How to: Migrate from App Store Witch to direct Witch

June 5th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

As you may have heard, the App Store is now enforcing sandboxing. As such, apps that aren’t sandboxed cannot be updated with new features; only bug fix updates are acceptable.

Unfortunately, with the rules that are presently in place, Witch is not sandboxable, which means that today’s release of Witch 3.9.1 is the last with any new features in the App Store—unless Apple changes their mind, which has been known to happen if enough users let them know how they feel about things (hint hint!). We fully intend to continue updating Witch with new functionality, but all such updates will only be applicable to the direct sales version. That’s the bad news…

The good news is that we have a way for you to easily migrate to the direct sales version, and making this move is completely free. The process is actually quite simple, too.

  1. Make sure you’ve run the App Store version of Witch 3.9.1 (it must be the most-recently-updated version) at least once.
  2. After running once, quit the App Store version of Witch.
  3. Download Witch 3.9.1 from our site, and install it. (The direct sales version of Witch is a System Preferences panel, not an application; you’ll find it in the Other section of System Preferences after installation.)
  4. There is no step four. Just check the Enable Witch box in the Witch System Preferences panel, and you’re good to go.

You can tell you’ve successfully licensed your app by looking at the About tab; the license in the middle should look like this:

That’s really all there is to it, with one caveat: you must repeat this process for each Mac—or different user on the same Mac—that you would like to convert. That’s because the conversion is tied to a license file which is specific to each user on each Mac.

Posted in How To, Mac App Store, Products, Witch | 6 Comments »

Witch 3.9.1 solves the fat font problem—really!

June 5th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Witch 3.9.1 is out today, and it’s got only one change—but it’s a good one, especially for those users who find the fonts in Witch 3.9 too thick, even after setting their preferred font for the switcher.

How did we solve the fat font problem? We added a font smoothing setting to the Font pop-up menu (on the Appearance tab of Witch’s settings panel). You can set font smoothing to Enable, Disable, or System Preferences Default. Enable and Disable are self-explanatory; the final option sets font smoothing to match the state of the “Use LCD font smoothing when available” checkbox in the Appearance System Preferences panel.

The differences are quite noticeable; here’s an example with the bold face of Eurostile, my Witch switcher panel font of choice. The top example is with font smoothing enabled; the bottom, with font smoothing disabled.

A big Many Tricks’ hat tip to Richard L., who helped us figure this out thanks to his use of a hidden OS X font smoothing setting. Once we were aware of the cause, it was relatively easy to add a method of disabling smoothing (without having to disable it system-wide, which wouldn’t be a good solution).

As always, direct purchasers can get the update via in-app updating (or from the Witch web page); App Store customers can get the update via the App Store application.

Note: Barring any changes in the App Store sandboxing rules, this is the last App Store version of Witch with any new functionality. From now on, any features we add will only appear in the direct sales version (as we’re not allowed to add them to the App Store version). For those interested in migrating (at no charge) to the direct sales version, here’s how to do just that.

Posted in Company News, Products, Witch | 1 Comment »

Desktop Curtain 3 makes your desktop clutter weep

May 24th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Today we’re releasing Desktop Curtain 3.0, a major upgrade to our solution to desktop clutter. First, the important bits about this release:

  • It’s a free upgrade to all prior purchasers of Desktop Curtain. That’s right, free. Just load up the App Store application, go to Updates, and install the Desktop Curtain update.
  • Desktop Curtain 3 is also available directly from us. Unlike the prior version, we’re selling this one directly, as well as via the App Store. To purchase from us, just visit the Desktop Curtain page.
  • Desktop Curtain 3 will cost $5 ($4.99 in the App Store), but it’s on sale through Sunday, May 27th for $1.99, the same price as the outgoing version.

So what’s new and exciting in Desktop Curtain 3? A ton of stuff, including this lovely new user interface:

In addition to the reworked interface, Desktop Curtain 3 has these awesome new features:

  • Application isolation mode automatically places the curtain behind the frontmost application, letting you focus entirely on that program.
  • A global hot key provides even more isolation, placing the curtain behind everything except the frontmost window.
  • You can use the current desktop image as the curtain image.
  • If the curtain is covering the desktop icons, clicking the curtain will activate the Finder.
  • The curtain image is now translucent, making it simple to change the curtain’s color.
  • New entries in the contextual menu (and in the program’s menu bar menus, and in new Dock item menus) allow you to easily hide the curtain, or change the level at which it’s displayed.

