14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has had such an impact on the world that many of its users have become fervent devotees. From a developer’s perspective, however, this impact is a true gold mine. In recent years, more and more “Facebook apps” have been created, generally being targeted towards casual users who want a faster way to interact with the site.
MenuTab Pro is one of the most popular Facebook desktop alternatives. The app offers quick access to the mobile version of the well-known website (Facebook Touch) from a menu bar window and to the full Facebook version from a desktop window.
The application is available as “MenuTab” for free, with limited features and ads, but users who are willing to spend a few coins on extra functionality can upgrade it to the Pro version. The latter's benefits include color-coded menu bar alerts, the desktop mode, opacity control and ad removal. You can purchase each feature individually within the free app or get the full version for $1.99 from the App Store.
We've installed the Pro version without any problems in a matter of seconds. In addition, it used an average of 200 MB RAM and took less than 1% of our Mac's CPU power most of the time. The resource consumption is comparable to the website-based version of Facebook.
The Looks
MenuTab is a front end to the highly popular website, which means that its GUI is, almost entirely, identical to the Facebook interface. It also offers two view modes: mobile and desktop. We could resize the windows with ease by dragging one of their edges or corners.
In both modes, a toolbar on the lower edge of the window provides several buttons to navigate the webpage, access the app preferences, or switch between views.
The mobile version is, for some reason, always attached to the menu bar, unlike the desktop window that can be moved anywhere. Although you can resize the mobile window to any dimensions, it might have been useful to allow you to move it anywhere on your desktop.
Furthermore, we've also tested the options that enable users to change the opacity of the window and set it to always stay on top of all other windows. Fortunately, these features worked as intended and no hitches occurred during our tests.
The Works
Aside from bringing Facebook to your desktop, MenuTab Pro does not include many extra features. It does, however, make the social platform much more accessible through the status bar item and a global hotkey.
The global hotkey plays a major role in the way you can access Facebook. By default, the CTRL + F keyboard shortcut is assigned to launch the MenuTab Pro window, but it can be changed from the Preferences window. The CTRL + F hotkey works flawlessly and so do other shortcuts we've used.
Navigating between posts was very fluid and the click reaction was as fast as in the browser-based version. All the external links we've clicked opened in our default browser, as the app can only open Facebook content.
Another advantage of using MenuTab Pro is that it can autocorrect your text when you're typing, an option that can be toggled from the preferences. In addition, it integrates the "Look Up" (in the OS X dictionary) option which other browsers besides Safari seem to lack.
Although it's just a front end for Facebook's website, MenuTab Pro comes with a number of custom visual and audio alerts for your desktop. You can view color-coded alerts on the menu bar icon when you receive notifications, messages or friend requests.
More specifically, the (default) black menu bar icon flashes with a red color when receiving general notifications, turns green when the inbox contains unread messages and yellow when someone sends you a friend request.
Regarding the response time between the moment our account received notifications and the app’s desktop alerts, MenuTab did not disappoint. As soon as our Facebook account received likes, comments, or messages, the app immediately notified us.
In addition to the color-coded alerts, you can also get sound alerts and popups. A total of fourteen different sound alerts are available and all of them are pleasant to the ear. Moreover, each type of alert can be toggled on / off from the Preferences window.
In our tests, we've only successfully received selected alerts when Facebook notifications occurred. Also, we could disable the app's sound alerts, allowing Facebook's default audio notification to play instead.
The Good
Moreover, the various kinds of visual and audio alerts made sure we never missed a notification. What's more, they can be optionally turned off.
The Bad
The Truth
In conclusion, if you're a Facebook addict or a business owner who wants to always be up to date with the popular social network, then you won't be disappointed by MenuTab Pro.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
