify your news feed. It has support for photo viewing, video watching, friend managing, and, of course, reading and posting updates.

It doesn’t have support for chat, something which will hopefully come soon, and the interface could be cleaned up a lot, but other than that, it’s has pretty much everything you need. Clarity comes in at a perfectly reasonable price of $3.99.

Conclusion

At the moment, there are no FB apps that have blown me away. They all seem pretty half-baked, and not at all polished. Hopefully, however, this is a growing market, and in the next year we’ll hopefully see something that blows everything else out of the water. Until then, I’d have to recommend that the best app for Facebook is your browser.

Today we’re going to take a look at Simplify, an attractive and convenient way to interact with Spotify from your desktop.

Read on to see if you should download Simplify to help manage your Spotify addiction!

Meet Simplify

As you likely already know, Spotify recently hit the U.S. causing a wave of new excited users to the awesome service. Instead of limiting you to radio stations with automated streams like Pandora, Spotify is more like Rdio and allows you to hear what you want, when you want, free. It’s a beautiful thing and I’ve barely turned it off since scoring an invite.

Simplify is a utility that works alongside Spotify. Basically it’s a mini player for Spotify that sits attractively on top of your desktop and hangs out in the background until you need it. The visual is a nice little graphic of an album showing the relevant artwork and song/artist info.

The graphic has just the right amount of embellishment, it adds an attractive widget to your desktop but focuses mostly on what you really want to see: the album artwork.

If you think this looks oddly familiar, you’re right. The app is likely heavily inspired by Bowtie, a similar utility for controlling iTunes.

Two Size Options

Built into Simplify are two different size options, simply titled Big and Small. I’m on a small screen so I personally prefer the small option but if you’re on a large cinema display you might prefer the big option. Here they are compared in actual size:

Mini Player

Simplify isn’t all about looking pretty on your desktop, it’s quite functional as well. Hitting a specified shortcut or menu bar command will bring up the mini player, which you can use to control the currently playing selection in Spotify. By default this is just a big album art preview but on hover it changes to the series of controls on the right below.

The functions here are extremely basic: play/pause, skip, back, scrub and volume. I really like how simple it is and it works great for these functions, but I’d really love to see some more features here. For instance, the ability to star a song or shuffle the current playlist would go a long way. Most importantly though, it would make the app infinitely more useful if there were some limited browsing capabilities like the Alfred iTunes mini player.

Menu Bar

In addition to the little desktop widget, Simplify is also a menu bar app. The menu bar controls are essentially a repeat of what you saw in the mini player, but represent a quick alternative that’s accessible from anywhere. This is nice if you’re not a fan of keyboard shortcuts and still want a quick way to control Spotify from anywhere.

Sharing

Both the mini player and the menu bar app allow you to copy a sharing link to your clipboard. I really love this feature of Spotify and I’m glad that it was implemented here as well. Basically, any time you’re listening to a song and want to share it with some friends, you can quickly shoot them a link where the song can be listened to right in the browser, even if they aren’t Spotify users.

Custom Shortcuts

One thing that makes Simplify much more accessible is setting up global shortcuts. By default these are empty but you can assign them yourself in the Preferences menu. I really like being able to bring up the mini player at a moment’s notice with a quick keyboard shortcut, make a change and get right back to what I was doing. It makes Spotify that much more integrated into my daily routine.

Worth A Download?

I have several thoughts about this app. My first impression is that I really like it. The interface is slick and attractive and the app genuinely helps me interact with my favorite music client in a very useful and convenient way. This alone is worth a couple of bucks.

Now, that being said, I would change quite a bit if I could. For starters, the current system restricts functionality to the menu bar and mini player, which makes the little desktop widget only an aesthetic nicety. This would be fine if a single click (or even a double click) on the widget brought up the mini player, but it doesn’t. The two are fairly distinct entities.

I would like this app much better if hovering over the desktop widget gave me primitive controls like play and skip while the mini player offered more advanced functionality such as playlist switching. As it currently stands, there’s no reason for both to exist and it feels a bit like two different ideas for an app competing in one box.

Further, since the comparisons to Bowtie are inevitable, I can’t help but think there’s tons of potential here for theming and allowing users to customize the experience.

Overall though the app is off to a really solid start and if the developer continues to make improvements, I’ll gladly integrate this into my daily Spotify experience.

Conclusion

To sum up, Simplify is a basic but attractive mini player for controlling Spotify. If you’re looking for a quick and simple way to control Spotify from a nice HUD that stays out of the way until you need it, you should definitely check this app out. However, if you’re looking for something with tons of features and deep Spotify integration, this may not be for you.

As I said above, despite having several suggestions for improvement, I like where this app is going and am eager to see what’s in store for the future.

