Our apps and OS X Lion compatibility

July 20th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

With today’s release of Lion, here’s an update on the status of all our apps in Apple’s latest Mac OS X release. Note that this is based on our testing only, and many of our apps are feature-rich: so if you run into something, please let us know via comments here, a tweet, an email message, or a trouble ticket.

  • Butler: Compatible, though it’s likely we haven’t tested 100% of everything that Butler can do.
  • Desktop Curtain: Compatible, but with some issues if you use Spaces or Mission Control. We’re working to find a solution to those issues.
  • Displaperture: Compatible.
  • Key Codes: Compatible.
  • Keymo: Compatible.
  • Leech: Leech’s browser integration feature only works with Firefox in Lion. We’re investigating getting the other browsers working again, and will post any updates here on our blog.
  • Menu Bar Tint: Compatible.
  • Moom: Compatible, as of latest 2.2 update.
  • Name Mangler: Compatible.
  • Open-With Manager: Not recommended and not tested in Lion.
  • Safari Guardian: Not compatible with Lion. It won’t cause problems if installed, but its features won’t work. (Note: Safari 5.1 in Snow Leopard also breaks Safari Guardian.)
  • Service Scrubber: Not recommended and not tested in Lion.
  • Time Sink: Compatible.
  • Usher: Compatible.
  • Witch: Compatible, as of the 3.7 update.

As noted above, if you find certain features in our apps that don’t work in Lion, please let us know!

Keymo lets you keep your hands on the keyboard

July 19th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Are you a diehard keyboard user who hates reaching for your mouse (or trackpad or Magic Trackpad or <insert other generic mouse-like device here>)? If so, you may find Keymo an essential addition to your toolkit.

Keymo gives you full control over your mouse via the keyboard. You can build custom actions to move the mouse by a specified number of pixels at a time, move it immediately to a screen edge or corner, move it to another display, move it to the center of the screen, scroll windows with scrollbars, and even click and right-click (with modifier keys optionally passed along).

One of the cooler features is what we call move by division: this sub-divides the screen by half each time you invoke it, which makes it really easy to move across huge swaths of screen real estate with only a few keystrokes. It’s hard to describe, but easy to understand when seen in action:

The best way to learn more about how Keymo works is to download a free trial; that way, you can see all of its features for yourself. After testing Keymo, f you’d like to purchase a copy, it’s only $5 when purchased directly from us, and $4.99 on the App Store.

Moom 2.2 gains drawer awareness

July 19th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Good news, users of BBEdit, TextMate, TextWrangler, and other apps that use drawers in their user interface: Moom 2.2 includes optional drawer support. Enable drawer support on the General tab of Moom’s settings window, and Moom will account for the presence of a drawer before moving/zooming the associated window.

Moom 2.2 has a number of other minor changes and improvements, all of which are nicely documented on its release notes page. If you bought directly from us, use in-app updating to get the new version (or just download the full version from our site). If you bought from the App Store, Moom 2.2 should show as an available update very shortly, if it’s not there already.

Moom 2.1.1 released

July 6th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths

Today’s Moom update is mainly about minor improvements and bug fixes, but there are a couple new features to make your favorite window moving and zooming utility even better.

You can check the release notes for all the details, but here are the highlights:

  • A new Save Window Layout entry in Moom’s menu will save the current window layout without first opening Moom’s Settings window.
  • The Grow and Shrink commands (in the Keyboard section) will now repeat when their assigned keys are held down.
  • The Settings window now properly appears on the active Space.
  • Fixed a bug with the Shrink keyboard control.

As always, updates are available via in-app updating (for direct customers) and via the App Store app for those who purchased in the Mac App Store.

Also, we’ve got another update in the works to further improve compatibility with Lion; we’re submitting it now so it’ll (hopefully) be ready for release when Lion ships.

Witch 3.7 is ready for the future…we hope

July 1st, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Witch 3.7 is our Lion-ready (we hope) release. We made some changes to support Lion in 3.6.3, but this update contains even more Lion-ready changes. I say “we hope,” though, because we’re working with unreleased software, and anything can change before it’s officially released. If that happens, of course, we’ll be hard at work on another update.

But for now, Witch 3.7 should work very nicely for those using 10.5, 10.6, or the current pre-release version of Lion. There are a couple of other minor changes detailed in the release notes, but the major point of this update is Lion compatibility.

Updates are available via in-app updating for those who bought directly from us, and from the App Store app for those who purchased via the App Store.

Moom 2.1 released

June 29th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

This Moom update is so chock full of goodness that it could have easily merited a full version increment. But given we just did that, we’ll hold back and just go with a “dot” increment this time.

