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uBar 2
- Thread starter dermeister
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I like it a lot. Nice work. I'll try it out for a while. The dock needing to be moved to the side will take some getting used to but we'll see.
I always had issues with the dock when you have multiple pages of the same app. One of the things I liked about Windows is when you left click the bar at the bottom it would show all the windows that application has open. The Mac dock doesn't do that.
However this app does so that's neat
I always had issues with the dock when you have multiple pages of the same app. One of the things I liked about Windows is when you left click the bar at the bottom it would show all the windows that application has open. The Mac dock doesn't do that.
However this app does so that's neat
I just tested it in OS X 10.9 Mavericks VM and it is quite a cool application, I like that CTRL key action a lot.
What I found while configuring, it is very Windows like to do so.
Can you create one Preferences window to make all the settings for Appearance, Size and so forth? It is a bit cumbersome to go into several sub menus repeatedly to do something.
And what about an option to remove the standard Mac OS X folders from the uBar menu? I do not use them, many other do not use them, Favourites is enough for me.
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Right clicking an application icon in the Dock will at least let you see a list of open windows.
And as for uBar doing that via primary click, it does not work for me. Even right click does not show multiple windows.
What I found while configuring, it is very Windows like to do so.
Can you create one Preferences window to make all the settings for Appearance, Size and so forth? It is a bit cumbersome to go into several sub menus repeatedly to do something.
And what about an option to remove the standard Mac OS X folders from the uBar menu? I do not use them, many other do not use them, Favourites is enough for me.
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Right clicking an application icon in the Dock will at least let you see a list of open windows.
And as for uBar doing that via primary click, it does not work for me. Even right click does not show multiple windows.
Yup. Ultimately it is meant to replace the Dock, which is why uBar likes it best when the Dock is hidden
Yeah originally there were very few preferences, but I've been adding so many options that the menu hierarchy is getting pretty long.
Definitely I'm going to do a good old Preferences window given the proliferation of options.
As for the menu folders, I'm going to create a pane in preferences to customize that menu (so you can't add/remove anything you want!)
Wow wow, uBar is definitely supposed to show all windows when left-click! Are you saying it's not doing that on your machine?
You're right you can right click, I'm just used to left clicking so I prefer that, also it's faster to just be able to click it, mostly because I always left click first and then remember I need to right click
Yours doesn't do this when you click it?
Yup. Ultimately it is meant to replace the Dock, which is why uBar likes it best when the Dock is hidden
My only question is, is there a way to shorten the titles of each block? Like if I'm on Macrumors the bar takes up so much space, could I make it half the size for the example?
Like instead of Mail being this big:
It could be this big:
uBar tries for a width of 180 for each item if it can get it (that is also the maximum). Once you start opening more apps, it will start lowering the size of each. I do notice you are using Small mode however, and you do have a point that perhaps the ideal size is less than 180 for small mode (looks too rectangular). I'll lower it for small mode in the next version!
Well I have in on Auto whatever that means so I guess I am in small mode. I didn't realize it would shrink, that does make sense actually.
Yup Size>Auto means that if you have 1600 pixels or less in width you are in Small mode.
I said this already but I like this a lot. Really good work.
I have it to auto hide as well so I can use the whole screen
My only worry was it would use a lot of memory but it's only using 16mb.
Thank you! BTW would you like your full name for your crediting on that bullet point in the release notes for 2.0.8 or shall it be johnnnw?
Since you mention that... There is a Terminal command that you can set that delays autohide. You can set it to like thousands of seconds that would stop it from coming up entirely.
http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/27/remove-auto-hide-dock-delay-mac-os-x/
This would be cool to have with uBar, but I think it would be an issue after an uninstall for folk that don't like it after a trial.
Are you saying this would be a good feature in case you don't want to activate the bar but instead just trying to click something at the bottom of the screen? Just wondering when delaying it would be useful.
Yeah I don't want to do anything dirty. The welcome screen asks they user to enabled accessibility and explains it, and it offers to auto-position the Dock if the user clicks the button. Don't want to do anything like that without express consent. And even with consent, I'm worried because that value isn't actually a user setting. If uBar auto-hides + positions the Dock right, no matter what happens the user can figure it out. The delay could elude someone until the end of time.
That delay would be to make it so the Dock never shows up, even when it's on the side. It would be nice, but I am worried about it. I could make uBar reset the delay to normal on Quit, but the problem is what if someone somehow force-quit uBar or uBar crashed and then they never run it again... The delay would probably stay there forever!
