14 DAY TRIAL // The senor members of the Mac community, who were around before OS X, will surely remember the way windows used to minimize.
Back then, when you double clicked on a window's title-bar, the whole window would slide into it, leaving nothing except a bar with the former window's name on it. Then OS X came, with genie and scale effects for windows that went into the dock. This program will restore the classic behavior of minimizing windows and even add a few new ways of minimizing.
So what's wrong with normal minimize? Lets face it, although Genie and the other minimizing effects are nice and cute, when you are working with heaps of open windows that are cluttering your screen, and a heap of other windows filling up your dock, it gets nasty trying to find the one you are after.
WindowShade X brings back the classic way of minimizing windows. With just two clicks, an entire window is reduced to its titlebar, and with another two, it's restored.
This might seem like a moot point, but when you are working, cutting down the need to move to the dock is very nice. It works wonders in programs with lots of palette windows, since it's awkward to minimize the palettes to the dock on account of their frequent use, and unless you have a very large resolution, those palettes eat up precious screen real-estate.
How many ways of minimizing are there? With WindowShade X, you can minimize any minimizable window with the windowshade effect. Since the window's title-bar doesn't move, it will still be where your pointer is used to having it.
But this is just one of ways WindowShade X can work with your windows. You can also choose to make windows transparent, so you can layer your workspace.
Imagine those palettes I was talking about earlier, packed with tens of brushes, textures, shapes still there, still usable, but being transparent and allowing you to see what you are working on beneath them. You can also lock windows so that they are always on top, which is absolutely great in combination with the transparency.
A minimize by any other name... Another great thing that you can do with WindowShade X is Minimize-In-Place, or MIP for short. With MIP you can minimize a window like you do normally but instead of going into the dock, it stays where it was.
MIP has a host of options from magnification on mouse-over, to having MIPed windows always on top or making them transparent. You can opt to have MIPed windows align automatically to the side of the screen, and can choose from any of the four sides of the screen and either direction.
One problem with MIPed windows is that they do not work well with Expose. If left floating about, the small MIP window icon will be on one place and when you mouse-over it the tool tip will be in another, also in most cases, you will not be able to click on the icon of the window. Fortunately we have the option to hide MIPed windows from Expose, and the other types of minimization work fine, so this should be a problem to anyone.
Anything else? Another great feature of the application is that you can change the shadows on the OS X windows. It does give us a few presets and the possibility to customize the look ourselves but we cannot save our shadow style as a preset. Other than that, the three presets are more than enough really, with Apple default, discreet and disabled.
The program is not intrusive, and although the developers refer to it as a "haxie", this is not a hack. It will not replace the normal minimize in OS X but expand it with new options. You can set shortcuts and window titlebar double-click behavior for each application, customizing it any way you want and adding your own shortcuts. Also you can choose applications that will never be affected by WindowShade X.
The Good This little application offers great alternatives to the minimize options that come standard on Mac OS X. It is perfect if you need screen real-estate, work with many different programs or simply hate closing windows. Once you customize and assimilate it, the app becomes an integral part of your Mac experience.
The Bad The only bad things that can be said about it is how WindowShaded title-bars have a buggy shadow, and that Minimize In Place windows still need work when it comes to compatibility with Expose and a smooth, dock-like magnification.
The Truth This is a great little haxie for both the nostalgic and those who want to relieve window clutter. Lots of features, very customizable and with a small price tag.
Here are some screenshots of minimizing madness, click to enlarge:
