Comments on: In Praise of Third-Party Mac OS X System Enhancements: Hats Off to Mighty APEs, Incredible InputManagers, and Satisfying SIMBLs!

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:44:52 +0000

waiting patiently….any chance at explicit instructions on how to get setalphavalue to work on leopard? haven’t gotten it to work yet.

By: Leland

Leland — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:38:19 +0000

I swear I’m gonna get this thing out of the door by the end of the weekend! I’ve been struggling with a feature that I added as a lark to the beta version a couple of weeks ago… just some useless eye-candy window animations. But the beta testers seemed to like it, and I thought I could do much better. It’s complicated, though, because the toolset has changed dramatically with the arrival of Leopard. You can do much more advanced animation more easily, but it only works for Leopard. And like a lot of Cocoa goodies, it’s only easy once you figure out how to use it!

Long story short, I’m gonna try to go back to the version from a few days ago that was working pretty well (as far as the animations go) on Tiger, while trying to make sure they aren’t awful on Leopard. I’ll probably keep them off by default as I did for the beta release, and then plan to enhance them in a future version.

Oh, and yes, Crystal Clear Interface will work without Unsanity’s APE, but only in Cocoa applications. (Read: Not in Firefox, Microsoft Word, or Photoshop, etc.) Fortunately, there are tons of great, native Cocoa apps for all of those products, some of them even superior to them.

Re: transparent windows while they’re being moved… ? Certainly! You can make them as transparent (or opaque) as you like!

By: kevin buttler

kevin buttler — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:37:15 +0000

ps i just look at crystal clear. looks awesome! i cant wait to try that out. good work!

By: kevin buttler

kevin buttler — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:42:16 +0000

dose anyone know of a way to get window dragon functionality on leopard?

and as a bonus question does anyone know how to make windows transparent while they are being moved?

that is the only feature i miss from linux….

much thanks for all the working going on to improve the mac interface.

kevin

By: jeremy

jeremy — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:06:00 +0000

I cant for the life of me get setalphavalue or invsiray or afloat to work. Eagerly awaiting CrystalClear.

Will the new crystal clear not need application enhancer? none of unsanitys products are working on leopard at present.

By: Leland

Leland — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:55:49 +0000

Hi Jeremy,
You can probably use SetAlphaValue as it is in Leopard, but it has to be installed in a certain way. As mentioned in the article, Leopard no longer supports InputManagers that are installed in the user’s home library. Instead, they must be installed in the System-level Library folder, in an InputManagers subfolder. The subfolder and all files and folders in the InputManager must be owned by the root user. The group owner must be the admin user. Only the root user can be enabled with write permissions on any of the files. When installed with these conditions, older InputManagers will run in Leopard.

FYI, my new CrystalClear Interface InputManager will have the transparency capabilities of SetAlphaValue plus a bunch of other features. I hope to have it available for download in a day or two. (Seriously!)

Also, do check out CocoaBits’ InputManagersManager software for Leopard and Tiger, which can help organize and install your InputManagers. (See links above)

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 04:54:18 +0000

In your expert opinion will an application that restores the functionality setalphavalue or ivvisiray be created for leopard? I use setalphavalue with writeroom to do my writing over a transparent window showing off my many beautiful desktops while I compose my stand up comedy and horrific prose…

i might need to downgrade back to tiger if some sort of coca transparency application is not released for Leopard soon….