Ahhhh I get it now. If you want to only use uBar there would be no reason to have it always popping up so you could delay it.
Yeah I could see that being useful. Although like you said potentially bad if something happens with ubar
If you did have a problem you could always use the menu bar to access the terminal and all that
Horizontal filling is implemented, and it looks amazing based on your tasteful advise as usual!
Will publish 2.0.8 within a few hours.
Good good.
Can't wait to see it.And yeah, don't worry about the dock. If people ask, you can direct them to that OSXDaily page.
I'm using uB on autohide too. It makes it much more comfortable working with fullscreen apps actually.
Good good.
And yeah, don't worry about the dock. If people ask, you can direct them to that OSXDaily page.
I'm using uB on autohide too. It makes it much more comfortable working with fullscreen apps actually.
Actually uB should automatically hide if you enter fullscreen. There are 2 kinds of fullscreen:
- Display capture - For example, YouTube uses this. It hides the MenuBar and Dock, so uBar follows cue and hides too.
- Lion fullscreen - The new OS X feature where you click the top right arrows. This will be the green blob in Yosemite. uBar does a temporary auto-hide for this.
The only issue you may have is that uBar doesn't stop you from resizing past it either manually or by clicking the pre-Yosemite green blob.
The Dock stops you thanks to the fact that it is the universal CoreGraphicServices connection and so it gets to tell the windowserver what it's area is, and windowserver doesn't let AppKit resize past that area.
I'm going to see what I can do about that - I have an idea of how I can do it.
Oh, it does hide, that is working fine. I was just saying that it's more pleasant to pull up and use compared to the dock which just looks weird.
Okay - another great update. Activity mode has "horizontally filling", and windows that are zoomed or resized and end up "under" uBar get every so gently thrown off uBar's lawn.
Release notes for Version 2.0.8
Release notes for Version 2.0.8
- Feature: Activity mode fills bar Applications horizontally based on CPU usage (Suggested by Jessica Lares)
- Feature: Windows that get zoomed or resized under uBar are resized out after half a second
- Tweak: Default application width in bar lowered in Small mode (Suggested by John W.)
- Fix: Activity mode now includes usage of application child processes
Just updated. Excellent! I've been using it a lot the last few hours, I don't miss the only icons buttons at all really.
What is "Activity mode?"
Also, one other thing I can't seem to figure out is dragging the bar for up to 5 rows. I can't seem to be able to grab the bar to do this.
What is "Activity mode?"
Also, one other thing I can't seem to figure out is dragging the bar for up to 5 rows. I can't seem to be able to grab the bar to do this.
Glad you like it! If you haven't seen Activity mode yet you're in for a treat.
Activity mode is triggered by holding Control. Your apps then display CPU % and RAM usage
To expand it, you have to really drag the very edge of the bar. Turns out adding a Resize cursor is not so simple since the window is never technically active, so it can't set the cursor. That means I will have to implement a window that looks like a cursor (the Dock does this!) to handle the drag cursor at some point.
Glad you like it! If you haven't seen Activity mode yet you're in for a treat.
Activity mode is triggered by holding Control. Your apps then display CPU % and RAM usage
To expand it, you have to really drag the very edge of the bar. Turns out adding a Resize cursor is not so simple since the window is never technically active, so it can't set the cursor. That means I will have to implement a window that looks like a cursor (the Dock does this!) to handle the drag cursor at some point.
Wow I didn't even know Activity Mode was a thing. That is pretty damn cool. Hold control and it shows the RAM and CPU... clever!
I was able to drag it when I disabled auto hide for a second. Once I had that off I could find the right spot to grab it and then re-enable auto hide.
I wanted to have two rows for more room for favourites without the favourites taking up too much room to the right side (less room for application bars the more favourites you have). I was pleased to see it indeed halved the favourites, 3 on the top 3 on the bottom, versus only going to the second row after a certain amount.
If you don't mind me asking, how long has it taken you to create this uBar?
Oh yeah of course I didn't think you had auto-hide on! I'm going to add that to the to-do list.
Favourites prioritizes using columns before adding new ones, but then when it fills the grid it fills it by row. This way it always uses the minimum space possible.
uBar 2.0 is a complete rewrite, which took a month. It's really rock-solid and attention is being given to every detail. I don't remember how long the original took a few years back but it was a long time. Everything is easier the second time, and of course years of experience helps. For an application that does this kind of stuff, you end up spending half the time doing research, the other half coding. I think I had 27 Safari windows open at one point (not even counting tabs).
The Activity Mode took a day (Saturday). Well worth it!