Desktop Curtain 3 represents a huge improvement in functionality over the old version, and it’s available right now. You can download and use it for free (forever, if you wish) in a feature-limited mode, and then use an in-app button to purchase the full version when you’re ready.

Posted in Desktop Curtain, Products | 2 Comments »

Keymo, Time Sink, and Key Codes updated today

April 24th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Today we released Keymo 1.1 (it’s first-ever update), Time Sink 1.2.1, and Key Codes 1.2. Here’s a quick look at what’s new in each one.

Keymo
We now support the very-often-requested ability to set custom move distances. Not only can you set custom distances, but Keymo will build a menu of your custom distances, making it easy to reuse them. You can also chain actions together, as you can with Moom. [All Keymo changes]

Time Sink
There are no new features in this Time Sink update; the only changes of note are that Time Sink now ignores floating windows, and we fixed a bug related to application-specific window blacklists. [All Time Sink changes]

Key Codes
Key Codes’ display of key combos that include modifier keys has been improved.

Updates for Keymo and Time Sink can be found via the in-app updater (direct customers), or via the App Store application. Key Codes doesn’t have an in-app updater, so if you downloaded it from us, just download the new version. (App Store customers can update Key Codes via the App Store application.)

Posted in Key Codes, Keymo, Moom, Products, Time Sink | Comments Off on Keymo, Time Sink, and Key Codes updated today

Touch up Tuesdays return: Moom and Witch updated

April 17th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 2.4.1 and Witch 3.9 were released this morning, for both direct and App Store customers.

The big news in Witch 3.9 is the Font pop-up menu on the Behavior tab of Witch’s settings panel/window. This is our solution to the “fat font” problem introduced (thanks to Xcode) in Witch 3.8.

Click the Font pop-up menu—and be patient; the first load will take a few seconds—and you can then choose any font on your system for use in the switcher panel. I’m partial to Eurostile, but pick the one you prefer.


The use of Webdings is not advised, unless you’re a fluent reader of Webdings.

You can read about the rest of the changes in Witch 3.9 on the release notes page.

Moom 2.4.1 isn’t as big of an update in terms of eye-catching new features. We did, however, make Moom (and Witch, for that matter) work much better with the virtual keyboard apps Synergy and Teleport (and our own Butler). We’ve also made some changes to how Moom interacts with additional displays; we think it’s now ever smarter than it was. You can find all the changes on Moom’s release notes page.

Both apps can be updated within the app or by downloading a new copy from our site (for direct customers), or via the App Store’s Updates tab (App store customers).

Posted in Butler, Moom, Products, Witch | Comments Off on Touch up Tuesdays return: Moom and Witch updated

Name Mangler 2.5.1 released

April 12th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Name Mangler 2.5.1 is out, available for direct customers via in-app updating (or by downloading the full version from our site), and for App Store customers via the Updates tab in the App Store application.

There’s only one change in this version, but it’s an important one. If a rename operation will remove the extension from one (or more) filenames, then Name Mangler will ask you to confirm that this is what you really want to do.

In older versions of Mac OS X (and the Mac OS in general), the loss of an extension wasn’t a big deal—the system didn’t rely on extensions to determine which program should open a given file. Now, however, extensions are quite important; remove the extension from a PNG file, for instance, and OS X will probably think that file is now a Unix Executable file. It’s important to note that the file itself hasn’t been damaged; if you put the extension back, it will work as it did before.

Given OS X’s relatively new reliance on extensions, we felt it important that Name Mangler ask you to reconfirm your intent to remove filename extensions before doing so.

Posted in Name Mangler, Products | 3 Comments »

How to: Set up, grow, and move Usher movie libraries

March 27th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Usher is our powerful movie management tool; its mission in life is to bring order to the chaos that can be one’s collection of videos. To help you get the most out of Usher, this how-to covers setting up Usher’s main Library folder, adding more storage space, and moving movie files to a new hard drive (replacing an existing smaller drive).

Basic Library folder setup

Our recommended setup for Usher is to create your main Library folder on your machine’s boot disk, regardless of whether you intend to keep any movies there or not. By having the main Library folder on your boot drive, you’ll be able to see all your movies, even if they’re stored on a not-currently-connected external drive; you can even edit those movies’ metadata without them being physically present.

(If you’ve got a machine with more than one hard drive, and the extra drive (or drives) is always connected, feel free to place your Library folder on that drive. It’s only drives that are transient in nature that can be problematic as Library folder locations.)