Update

The developer just let me know that Simplify is about to get a whole lot better. The next version fully supports both iTunes and Spotify and features an HTML/CSS “jacket” system that allows you to build custom skins! Check out this screenshot to see it in action.

Last week, Producteev for Mac hit the Mac App Store and received an extremely positive review from AppStorm. This week we’re following that up with an awesome giveaway of five one-year Producteev Premium Accounts (each worth $220!).

Here’s a quick rundown of what a premium account has to offer:

• Unlimited Users
• Priority Email Support
• SSL Security
• Customizable Workspace
• 500MB of File Storage

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, August 11th. Good luck to everyone who enters and thanks for reading Mac.AppStorm!

VirtualDJ was first released in 2003 and over the years has grown into a real success story for Atomix Productions, providing professional DJ’s and hobbyists with effective DJ software. Originally sold in shops, this multi-platform ‘Home’ version is now available for free in the Mac App Store and sees the developers adopt an innovative pricing model to offer a largely uncrippled and feature-packed app in the hope of enticing users to eventually upgrade, with the end result being a big win for the consumer.

Let’s take a closer look at this innovative App Store favourite.

First Impressions

Upon launch, VirtualDJ Home simply feels like a quality product, with slick graphics and a feature set which place it on a par with premium audio apps such as Ableton Live, Reason, Mainstage, etc – belying it’s completely free price point. The workman-like UI is not very intuitive to the complete beginner but nor is it overly complex. Rather, both graphics and layout highlight the fact that VirtualDJ Home is a piece of software to get work done.

Taking a look at VirtualDJ Home’s various buttons and sliders, one is confronted with two master volume controls, in/out bus, easily accessible mixer options and a wealth of effects, such as “Flanger”, “Reverb”, “Phaser” and “Wah” to name but a few. The Mac’s hard disk is accessible through the apps file browser and it is not difficult to begin mixing tracks.

Crucially, VirtualDJ Home’s main controls are rarely more than one click away, an important point to consider if one is live mixing without the aid of an external hardware controller (full MIDI-controller support is not offered with this free version of the app).

Recreating The DJ Environment

Admittedly, no app will ever truly replicate the incomparable feeling of dropping needle on vinyl but VirtualDJ Home goes a long way toward giving as authentic an experience as possible from Mac alone and at a fraction of the cost, size and weight. The decision to base the app’s interface on the classic twin deck/crossfade mixer setup is more than mere affectation and plays a large part of making VirtualDJ Home so useable, inspiring the user to lose themselves in the moment.

VirtualDJ has an excellent online presence, with forums, support and advice available.

Limitations

While VirtualDJ Home contains many excellent features, it is sensible to give some attention to a few of the apps limitations also. As this is a free version of a paid app, Atomix Productions have naturally chosen to restrict VirtualDJ Home’s features in an effort to encourage upgrade. This is carried out so reasonably that one cannot fairly begrudge it, with mostly minor points such as the inability to add to the limited selection of skins.

Perhaps the most prominent limitation within this free version is the lack of MIDI controller support – limiting its effectiveness for live gigs. Beginners wishing to use this app in a live environment may be advised to consider splashing out on one of VirtualDJ’s paid versions and an inexpensive MIDI controller, such as Korg’s affordable NanoKontrol, or something similar.

Mixing With VirtualDJ Home

Transitioning from one track to another is easy with VirtualDJ Home. A graphical representation of the track is clickable, providing an easy way to skip song sections and the built-in effects help to make the blending that much more smoother, while providing new and unexpected sounds for the audience. There’s a healthy selection of samples too and the classic siren sound of the Rave scene even makes an appearance for those wanting to relieve the 1990′s underground dance culture.

VirtualDJ Home’s “Beatlock” engine enables tracks of differing tempo to be matched up together and I was very impressed with its near-flawless implementation, significantly outclassing other such software I have tried. Another interesting feature packed into this app is the option to mix music videos. This works in the same fashion which audio is mixed and comparable tools like an automatic crossfader are available. Though I rarely work with video myself, I can certainly imagine this adding another dimension to live performance for those who do.

iOS Support

Though this version of VirtualDJ does not allow full MIDI controller support, Atomix Productions have released a companion iOS app for iPad and iPhone/iPod which is supported in this app and negates the difficulties of mixing without proper hardware quite significantly. While reviewing, I only had chance to test the iPhone/iPad version but this worked very well, with no noticeable latency on my home network, allowing crossfades, volume and scratching to be controlled with relative ease. From my brief experience using this app, I would imagine that a twin iPad and MacBook setup would be a very useable set of virtual turntables indeed!

Scratching The Surface

VirtualDJ Home is an app with a remarkable depth of features and I’ve only scratched the surface of what it is capable of here. If one is a novice with even a passing interest in DJ software, or a hardware-orientated DJ wanting to take a look at what DJ software can offer, then VirtualDJ Home would be by far the best place to begin at present.

