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Written by Tom Mordasky
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Saturday, 18 November 2006 |
Right clicking Mac style
 Ah, the humble right click. Purists deride it. New users are perplexed by its absence. Power Users scoff at the debate… after all, we’ve had it all along! Extra button or no, the contextual menu is a powerful tool that can vastly speed and simplify workflow. In past editions of dotAPP, we looked at various ways to access the menu from Macs lacking a second button. In this installment, we will assume the reader has already figured out how to activate the menu (Control-Click anyone?) and dig right in to expanding its capabilities.
Once they have “discovered” the right click, some users may find that its standard offerings seem a bit sparse. (This may be particularly true for windows users.) A custom set of functions may be just the thing they are looking for.
OpenMenuX is a simple utility that adds a host of functions to the contextual menu in an easy to use and highly customizable manner. It has the standard “Try before you buy” period of 10 days and registration is $10. The program is installed, like most preference panes, by simply dropping it into the users/yourusername/library/preferencepanes folder.
The program can be configured via the preference pane itself, an item within the contextual menu or even an icon in the menu bar. It can open documents, applications, AppleScripts and URLs. Numerous finder level functions can be specified to automatically perform various common tasks such as attaching a file to an email. The program also supports file system browsing. It can browse, open and move files or folders directly through the contextual menu. It supports Apple Scripts for the more savvy script fans out there and the default configuration includes a few to get you started. One of its more interesting features is its ability to reduce the overall size of the contextual menu itself. Selecting the smaller font size option when configuring OpenMenu X will considerably reduce the overall real estate taken up by the menu.
Configuring the menu items is simple and most items can be added by a simple drag and drop. Custom menus can be set on an application by application basis and different functions can be assigned to specific selection types, files, text, URLs or images. The dictionary, translation and web search functions work particularly well in this regard. Allowing, for instance, quick functions to be performed on any text selection. Items and functions can also be excluded in the same manner. While custom menu sets can be set up for specific applications I found that in practice many apps ignore the settings, or even the entire OpenMenu X application, particularly those that already use their own custom menu sets.
There is a decent help file included to help answer common questions and a host of information on custom settings is also available via the program’s web site. Most of the features are relatively self-explanatory and overall the learning curve on the program is a gentle one. The default feature set is plenty to get the average user up and running and those looking for more should be able to dive in without fear.
Overall I found the program easy to use and felt it lived up to its promises quite well. The most intriguing features in my opinion are its text-based functions, giving the user the ability to perform a host of tasks on any selected text, and its file browsing features. A simple right click can be used to move a file or folder to any location you desire. For those looking to expand the functionality of the default contextual menus in OS X this is defiantly a program to check out.
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The Good: Easy to use and confiugre custom contextual menus
The Bad: Works best with the Finder, many programs ignore settings
The Skinny: If you want more from your right click this is definitely something to try!
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