If you simply install Usher and run it, this is the setup you will get—the main Library folder is created in your user’s Movies folder, within an Usher folder we create there. While you don’t have to use this arrangement, we strongly recommend that the main Library folder reside somewhere on your boot drive, or other always-there drive. (You can choose a new location for the Library folder on the Library tab of Usher’s preferences panel.)

After you’ve used Usher for a while, assuming you’re actively growing your movie collection, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself running short on drive space. Thankfully, Usher makes it really easy to add additional storage space to your collection.

Read the rest of this entry »

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How to: Add dates/times to filenames with Name Mangler

March 14th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths

Name Mangler 3 includes date-based renaming features outside of Advanced mode; this article will be of interest only to those running Name Mangler 2.

Name Mangler is our user-friendly yet powerful batch file renamer. In this how-to, I’ll show you how to use Name Mangler’s Advanced mode to add date and/or timestamps to your filenames (and how to replace a portion of the filename, all in one pass).

While Advanced mode can be intimidating, the objective of this tutorial is to show you that it may not be as bad as you fear, and that you can do quite a lot with it. To get the most out of this tutorial, I recommend you create a batch of sample files, and follow along in Name Mangler, trying each step as you read.

Name Mangler’s Help file contains an entire section on Advanced mode, covering all the commands available; if you have the display space, opening the Help window alongside the tutorial and Name Mangler could be very useful.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Name Mangler 2.5 and Witch 3.8 released

March 1st, 2012 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Hot on the heels of Moom 2.4, we’ve just released Name Mangler 2.4 and Witch 3.8. These are both “full dot” version number increases; here’s a quick look at what’s new in each program:

Important note: Both Name Mangler and Witch now work only on Intel-based Macs and Mac OS X 10.6 or later. If you’re on a PowerPC-based system, and/or Mac OS X 10.5, you’ll want to remain on your current versions. If you accidentally update, you can download the prior versions from the sidebar on each program’s page.

Name Mangler 2.5

  • Added a File > Populate command (Command-O) to populate Name Mangler’s file list via the OS X Open dialog.
  • Advanced mode’s [pad] and truncate functions can now pad or truncate from the beginning of a string, by using negative numbers.
  • New name.extension and .extension variables ease some Advanced mode renaming tasks.
  • Full list of changes in Name Mangler 2.5.

Witch 3.8

  • The Witch switcher panel now scrolls to display all open windows, regardless of the length of the list. (Prior versions of Witch would extend the panel beyond the screen, but you couldn’t access items below the lower boundary of the screen.)
  • Witch’s debug mode now shows how long it takes for applications to provide their list of open windows. (More detail on this is in the release notes.)
  • Full list of changes in Witch 3.8.

App Store customers can find these new versions on the Updates tab of the App Store application (either now, or in the very near future). Direct customers can download new versions from our site, or use the in-app upates feature to update directly from the application.

Posted in Name Mangler, Products, Witch | Comments Off on Name Mangler 2.5 and Witch 3.8 released

Moom 2.4 chains things together

February 28th, 2012 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Great news for all you Moom users out there; Moom 2.4 is out, and features the single most-requested feature on our to do list: chaining of Custom Controls. This is mostly of interest to users with more than one display, but others may find it useful as well.

For this release, we’ve implemented chaining of Custom Controls in the most simple way possible: assign the same keyboard shortcut (either a single-key local shortcut, or a global multi-key shortcut) to more than one Moom Custom Control, and those Custom Controls will execute automatically, in the order you have them arranged in Moom’s Custom Controls panel. Here’s an example:

When I press Shift-Option-H, Moom will first move the frontmost window one display to the left, and then center that window. This all happens very rapidly, such that you’ll usually only see the end result of your chained Custom Controls (which is really all you care about, after all). You can read Moom’s Help file for more information on chaining Custom Controls.

Note that this isn’t our complete vision for chaining Moom Custom Controls; we have some great ideas on how to make it work much better in Moom 3. However, we think this implementation works, and it helps us get the feature out there for everyone to use, without waiting on the next major upgrade.

There’s more in Moom 2.4, of course; we’ve reorganized the menu bar menu, placing the often-used Save Window Layout Snapshot and Settings choices up top, and we now check to see if Moom is hidden at login in OS X Lion (as this causes issues with Moom’s green button overlay). You can read the release notes page to see all the changes in this release.

As always, updates for Mac App Store purchasers will be found (either now, or very shortly) on the Updates tab of the App Store application. Direct purchasers can download the latest version of Moom from our site, or use the in-app Updates tab to check for updates.

Posted in Moom, Products | 4 Comments »

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