Macworld is doing their annual GemFest, covering the best of of free and low-cost software. Last week, we were thrilled to see Leech included in the GemFest…and this week, Witch makes an appearance.

Not just an appearance, but an appearance with a perfect five-mouse rating. Having worked for Macworld, I know how rare the five mouse rating is—I think I only handed out a few of them in my nearly five years with Macworld. So Peter and I are, needless to say, thrilled with Macworld’s feelings on Witch.

With that said, we’re even more excited about what we’ve got on the drawing board for Witch 4—we’ve got a list of 30+ new and/or improved features that we’re contemplating for the next major release of Witch. (There’s no timeline for a release as of yet; Witch 3 has only been out for a few months.)

Today we released Witch 3.5.2, and for once, we actually didn’t sneak in any new features (I know, you’re in disbelief). Just two minor bug fixes, one of which affected apps with windows in other Spaces when Witch’s Spaces support was disabled. The other cropped up when the key repeat rate was set to ‘off’ in the Keyboard System Preferences panel.

You can read those two sentences again on the official release notes page, but really, there’s no need—that’s really all that’s there!

You can get the update via Witch’s in-app updater, or download the full program from Witch’s product page.

Yea, I know it’s not a word…but it perfectly describes the one notable new feature in Witch 3.5.1: support for gradients in the selection background color.

The default gradient is seen in the image at right, but you have (as you might expect from Many Tricks) full control over its appearance—including whether it’s there at all.

To customize the gradient, open Witch’s Appearance tab, then click on the color well next to Selection background color to open the color picker. Below the Opacity slider you’ll see a new (unlabeled) gradient slider. Center the slider for no gradient, or pick a spot left of center (lighter at bottom) or right of center (lighter at top) that pleases your eye.

In addition to this new feature, Witch 3.5.1 squashes an annoying bug related to the delay timing of the preview windows. In addition—and I think this is a very cool addition—you can now call up preview windows on demand, even when previews are disabled. Simply press P (or the Space Bar, though this may not work if you use Command in your Witch shortcuts) with any window selected, and its preview will appear. Press P again to make the preview vanish.

There are a few more fixes and improvements detailed on the Witch Release Notes page; you can get version 3.5.1 directly from the product page, or via the built-in updater.

It seems just weeks ago that I was writing “if we were believers in large version number increments, this could easily be Witch 3.5.” Oh wait…it was just weeks ago, when we released Witch 3.2 with Spaces support. So why are we today releasing Witch 3.5, doing that version-number-jumping thing that both Peter and I dislike?

Basically, as we looked back at the list of changes and additions since Witch 3.0—including today’s update—it seemed unfair to simply call this version 3.3. So after some discussion, we settled on 3.5, as we think that properly reflects all the feature additions and general improvements we’ve made since the release of Witch 3.0.

So what’s new and different in Witch 3.5? The most visible change in this release—and the one that had the largest impact on the version number jump—is that Witch now provides window previews for all windows it knows about.

To see a preview of any window, just leave the window selector on any entry for two seconds. (You can shorten or lengthen the delay before the previews appear, or disable them completely, using Witch’s preferences.)

You can even tell Witch to use a shrunken version of the previews in place of the icons you normally see in the Witch panel.

In addition to the very-useful previews, our new in-app purchasing system (introduced with Leech 2.0.3) has been added to Witch, providing a much-simpler way for trial users to purchase a license.

Witch 3.5 also contains these additional features and improvements:

• Space number badges now scale with the size of the icons. As you make the Witch panel larger, the Spaces badges will get larger, too.
• Space number badges can optionally be shown only for windows in other Spaces (click the Show Space numbers check box one time, to make it a minus sign).
• Jump to the top (T, Home) or bottom (B, End) of the switcher panel via keyboard shortcut.
• For those using a scrollwheel or trackpad to scroll through Witch’s window panel, a new pref enables wrap-around, so that the selector will move from bottom to top (or vice versa) without stopping.

We also squashed some minor yet still-annoying bugs, mainly related to toggling between two windows. To see a full list of changes, just visit the Witch release notes page.

If you’ve enabled automatic updates, Witch should alert you to version 3.5; otherwise, you can download it via the Witch web page.