atomicbird

I've just uploaded beta 1 of MondoMouse 1.4.4. This update is intended for people using Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard". It fixes a couple of annoying issues:

• System Preferences will no longer have to restart when opening the MondoMouse preference pane.
• MondoMouse won't suddenly stop running the way it does sometimes

Most of what I changed in this update is bringing back some stuff I wrote back in 2006 before MondoMouse 1.0 came out, but that I had to abandon due to bugs in Mac OS X 10.4 (which was current at the time). These bugs have since been fixed, so MondoMouse goes back to the way I had hoped it would work and becomes more reliable to boot.

This update requires 10.5 or higher. It's only needed if you're running 10.6. I may be able to add 10.4 support by the time this gets out of beta, but that'll depend on taking a good hard look at my usage stats to see if anyone's still using MondoMouse on 10.4.

Please note that this is a beta release-- I still have some things on my to-do list for 1.4.4, but I wanted to get something out for 10.6 users as quickly as possible. I use MondoMouse constantly myself, so I know how annoying it's been of late.

You can download the beta here.

• Download MondoMouse 1.4.4 beta 1 (1.3MB)

I've just uploaded MondoMouse 1.4.3. The only significant change in this version is that it fixes an installation problem on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

MondoMouse requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, but due to a bug in Snow Leopard's system preferences, attempting to install MonodoMouse led to this rather bizarre error message:

Version 1.4.3 works around this problem and installs without errors. For some reason this doesn't affect all Macs, or it would have turned up in my pre-release Snow Leopard testing. If you're reading this and you're from Apple, this has been filed as bug # 7192263 with code that demonstrates the problem.

If you have already installed MondoMouse, you can sit this update out, because it only affects the install process.

Today's release of Mac OS X 10.6, a.k.a. Snow Leopard, has brought many questions from people who want to know-- Does your software work on this new version of Mac OS X?.

The answer is, very simply, "yes". The current versions of all of my software work just fine on Snow Leopard. No updates are needed, so you can keep using the version you have.

Ever since MondoMouse came out I've tried to explain why it's so useful. I've had mixed success, drawing a dedicated band of users but not quite so many as I might hope. I'm not sure I really get the MondoMouse message across well.

So, I was more than a little pleased to see "Power Windows for Your Mac", Mason Mark's writeup on MondoMouse. Mason takes the time to analyze and explain how MondoMouse can save time and frustration when using your Mac, complete with diagrams that'll make it all clear even if you only skim the article.

Mason's post basically illustrates Fitt's Law, one of the cornerstones of user interface design. It provides a solid mathematical basis for why MondoMouse's approach to moving and resizing windows is not just way cool, but also provides a significant improvement in the overall Mac experience. Mason's writeup is more entertaining, and drops the math in favor of some obvious illustrations.

Fitt's law, by the way, is the reason that Macs have always had their menu bars firmly attached to the top of the screen. Applying Fitt's law, the menu bar can be regarded as if it were infinitely tall (because it's impossible to move your mouse too far when you want to click on it).

Mason is also the guy behind the excellent iGet and the promising iGet Mobile. Check them out.

I've just released MondoMouse 1.4.2. This version makes two changes:

• MondoMouse will not make "choose application" windows appear anymore. This has been happening on Leopard systems, when MondoMouse works with certain applications (e.g. OmniGraffle Professional).
• If a window can't be resized, and "highlight windows being moved or resized" is turned on in MondoMouse preferences, the window will be highlighted in red to make it easier to tell what's going on. Thanks to Brian Cooke for suggesting this.

This upgrade is free to all registered users of MondoMouse. If you already have MondoMouse, the best way to get it is to use MondoMouse's "check for updates" button, or else just wait for MondoMouse to check automatically.

Otherwise, you can download the new version here.

• Download MondoMouse 1.4.2 (1.1MB)