Though the feature packed user interface can be a little overwhelming at first launch, everything is logically placed and it should not take too long to begin mixing. Whereas most free or ‘lite’ versions of apps seem to want to force the user to upgrade, VirtualDJ Home instead gives the impression of gently persuading and at no time do any of its limitations take away from the incredible value baked into this free app.

Remember iWeb? This former iLife member’s lofty goal was to translate the intimidating task of building a website down to the “drag and drop” simplicity of the Mac experience.

Apple’s brief foray into the world of DIY websites was impressive at first, but aged quickly and was eventually abandoned altogether. Discounting professional developer software like Dreamweaver, this leaves Mac users with three primary options for WYSIWYG website building: Sandvox, Rapidweaver and Flux. Today we’ll take a brief look at each and offer some advice on which you should use.

Sandvox

Conceptually, Sandvox is the closest thing to iWeb on the market. The workflow here is very familiar: choose a theme, edit the text, drag in some images and hit the “Publish” button.

Sandvox has plenty of built-in themes and can easily be expanded via third party designs. As a designer, I’m definitely not crazy about the available Sandvox themes, the overall aesthetic quality of the set feels dated, but there are some gems. Non-designers will likely find something fun and simple that’s perfect for their needs.

The professional features here are limited, but very close to what you saw in iWeb. The app definitely isn’t geared towards coders or designers who want to start from scratch, but you can “inject” snippets of HTML, JavaScript or even PHP into the pages on your site.

Who Should Use Sandvox?

Anyone who used and loved iWeb should definitely check out Sandvox. The two apps are close enough that you’ll have very little trouble transitioning from one to the other.

In fact, Sandvox’s marketing heavily targets iWeb users. The website welcomes “iWeb graduates” and even has a guide for iWeb switchers.

RapidWeaver

Occasionally, it seems as if a third-party developer understands the true “Mac experience” better than even Apple. RapidWeaver is not a slightly different version of what iWeb was but rather everything that iWeb should’ve been. It’s simply a beautiful program that is a joy to use whether you know anything about building websites or not.

To build a site in RapidWeaver, you add one page at a time, each of which conforms to one of eleven page types (blog, photo album, etc.) and the overall visual theme you choose. The interface is customized for each page type and the controls are simple enough for anyone to use.

The professional features here are pretty extensive. Overall, the design of your site is definitely driven by the chosen template, but you can customize code fairly easily and really bend the site to your will if you need that kind of flexibility. It really helps that the auto-generated code is actually human readable and conforms to web standards.

Extensions

The killer feature of RapidWeaver is definitely its expandability. The RapidWeaver Add Ons Library is not only full of gorgeously designed themes, but also some amazing plugins like that really stretch what’s possible. For instance, the Blocks plugin brings full-on freeform page layout to RapidWeaver and is a must-have for anyone who wants true control over their design.

Who Should Use RapidWeaver?

RapidWeaver is an app for a wide range of users. If you don’t know anything about building a site and aren’t crazy about the idea of going to school to learn web development, RapidWeaver will help you create a great site with little effort.

Also, if you’re a designer who knows his/her way around an HTML document but aren’t really the code-from-scratch type, RapidWeaver with the addition of a few powerful plugins could really help you convert your designs to basic but functional websites.

Basically, if you’re a newbie, RapidWeaver welcomes you with open arms and a user-friendly workflow and if you know enough to need some advanced features, they’re ready and waiting for you to dive in.

Flux

Flux is by far the furthest app from iWeb in the bunch. In fact, it’s so different that it’s hard to group with the two apps above.

iWeb, Sandvox and RapidWeaver are all primarily aimed at making website creation available to the masses. They’re tools that allow everyone to get a taste of web design without necessarily becoming professionals. Flux on the other hand, really is a professional web design tool.

It has much of the charm that you get from a RapidWeaver-like WYSISYG, only it gives you complete freedom to design and code your own site. There are some templates available, but the strength of the app is that it isn’t in any way template-dependent.

In fact, you can import existing web projects that you’ve coded by hand right into Flux and then shuffle objects, add styles or create dynamic objects with easy-to-use tools. Think of it as an awesome visual front-end to your code.

Who Should Use Flux?

Flux has a little bit of a learning curve and will make the most sense to those that are at least partly familiar with how CSS works. If you’re a graphic designer who is either intimidated by or bored with the process of coding entire sites by hand, you should absolutely give Flux a shot.

I personally code sites by hand and generally avoid WYSIWYGs like the plague. That being said, I love Flux. It’s a really innovative concept and once I took the time to really learn how to use it properly I was surprised at how much you could accomplish with a really simple workflow.

