WindowShade X - January 14, 2004
Author: Unsanity
Cost: $10
Version: 3.1
Reviewed by: Daniel Shannon
User Rating: 
65%
There are few groups of programmers that have brought Mac users as much joy as Unsanity with their popular "haxies". WindowShade X, a homage to the feature in previous Mac OS's, is a product that deserves to be recognized as one of the most useful Mac hacks available today.
Features
Imagine that you're working with a project that requires you to have many windows open: writing a paper, coding, designing something in Photoshop, etc. As you need to hide certain windows, you're faced with a problem: minimizing them to the Dock would take up vital space at the bottom of your screen, but you need that window's screen space. At the same time, you want to keep things organized. That's where WindowShade comes in: double-click the title bar or tap "Command" twice, and voila! The content area disappears, leaving only the title bar behind.
Even more useful is the "Minimize-in-Place" feature. This overrides the default behavior of the minimize button, so rather than send a window to take up room in the Dock, it shrinks it to a tiny rectangle. That rectangle floats on your screen, keeping an image of the window's last state visible, and displays the title when you move your mouse over it. This is a great way to temporarily organize lots of windows, especially when their content is easily identifiable even when shrunken.
Finally, WindowShade allows users to customize the shadows that OS X windows and the menubar have. This is highly useful for those flat themes (such as FatalE or EYLO) that feel awkward with 3D shadows. In addition, a removal of shadows reputably gives those without Quartz Extreme a small performance boost.
Ease of Use
WindowShade is highly customizable, but the interface is logically organized and easy to use. The user can decide how WindowShade should behave when he presses the "Minimize" button, double-clicks the title bar, double-clicks the title bar while holding control, presses Command-M, taps "Command" twice, and "Control" twice. Windows can be made to turn translucent, which helps if one is writing based upon research, or comparing one image to another, or in any number of other situations. As previously noted, WindowShade has the added benefit of being able to control windows' shadows, and the minimize-in-place feature is highly customizable as well.
Double-tapping "Command" is set, by default, to activate the WindowShade effect. This is sometimes irritating, but one gets used to it after a while. Otherwise, WindowShade does not have any major usability problems. It is still not fully compatible with Exposé, and so the window-shaded windows still take up space on an Exposéd screen as though they were maximized. Aside from that, WindowShade has no major usability issues or bugs.
As one might imagine, the effect could become irritating while, for example, playing a game. Unsanity has already thought of that: the preferences panel allows the user to exclude certain applications. Just add it to the list and re-start, and WindowShade will let it behave normally.
Unsanity support is helpful, courteous, knowledgeable, and prompt — if you ever have a problem, they're ready and willing to assist you.
Price
All in all, Unsanity's WindowShade is well worth the mere $10 price. It makes your Mac even more of a pleasure to use, and though it is not "essential," necessarily, it is certainly deserving of praise and more than useful enough to warrant a $10 price tag. Think of it as an investment in more cool haxies to come. (Translucency, shadow customization and minimize in place functionalities have been added in updates.) Or just a kind donation to let another poor programmer eat tonight.
Comments
Posted by Judie Edwards at January 14, 2004 01:49 PM | Edit | Delete
Whaddya mean "it is not "essential"? I'd sooner give up iTunes, if I HAD to make a choice!
Posted by danielgrenell at January 15, 2004 05:49 PM | Edit | Delete
it's not worth my 10 bucks, mip in jaguar was free (as you may remember), and window collapsing was in 9, it was given up for the superior minimization feature.