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Written by Tom Mordasky
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Monday, 11 September 2006 |
Cut corners, take control
 It has always been surprising to me that one of the more controversial
features of OSX has been the humble Dock. Some love it, some hate it.
After living quietly on the desktop for the better part of five years,
most people have made their peace with it. Those of us who have been
around long enough remember the feature the Dock replaced, the Apple
Menu. With the Classic Apple Menu, a user could specify applications,
folders and pretty much any commonly used items to be easily accessed
via its pull down interface. Software exists that replicates this
feature in OSX but why live in the past? (Note to Self: Take my own
advice.) MaxMenus, a preference pane by Proteron LLC, brings us to the
next level. It features hot corners with highly customized content. MaxMenus is distributed as shareware with a
registration fee of $29.95. Fans of “Try before you buy” can download a
free, fully functioning trial version with a demo period of 30 days.
On launch, small, colored and deceptively inconspicuous dots appear in
all four corners of the screen. One of the most striking things about
MaxMenus is the contrast between its small footprint and the dizzying
array of items its hot corners can contain. Each dot contains up to
four unique and fully customizable pull down menus, making for sixteen
potential menus in the hot corners alone. Users with two monitors will
find that up to eight corners are supported (8x4=32; that’s a lot of
menus). Separate key commands can be configured to summon additional
menus independent of the hot corners. Really, there is no limit to the
number of custom menus a user could configure. The only practical
limit would be in finding enough keyboard shortcuts that do not
conflict with the system or other applications.
Both the individual corner dots and the floating menus can be
preferenced to contain any combination of items from the list to the
right in the configuration window. A corner can also be disabled
completely by deleting all of its menus from the list. Potential menu
items include mounted volumes, system preferences, open programs,
recent apps and docs and the contents of the home folder--or for that
matter, any file or folder the user desires. Files and Folders can also
be dragged directly from the finder into the list. Separators can be
added to aid in the organization of the pull down menus. In addition,
the user can specify the icon size that each menu uses, each can be
configured independently of the others with icons sizes up to 128 x
128. The color and opacity of each tab can be customized as well. Tabs
can even be hidden simply by setting their respective opacities to
zero. Custom key commands can also be specified to summon any of the
available menus.
One of the more interesting and potentially useful features of the
program is its ability to assign custom “Hot Keys” to any item in its
menus. A user can specify a keyboard shortcut to summon any item he or
she desires, whether it be a file, a folder or an application. In
addition, the “Open Applications” menu as well as the “Mounted Volumes”
menu support all of the standard system level key commands for common
tasks such as hide, quit, force quit, eject etc.
The menus do support drag and drop, via a “spring Loaded” option in the
configuration window. While the feature does work, its behavior is a bit
unusual. Dragging an item over one of the corner tabs will cause the
curser to change to a small hand. The menu will not open. Releasing the
file will summon the menu and allow you to navigate to the location you
wish to place the item or application you wish to open it with. In my
opinion, this feature has room for improvement. There is little or no
indication of the curser’s “loaded” status, i.e. that a file is being
moved. At first, I simply believed that the drag and drop feature did
not work. Actually, it works flawlessly but with little or no visual
indication that it is doing so.
Overall, I found some of the more useful menus to be among the default
ones. MaxMenus comes with twelve preconfigured corner menus as well as
a thirteenth activated by Command-Control-Tab. Both the utilities menu
and system preferences menu are particularly useful for providing quick
access to those folder’s contents. The home folder alias is also very
handy, allowing for quick navigation to the music, movies, pictures and
document folders.
Like many programs of this nature, MaxMenus provides an alternate means
of interacting with OS X. Many of its features have rivals, both in
other third party software as well as the system itself. For instance,
does MaxMenus’ utilities menu provide faster or more convenient access
to the contents of that folder than simply pressing “Command-Shift-U”?
There is no right answer. It all depends on your preferred style and
habits. MaxMenus is an amazingly versatile means of providing fast
access to whatever you choose. Overall, MaxMenus is easy to use and very
customizable, providing a nearly infinite set of user configured pull
down menus. Though quite intuitive and straightforward, very in depth
documentation is included with the program, giving excellent insight
into its many features.
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The Good: Mind boggling array of custom menus. Key commands to summon pretty much anything. Lives up to its name
The Bad: Finding enough keyboard shortcuts to go around may prove to be a challenge. Drag and drop interface needs tweaking.
The Skinny: Don’t balk at the $29.95 price tag, this little app is absolutely amazing at what it does.
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