Obviously, none of these options are going to replace traditional text-based IDEs for hardcore coders. If you fall into this category, check out Coda or Espresso instead.

Conclusion

To sum up, there are three primary applications in the realm of Mac-centric WYSIWYG website building apps: Sandvox, RapidWeaver and Flux.

Sandvox is probably the most iWeb-like tool on the market. Users that were sad to see iWeb go should definitely take a look at Sandvox. RapidWeaver is like a really slick iWeb upgrade. It’s more attractive, more powerful and more amazing in just about every way. It’s easy enough for complete beginners to pick up and powerful enough that users who are slightly familiar with web development will find the features that they need, especially given the wealth of plugins that are available.

Finally, Flux is the most advanced and most flexible option, affording you complete template independence. If you don’t know a thing about web development, stay away from Flux. If however, you’re looking for the best non-Dreamweaver WYSIWYG around for the Mac, give Flux a download.

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of these three apps. Where do you fall on the web developer spectrum and which app do you think is best suited for your needs?

We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in July. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, iPad, Web, or Android apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!

Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!

Best of iPad.AppStorm

Best of Android.AppStorm

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

Is there something in particular you’d like to see on the site next month? We’d absolutely love to hear your suggestions for articles, topics and giveaways. Just let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading AppStorm!

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about text-to-speech in OSX, and one commenter suggested I check out Repeat After Me, a text-to-speech utility hidden in the Developer folder.

While checking it out, I discovered that the Developer folder holds a stash of useful applications and utilities I’d never heard of before. I’ve found some real gems while digging through Developer Tools, including some utilities that I now use on a regular basis. Let’s go hunting for burried treasure!

Where Are We Looking?

To get these developer tools, you have to install Xcode, either from your Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard install disk, or for free from the Mac App Store. I had developer tools installed on Snow Leopard, and they’re still there now that I’ve upgraded to Lion.

If you’ve never checked it out before, the Developer folder can be found right inside your hard drive’s main directory. As developers will know, the applications folder inside the Developer directory is home to key tools like Xcode and Quartz Composer, but the average user would have no reason to know the folder existed.

All the applications and utilities I’ll be discussing can be found at OSX HD/Developer/Applications/.

Warning: This could get geeky.

Repeat After Me

Developer/Applications/Utilities/Speech

This utility is a very powerful, complex text-to-speech tool, which can be used to alter text-to-speach output and export your spoken text to .aiff. Repeat After Me allows you compare recorded audio (like your own voice) to the automatically generated speach, and impose pitches and durations from the recorded voice onto the text-to-speach output. It’s a complicated—but powerful—process, though practical applications are hard to think of.

While I was searching for information about Repeat After Me, I did come accross one interesting application: creating digital “singers” to be used in GarageBand compositions. You could theoretically “train” the computer to sing a line of text, though in practice this might be pretty time consuming.

Core Image Fun House

Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools

Your Mac comes with powerful image processing technology called CoreImage, which powers many third-party image editing apps. If you don’t feel the need to download (or pay for) a pretty face for technology you already have, you can achieve some pretty cool effects using the Core Image Fun House.

Core Image effects are non-destructive, so you can add layers of effects to the “Effect Stack”, then modify or delete them. There are dozens of effects to play with, from common adjustments like hue and saturation, to powerful Photoshop-like effects including displacement distortion (similar to Photoshop’s displacement map feature).

Core Image Funhouse is meant to familiarize software developers with the tools available to them, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have a little fun!

Pixie

Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools

Pixie is a really useful little utility that magnifies anything on your screen up to 1200%. This feature is really handy for taking a close look at UI elements in both desktop and web applications without having to open an image editor, which can be very useful for designers.

AU Lab

Developer/Applications/Audio

AU Lab is a fully-featured audio mixer, and though I don’t know much about the subject, I’ve read some really positive comments about it in forums. It’s been compared to RAX in terms of functionality, and is very lightweight and fast. I’ve read that it has a pretty steep learning curve, but it comes with extensive help documentation, and you can’t beat the price.

FileMerge

Developer/Applications/Utilities

FileMerge is probably my favorite of the Developer Tools, I’ve actually used it a couple times to compare documents. FileMerge works like a stripped down version of Kaleidoscope, it “spots the differences” between two text documents.

This kind of utility is useful for both coders and for people that work in writing or editing: it could spot the crucial difference that broke your web app, or show you what changes your editor made to an article. When I do editing work, I usually use Word’s “compare documents” feature, which is good for when you really need to see how something was changed, but something like FileMerge is ideal for getting a general idea of what’s different.

Conclusion

There are dozens of applications and utilities in the Developer folder, but most of them are only useful to software developers. However, even if you’re not a developer, it turns out there are still some very useful, freely available tools to be found. I don’t think any of these applications would find their way to my dock, but I call up Pixie and FileMerge from time to time, and I’d definitely play around with Core Image Funhouse if I wasn’t already such a Photoshop nerd.

I’d be curious to know how many Appstorm readers have Developer Tools installed, whether or not you actually develop software. Have you tried out any of these tools? Are there any other little-known apps I’ve missed?

Now that Lion has been out for a while, many of us have downloaded it on our primary computers and are now using the operating system full-time. As far as stability goes, the reports that we’re receiving are a bit scattered.

For my part, Lion roars along nicely. I upgraded the day it launched and apart from an initial slowdown while Spotlight finished indexing, I can’t say that I’ve run into a single major issue that couldn’t be addressed in a few minutes or less (even on my ancient 2007 MacBook).

However, I’ve heard several people, including some of our own writers, describe OS X Lion as an “extremely buggy” and all around unstable release. Given the variety of different Mac setups that exist, there are bound to be some pretty disparate experiences from users. Today we want to know what you think. Is Lion solid as a rock or one big, buggy mess?

Cast your vote in the poll and then leave a comment below telling us about some of the persistent problems you’ve run into and what machine you’re running.

We’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Box Shot 3D.

As a graphic designer, I am constantly faced with the task of creating 3D product mockups. Unfortunately, 3D modeling programs are extremely expensive, quite cumbersome and can take years to master. Box Shot 3D has come to my rescue quite a few times.

Box Shot 3D allows you to render custom software boxes, book covers, magazines, CD, DVD and Blu-Ray boxes, cans, bottles, mugs, bags and much more. No 3D-knowledge is required at all and the results look very professional because of the raytracing rendering technology.

So Easy, Anyone Can Use It

Box Shot 3D provides probably the easiest way to create virtual boxes for representing software products on the web or to create 3D book images for e-books. Box Shot 3D is used by thousands of designers around the world to represent their work to customers, as it supports more than 50 different shapes and most of them can be configured. It is also possible to render external 3D files.

What’s New?

The latest updates feature the support of multiple shapes in a single scene, external Collada files, sample ready-to-use scenes, image transformations and lots of other improvements.

Go Try It Out!

Box Shot 3D runs on Mac and Windows and is available for $80. Be sure to stop by the website to download the free trial version and see what you think!

You can ask just about anybody what browser they’re using, and they will very likely respond with Safari, Firefox or Chrome. I have never met anyone who actually uses Opera for everyday browsing. This is not surprising seeing as how its usage share is 2.4%. And yet, nearly everybody has heard of it. So why do so few people use it?

Today, I’ll be taking a look at Opera, what it has to offer, and whether or not you should consider adopting it as your new favourite browser.

Getting Started

Installation of Opera is nice and easy – Download the DMG (for free), drag the app into Applications, and away you go. Alternatively, installation through the Mac App Store is even easier.

Upon first opening Opera, you will not be greeted by a wizard to import your bookmarks from another browser. This is unfortunate, because it is a feature which I feel really helps smooth over the transition between browsers. Still, this import is possible, by going to File > Import and Export, and then locating your exported bookmarks file on your computer.

Interface

I was really impressed by Opera’s interface. On any review of a Mac app’s interface, the reviewer will comment on how “native” the app looks and feels. Opera gets top marks for this one. It totally feels like it was designed to work on a Mac and incorporates numerous design elements that are used across OS X.

The Opera folks have decided to go with the tabs on top, something we’re seeing more and more with browsers. Following another popular browser trend, Opera’s toolbar is minuscule but never for a minute feels cluttered or under-equipped. When your app is in a competitive field (and there’s no field more competitive than browsers), your interface is absolutely crucial. Opera has hit the nail on the head with this one.

Browsing

For a browser, the browsing experience is crucial. Luckily, you’re in safe hands with Opera. I’m a Firefox man, and for the purpose of this review, I used Opera for a few days. When I’m in Chrome or Safari, I am fully aware that I’m in Chrome or Safari, and I know the limitations. While using Opera, the content took over, and I totally forgot about what browser I was in. It just felt natural.

One gripe I do have is the lack of middle button scrolling. In Firefox, I can click the middle button (or scroll wheel), and get a nice scroll feature which scrolls by moving the mouse up or down. This means much less scrolling. While this may seem silly and nit-picky, when I consider the the amount of time I spend on the Internet, I would say this has probably saved me from some repetitive strain injury. To be fair, neither Safari nor Chrome seem to have that feature either, but it’s a total dealbreaker for me, and one of the main reasons I use Firefox.

Another of my favorite features in Firefox is the ability to quickly go to sites with your address bar. If I want to find out more about the last Harry Potter film, I just type “harry potter part 2” in the Firefox address bar, and I am instantly brought to the IMDb page for the movie. In Opera, Safari, and Chrome, I am brought to a Google search for that term. Sure, this only means one more click on my part, but it’s important for me.