So what will you get when you install the (free, of course) Moom 2.1 update? A bunch of really nice new features, including:

  • The ability to save and restore window layouts. Have a layout you like a lot? Now you can save it with a simple button tap, and then restore it later via keyboard shortcut or Moom’s menus.
  • Speaking of keyboard shortcuts, you can now create single-key shortcuts that are usable only when the keyboard bezel is onscreen. No more working hard to identify non-used global shortcuts; just type a single character in the shortcut box, and that shortcut will only work after you’ve first brought up Moom’s keyboard bezel. (A yellow background behind the single-key shortcuts helps you identify them at a glance—and they appear in the cheat sheet as well!)
  • You can now use grid-based resizing in keyboard mode; just press the keyboard bezel activation shortcut a second time. (You have to enable it first, though, in the Keyboard section of Moom’s settings.)

There are some nice small touches, too. You can optionally highlight the window to be adjusted (via a user-settable slider in General); grid-based resizing shows a live preview of the window’s size and position on the screen; and you can optionally show the Custom Control menu in the mouse palette without clicking your mouse. Read the Moom release notes page for the full scoop on this release.

We think Moom 2.1 is really a great “minor” update, and the new features—especially the ability to save and restore window layouts—makes this a must-have window management utility.

As always, the update is available via in-app updating for those who bought directly from us, and via the App Store application for those who purchased on the Mac App Store.

Desktop Curtain 2.2 released

June 24th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Today’s Desktop Curtain update adds two minor features, and includes a few bug fixes. The two new features are:

  • A ‘boss key’ to instantly bring the curtain to the foreground, covering absolutely everything (including the Dock and Command-Tab application switcher). It doesn’t, however, bring up a fake spreadsheet as did certain games of yore.
  • Image names are now shown while hovering over image thumbnails in the History menu.

Desktop Curtain is (as of now, at least) only available on the App Store, for $1.99 to new purchasers (the update is, of course, free to all current customers).

Make your own Moom with Moom 2

June 7th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Today we released Moom 2, a major upgrade to our window moving and zooming utility. You may be saying to yourself, “didn’t they just release Moom 1 last week?” Well, it was actually just over three months ago, but yes, that’s still a very short interval for a major upgrade.

But that short interval is actually good news for existing Moom customers. Because it’s only been three months since the initial release, Moom 2 is a completely free upgrade for all purchasers. App Store users can download the new version through the App Store application, and direct customers can use the in-app updating to get the new release.

So what’s so cool about this release that merited a full-version jump? Custom controls, that’s what. And just what are custom controls? Custom controls let you turn Moom into a customized tool that does just what you want it to do. You can create a custom control for any Moom action, and then access that custom control via a defined keyboard shortcut, or via the menu bar menu. You can even access these custom controls in the mouse palette, via an option in the Mouse section of Moom’s settings window. (See the Moom product page to see how custom controls look, both while creating them and while using them.)

You can create as many custom controls as you like, too. To help keep all those custom controls straight, you can organize them by drag-arranging them in the Custom tab of Moom’s settings window. You can also insert separators, and apply group headings to groups of related actions.

We’ve been thrilled with the reaction to Moom so far, and we think Moom 2’s custom controls turn an already great tool into a simply amazing tool. If you haven’t tried it yet, download it from the Moom page and give it a try.

App Store reviews: Of one-way streets and sidewalks

May 11th, 2011 by Peter Maurer

Yesterday, I had an interesting (to me, that is) discussion about App Store reviews with Smile Software‘s Jean MacDonald (@macgenie) and Unmarked Software‘s Mark Munz (@mmunz) on Twitter (I’m @petermaurer, of course). It started with me trying to reach a user who had left an App Store review, including a suggestion that prompted me to believe he’d be interested in testing a beta build I had just completed.

So I took to Twitter, mentioned the name he had given in the review, and asked him to contact us. No result, as usual. From there, the following conversation unfolded…

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Another day, another Name Mangler release

April 27th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

We’ve just released Name Mangler 2.4.4, which contains an important fix for an issue introduced in yesterday’s 2.4.3 update: under certain conditions, renaming wouldn’t actually work, despite the filename preview showing correctly within Name Mangler. Version 2.4.4 fixes this problem, and that’s the only change in this release.

If you bought Name Mangler directly from us, the update has been released, and you can get it via in-app updating or by downloading Name Mangler again from our site. We apologize for two releases in two days, but we felt it was important to get this fix out as soon as possible.

If you’re using the App Store version, we’ve submitted 2.4.4 for approval, which we hope will take only a few days. If you find that version 2.4.3 won’t work for a certain renaming task, you can (temporarily) use the demo version from our site until the App Store update is approved. Continue reading to see how to do that.

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