iAnnoyance Winner: "Stoplight" Rating Options

[Swad]

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!

Andy Matuschak and his pal Joe Osborn (both of Pixen fame) have submitted the winning entry for our first iAnnoyance Challenge with an app they're calling Stoplight. (Which is a great name - we'll stick with it. )

Stoplight is a SIMBL plug-in that works via a Preference Pane. It allows you to change the windowing behavior for any and all Cocoa based apps (Carbon apps don't work at the moment, but hey, that's why this is open source...).

Here's how to install it:

1. Download and install SIMBL from http://culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php (Make sure you're running the latest version, 0.8.1)
2. Drag StoplightHack.bundle into ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/
3. Double-click Stoplight.prefPane.
4. Configure as you like on a per-application basis, or exclude certain apps.

After you change an application's attributes, restart the app for it to take effect.

Go ahead and test it out and let us know what you think!

Download the latest version here!

[kevin_4e]

Great jobs guys and congratulations. I can't wait to give it a try. Thanks a ton.

[Swad]

Finally - instant full screen in Safari (my preference for web browsing).

[Colonel]

Awesomeness! It' a great utility. Well done!

[brewno]

Wow. This is cool. A great new way to make cool utilities. Everybody happy in the end I have to congratulate the idea and the programmers. Well done!

[joe.osborn]

Thanks for running the contest! Even though I kind of like the default behaviors, I think it's valuable to re-examine assumptions like those from time to time, and 'mechanisms'(or, as I like to say, 'hacks') like these are excellent for that purpose.

So, thanks again. Andy and I will be glad to give the next iAnnoyance a shot, too. (:

I'd also like to thank JonZ14 of this forum for our icon and Ian Henderson( http://ianhenderson.org ), another of the Pixen coders, for some of the framework code we used in writing our SIMBL hack. Thanks!

[SaberSHO]

Awesome!

I had just about finished my SIMBL plugin that accomplished the tasks, but had not yet even started on the pref pane. It took a while of spinning my wheels to realize that SIMBL was the way to go. I think im gonna continue work on my own version, if only because i have at least a bit of time invested in it already. Congrats to the winners...i guess ill just have to work faster next time...

[Swad]

Welcome, Joe. I like the default behaviors too for most apps, but I've already enjoyed tweaking a few apps.

Thanks for your great work (I've emailed Andy with the details).

[lemniscate]

Thanks again for running the contest. It was a lot of fun! Maybe I'll make a proper installer for it sometime, but for now I'll just enjoy the victory. I hope Stoplight is useful!

[SaberSHO]

wow...upon looking through the soure code, i can see that i was definatly on the right track with my own attempt. I also had started with the megazoomer plugin and was using its method swizzling to get the close behavior working. I was having a lot more trouble with the zoom though. It boosts my confidence that I can hopefully help the community in the next challenge.

Speaking of the next challenge, how about next weekend Mash? i wont have such st00pid distractions as work and the girlfriend next weekend (okay, the GF isnt st00pid, but still very much a distraction)

oh well, i guess ill go to sleep now....damn...those 3 red bulls i bought earlier are gonna go to waste! or maybe ill take the time to work on CPUThrottler

[Swad]

Any bugs you find can be listed here:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...view=getnewpost

For example, I just discovered that closing a tab in Camino quits the app.

[Ali Zaid]

Hay, I kinda agree with some on leaving the default behavior, what I had in mind is something like, if I press ctrl and I press the red close button, it terminate the application otherwise it behave as default.

Great work, Thanks for everybody!!!

[Korrupted]

We've made it onto ars technica, and they're bashing us..horribly..
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/9/2/5185

[dtm3dd]

Great app guys!!
Wow AT really didnt like it!! lol - their loss. I cant say why you wouldnt like to customize something on OSX to your preference.

[enj0y]

I love it, I love it, I love it!
Glad to see that other ppl hated the (inconsistent) behaviour of them buttons too!
You can't believe how thankful i am. Stupid "apple+q" see you in hell :-)

[John the Geek]

I agree with them. I have absolutely no use for this, as my windows behave exactly as they are supposed to. When I close a BBEdit window the app stays open because I'm likely about to open another one. I hate that GarageBand was quiting just because I closed one window to go open another one, but thankfully now I get a popup window asking if I want to open another window or quit. Quitting without my consent was the annoyance.

I don't use Maximize much. I just resize on the fly.

[nikongeek]

For the people who are bashing this contest, none of them seem to realize that having an option is better than none at all. They may like the current way Mac OS X handles windows, but HEY you don't have to install it.

[domino]

Some people on that site make me puke. Come to the party or stay at home. Ether you like or not, is your prerogative. Being little b!tches about it and not contributing is plain pathetic.

[jonz14]

Wow he told me he was gonna be done by tonight so i guess he finished early. I can't wait to try it out.

P.S. Don't forget that the icon was made by jonz14
I'm also willing to create icons for any of the other apps, just pm me.

[Muriac]

It's not worth reading the whole Ars Technica comment thread, but I'd like to point out that they're arguing with themselves more than with the competition.

Also, as the most vocal detractor of this program in the original thread, I'd just like to say that I'm impressed at how quickly it got done, and I'm downloading it now to check it out. Congratulations, Andy and Joe. And nice icon, jonz14.

Edit: and it's pretty awesome. I'm not using it on close buttons for reasons I mentioned in the other thread, but this zoom functionality is wicked. Two issues, though:

1. The zoom button doesn't quite zoom full-screen on my MacBook. It gets everything except a few pixels on the left. Is this on purpose?

2. I was happy to see that pushing the zoom button again returns the window to its original size. However, it puts it in the middle of the screen even if that was not its original location.

Again, good job.