With the release of Safari in Lion, every major browser displays your downloads differently. Safari has a pop-up, Chrome does it in a new tab, and Firefox opens a new window. So how does Opera manage your downloads? Well, by default, it will open a new tab, similar to Chrome. However, they also have a lovely sidebar view which gives you all the information you need, no matter what tab you’re in. For me, this is a great way to view your downloads’ progress, and from there, you can also access your bookmarks, history, and much more.

Another great feature of Opera is the ability to stack tabs. If you have a large amount of tabs open that you want to access at some point, but have no use for at the given moment; or if you just want to organize your tab in clusters, you can stack tabs easily by simply dragging one tab on another. Opera is famous for introducing features before any other browser (in fact, they were the first to have tabs.). In my opinion, tab stacking is an awesome feature that other browsers should definitely incorporate.

Web Standards

I’m no web developer. I don’t know all of the the nuances of HTML and I don’t know what makes CSS so amazing. But I do know a broken layout when I see it, and I haven’t seen one yet. Opera claims to have support for both HTML5 and CSS3, but so does every other modern browser. The degree of support is what’s most important and Opera does seem to score fairly high in this area. Development gurus can find out more here, normal users should just know that Opera handles most modern websites perfectly.

One thing worth noting is that Opera is not a Webkit browser, so you can’t get any of those fancy CSS animations we all love in Safari and Chrome. If that’s something you rely on, then maybe give Opera a miss, but for the rest of us, almost everything looks just as it should.

Extensions

Extensions are a crucial part of the web experience, and with good reason: users love to have a browser that is custom-built to work with the way they use the web. Opera has plenty of lovely extensions, all serving a purpose. It doesn’t, of course, have anything on the ridiculous number of extensions Firefox has (Opera has less than 800 at the time of this writing). One awesome benefit of Opera’s extensions is the ability to install without a relaunch of the app – just hit install and you’re good to go!

Why Isn’t Opera popular?

On paper, Opera should have a massive market share – It’s updated regularly, fast, secure, customizable, introduces lots of new features first, and looks great. It’s also an absolute pleasure to use. So why does it only have a market share of 2.4%? To me, it looks like a matter of branding. Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome are products from Microsoft, Apple and Google respectively, and Firefox has built up a great reputation over a long time. Opera, however, does not have a massive corporation behind it, nor does it have Firefox’s levels of marketing. No matter what the reason really is, you shouldn’t let Opera’s low market share discourage you from giving it a shot.

Conclusion

Opera feels like the browser Apple should have made – It’s beautiful, innovative, and it “just works”. I’m sticking with Firefox myself, but were Mozilla to suddenly disappear from the face of this earth, I would switch to Opera without a second’s doubt.

I’ve only really touched on the most important aspects of Opera, it’s so feature-rich that I could have written a book about it. To really experience it, you have to use it yourself. You may not switch straight away, but you definitely won’t be disappointed.

We’d like to say a big thank you to this month’s Mac.AppStorm sponsors, and the great software they create! If you’re interested in advertising, you can purchase a banner advertisement through BuySellAds, or sign up for a Weekly Sponsorship slot.

Thank you to the fantastic applications we had sponsoring each week during the month, all of which we personally recommend you download and try out!

• Jumsoft Money – Money provides small businesses and home users with a simple and remarkably effective way to track their financial records and create budgets. Among other novelties, the new Money 4 features a fully redesigned user interface, allows direct downloads from financial institutions, and institutes smart importing rules and a document-based system that allows multiple users to work with a single copy of the application.
• Screeny – Screeny is a beautiful, simple and effective utility for taking screenshots and recording screencasts. The controls are basic enough that you can pick the app up immediately and powerful enough that you can create just what you want with almost no effort.
• Postbox – Postbox is one of the most powerful alternatives to Mail.app that you’ll find anywhere and is a simply incredible email client. In addition to your favorite standard Postbox features like tabs and beautiful reply formatting, Postbox 2.5 sports several brand new features that make it even more irresistible.
• Raskin -Raskin represents an entirely new way of interacting with and managing your open applications and windows. It makes finding, organizing, previewing, and opening documents a fast and remarkably seamless process.

Finally, thanks to you for reading AppStorm this month, and for checking out the software that our sponsors create. I really appreciate it – you make the site what it is!

I’m the kind of person that likes things to be neat and organized, but I don’t like it enough to put a lot of effort into making it happen. I’m mostly content to be moderately irritated by things being out of order in exchange for not having to waste time organizing, alphabetizing, labeling or tagging. Since my recent hard drive failure, I’ve been dreading transferring music from my iPod back to my computer because I’d forgotten that all the hard work I did updating song metadata hadn’t been synced to my iPod.

I was naturally very intrigued by Little App Factory’s new app Tagalicious, which promises to clean up your iTunes library quickly and painlessly by auto-detecting track metadata and updating it in iTunes. Read on to find out if it succeeds!

The Tagalicious Workflow

When you first open Tagalicious, it begins cataloging your entire iTunes library. If you have a large library, this could take a while. Once all your songs are recognized, you can start updating their “tags” (metadata info like artist, album, track number, etc).

Reviewing Changes

When you select a track, the current info shows up in the sidebar, and Tagalicious starts searching for more accurate data. Once it’s done its search, you’ll see two columns in the sidebar: one for the old info, one for the updated info. Any tags that are different from the original are highlighted. At this point, you can either leave the new data as it is, or click on the old data to change it back. Once you’ve finished picking which tags to use, the highlighted gray ones will be the ones sent to iTunes.

You can also see which fields have been changed when you look at the song list in details view: any field with a tag icon beside it has been changed.

Tagging Multiple Tracks

It’s not immediately obvious that you can tag multiple tracks at once, but if you select more than one in the left column, the option “Check All For Tags” appears in the sidebar, which updates all selected tracks. Depending on how many you select, this process can be pretty slow, and sometimes triggered a pinwheel of doom. Once Tagalicious has finished tagging, you can review the changes most easily in list view and change back anything incorrect.

Accuracy

For the most part, I found Tagalicious to be quite accurate, with a few exceptions:

1. Anthologies and “Greatest Hits” Albums

When faced with “Greatest Hits” albums, Tagalicious often identified the original album the track was released on and not the collection, but not always. Of all the albums I have, Tagalicious had the most trouble with the Beatles’ Anthology, identifying about two-thirds of the songs as being from Anthology, and identifying the other third as being from their respective original albums.

If this idiosyncrasy had been more consistent, I think I actually would have appreciated it, because it’s easier to sort through songs by the well-known albums they were originally released on than in one huge album. When you’re tagging your music, I’d recommend doing it album by album, so you can quickly check accuracy in the left column after changes have been made.

2. Classical Music

I found tag results to be really all over the place with classical music, although I guess technically Tagalicious’ info is more accurate than what I’d written: it sets both “artist” and “album artist” to the conductor or orchestra, and though this is technically correct, it’s not very helpful for browsing. Though it doesn’t show the “composer” field in the sidebar, it does update the field accurately.

Some of my classical tracks were also renamed pretty strangely, for example, every Stravisnky track name started with “Stravinsky:.” Many classical albums were also incorrectly identified.

3. Audiobooks

Tagalicious got the audiobook tracks I had and my Pimsleur language tapes completely 100% wrong. Don’t use Tagalicious for spoken word.

There was also one album that Tagalicious just couldn’t handle (Desmond Decker’s Israelites), it got all the song titles and albums completely wrong. When Tagalicious adds incorrect data to a field that previously was empty, you unfortunately can’t delete the new information from within Tagalicious, and have to remember to fix it in iTunes, which I wound up having to do a bunch of times.

Lyrics & Album Art

Tagalicious finds and adds Lyrics and Album art to your tracks surprisingly quickly (much faster than in iTunes, in my experience). I was impressed with how many songs it found lyrics for, with the only exceptions being iTunes Store-purchased songs, which Tagalicious can’t really touch (which isn’t a huge deal, since iTunes Store tracks usually have accurate metadata).

Tagalicious found album artwork for pretty much every album I have, I’m still not sure I’d ever use CoverFlow, but now at least I have the option!

The Little Things

I really like the minor corrections Tagalicious made to album and track names, such as capitalization and apostrophe errors (prepositions in titles don’t get capitalized!) and getting rid of some of the messy album names that sometimes come with special edition, two-part, or live albums.

Conclusion

I started out writing this review feeling a bit more positive about the app than I do now, I realize that I actually spent quite a bit more time updating my music than I wanted to. Now that I have a thoroughly tagged and organized music library, I’m glad that I do, but I did spend a considerable amount of time “babysitting” Tagalicious while it worked, and then correcting mistakes in iTunes.

I’m not sure anything can be done to improve the accuracy of the app, because the tagging relies on a separate technology called Gracenote, the same technology that powers iTunes’ Genius features. The inaccurate taggings would be a lot easier to deal with, however, if you could correct them more easily from within Tagalicious: for example, when one track of an album is identified as part of the wrong album, you can only change the album name back to what it was before, not to what the other tracks were identified as.

Overall, I’m really pleased with my obsessively organized iTunes library. If you’re like me, and you’re willing to put a bit of time into getting things perfectly organized, you’ll find Tagalicious a big help. If you have a really large library, however, the process is still going to take a long time, and potentially make some things messier (mostly by breaking up albums). Tagalicious is definitely a really impressive app, powered by some very powerful technology.

What do you think? Is it worth spending a bit of time to organize your music, or are you content with a little bit of chaos?

One thing that the latest version of Windows does well is managing application windows. With easy keyboard shortcuts you can flip through visual representations of each of your open programs and instantly resize or move windows. There are several Mac applications available that emulate some of these features, a number of which we’ve reviewed in the past.

Moom is an interesting new option, offered by Many Tricks, a small independent company that produces several very good Mac apps. I’ve long relied on their Witch to improve OS X’s built-in app switching, and I use Desktop Curtain whenever I need to cover up my messy desktop to take screenshots. Moom takes its name from the conjoining of “Move” and “Zoom”, as these are the two main things you can do with the app.

Join us after the jump to see how Moom works.

Simple functions

Moom allows you to work with keyboard shortcuts or the mouse, or to mix up the two. The simplest way to interact with the app is to mouseover the green resize button at the top-left of most application windows. When you have Moom running, you will usually then see a small palette appear with a number of rectangles representing different window states.

I say ‘usually’ because Moom doesn’t work with every window. For instance, the app I’m using to write this review, iA Writer, appears to be immune.

Each of those rectangles shows the position the window will be shifted to if you click on it: fullscreen, moved to left or right screen edge and filling half the screen, moved to top or bottom edge and filling half the screen. The ‘person’ shape on the left drops down the custom controls menu, which I’ll return to shortly.

Holding down the Option key when Moom’s control palette is showing changes the control rectangles so that they look like this:

As you’d expect, these controls will centre your window onscreen, or change it to quarter-screen size and move it to your choice of screen corners.

More control

By switching on the control to ‘Enable Move & Zoom grid…’ in Moom’s Mouse preferences, you get more granular and per-use control of how the app works. Now when you mouseover the resize button, along with the preset window size and position control you’ll also see a grid.

Clicking and dragging on the grid will display a shadow outline of your window’s new dimensions and position, and when you release the mouse, the window will ‘moom’ into that space.

Another important setting in Preferences is ‘Enable access to custom controls’. When this is ticked, you’ll see the figure outline on the left of the palette, as in the screenshots above. Custom controls allow you to set your own window triggers and responses. Through the Custom panel of Preferences, you can define actions and keyboard shortcuts that can specify exactly where you want your windows to move to, what size they should be, or particular arrangements they should assume.

Keyboard mode

The Keyboard panel in Preferences allows you to set up a shortcut to enter keyboard control mode.

You can also select whether or not a cheat sheet is displayed, and whether or not double-tapping the shortcut shows a screen grid (which gives you the same advantages of grid control as above, but by keyboard shortcut).

The cheat sheet here is self-explanatory, and a little bit of playing around with combinations of keys will quickly demonstrate how easy it is to do everything that’s available in Mouse mode without lifting your fingers from the keyboard.

How Was It?

I’ve used SizeUp for a while now. Although it’s great having this kind of control of windows when I need it, most of the time I forget that the app is even running. I also know that when I work on PCs running Windows 7, I usually forget that these controls are available. But whether in Windows or via SizeUp on my MacBook, I’m always really pleased when I suddenly remember what’s possible, especially since that memory often solves an issue or simplifies a process.

In theory, Moom is just the same. Once it’s set up, it runs quietly in the background, and is there whenever you need to alter a window’s position or size, whether you choose to use the keyboard or mouse to do so.

However, I’ve had a few problems with Moom. You may have noticed in the full screen screenshots above that I’ve had both Activity Monitor and Console running while I’ve been writing this review. That’s because Moom has frozen so many times, and I’ve needed to periodically kill it in Activity Monitor, and then read through the Console’s logs to confirm that something is up with Moom. Now, I’m no techie, so I can’t make much of the logs, but I certainly know enough to see that logs are being written, and that Console is recording errors with Moom (all variations of CGContext errors, in case that means anything to you). Could these be issues with my old MacBook’s graphics card? What I see is that it’s impossible for me to open up Moom’s Preferences and then click through the different sections without the app freezing.

That makes it really difficult for me to give Moom a score. Once I’ve set it up as I want, I can forget about it and enjoy the fact that it works straightforwardly and well, and doesn’t seem to freeze. But if I ever want to change anything or add new custom rules, I know I’m in for instability and app freezes. All of this adds up to me deciding to stick with SizeUp. If you don’t already have an app that adds similar functionality to your Mac, and you’re interested to try one, perhaps it’s worth the few bucks that Moom cost. As I said, it works fine most of the time, so long as I don’t try to change anything.

What Do You Think?

Your mileage, of course, may vary. If you’ve tried Moom, did you encounter similar issues? And, in general, is this a class of apps that you’d be interested in running?