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InactionMan
2004-06-23, 22:31
http://members.rogers.com/inactionman/ai/menu.jpg

What do you kids keep in your menu bar?

I've cluttered mine with Butler (http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&sprache=deutsch&kopf=labor), Menu Calendar (http://www.objectpark.net/mc.html) and Meteorologist (http://sourceforge.net/projects/heat-meteo/).

Butler is by far the coolest thing I've wasted time on in a while. Being able to get turn of FUS is by far the greatest feature. I hate having my name at the top of the screen. Menu Calendar makes iCal worth using. Before, I used to update iCal every couple of weeks. And Meteo is still the best damn weather thingy ever.

Looking at the time in the screenshot, I can't believe this took me 13 minutes to post. :|

DMBand0026
2004-06-23, 23:35
I can't post a screenshot now because I don't really have a place to host it. No biggie anyway. I have pth iTunes notifier, iChat menu, Airport menu, bluetooth menu, battery meter, volume meter, and the clock. Sounds like a lot, but it's really not all that much. I like to keep things simple.

_Ω_
2004-06-23, 23:40
I am a fan of MenuMeters myself.

Paul
2004-06-24, 00:44
http://homepage.mac.com/psantora/.Public/menubar.png

synergy (http://synergy.wincent.com/), Fuzzy Clock (http://www.objectpark.org/FuzzyClock.html), Menu Meters (http://ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/index.html), WinSwitch (http://winswitch.wincent.com/), and ASM (http://www.vercruesse.de/software/)

other images of interest:

http://homepage.mac.com/psantora/.Public/Dock.png
Finder, Terminal, Big Bang Chess (http://www.freeverse.com/bigbangchess/), iTunes, Mail, Adium (http://www.adiumx.com/), OmniWeb (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/5/), Safari, Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/), Word, and Excel.
and
http://homepage.mac.com/psantora/.Public/syspref.png
Peripheral Vision (http://www.grantedsw.com/p-vision/), RCDefaultApp (http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/), Little Snitch (http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/), Macaroni (http://www.atomicbird.com/), SideTrack (http://ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/index.html), and uControl (http://www.gnufoo.org/ucontrol/ucontrol.html)

SonOfSylvanus
2004-06-24, 04:09
Paul, how do you get RCDefaultApp into the "Internet & Network" pane? Mine defaults to the "Other" pane. Thanks.

Paul
2004-06-24, 09:21
http://www.resexcellence.com/hack_html_03/12-04-03b.shtml

a little light reading, poking around in the pref pane bundles (didn't change anything there) and playing with the NSPrefPaneGroups.plist in the system preferences application bundle (backed up and made a few changes to this file).

took me all of 20 minutes after I finally got myself to sit down and do it...

torifile
2004-06-24, 12:59
Good thread! I'm currently using Butler (as per the suggestion above) and WeatherPop Advance. I've toyed with Synergy and other menu bar apps, but I don't have much real estate up there on my 12" screen and I hate clutter. I'll see how Butler does. It looks neat. :)

InactionMan
2004-06-26, 07:55
Anyone using Butler find their system slowing down a bit? Mayhaps Butler tries to do too much in the background. Or maybe it just because my Mac is four years old. I'm going to try Paul's suggestions for ASM and WinSwitch and see if things get a bit snappier. I've been seeing way too much beachball action lately.

DMBand0026
2004-06-26, 12:49
That's going to happen anytime you constantly have a program using up CPU time and RAM. Although it should be minimal with a program that is made to run all the time in the background like that. Check and see if it really is the offender in activity monitor or in terminal. And do some basic system mantanance. Clear caches, repair permissions, all that good stuff and see if you don't get rid of that lag.

InactionMan
2004-06-26, 14:51
Holy Crap! Butler is a well behaved little App. MenuCalendar on the other hand is serious CPU Hog. It was constantly hovering between 40-60% CPU Use. And I thought Word was a hog. I quit MenuCalendar and all is well.

autodata
2004-06-26, 16:45
http://www.fireantav.com/menu.png

windowsblowsass
2004-06-26, 22:08
nobody else uses weatherpop (http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?str=weatherpop&plt%5B%5D=macosx&mode=basic&action=search) ?


oops didnt see that one post

InactionMan
2004-06-27, 07:52
http://www.fireantav.com/menu.png

What are the thingies on the left side?

ast3r3x
2004-06-27, 08:17
I tried synergy, but I like a cleaner look.

So I have a clean menu bar, and I use X-Tunes (http://www.pol-online.net/index.php?page=freeware) (bottom of the page) to control iTunes.

Just weather, and WinSwitch for me.

http://mobocracy.no-ip.com/pictures/screenshot6-27-04.png

Eugene
2004-06-27, 08:42
Fast User Switching, Keychain Status, Input Menu, AirPort Status, iChat Status, AppleScript Menu, Displays, Volume, Clock. I run my monitor at 1280x1024, so Menu Bar space is at a premium. Any more Menu Extras and some app's menus would cover them.

staph
2004-06-27, 08:45
What are the thingies on the left side?

Those would be virtual desktops.

Haven't used one in ages, but the options are either Codetek Virtual Desktop (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/7966) or Desktop Manager (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/12682)

autodata
2004-06-27, 18:30
Yup. Desktop manager. Does everything I need to and does it well.

I have it set up with 4 desktops and a fast cube transition, just like user switching but much faster.

BarracksSi
2004-09-02, 00:31
What kind of jobs do you do where separate virtual desktops would help?

I'm mostly homebound, so I'm not sure what I'd do with additional desktops...

chucker
2004-09-02, 04:57
GrowlTunes, SlimBatteryMonitor, MemoryCell, SSHKeychain, MenuMeters: CPU, MenuMeters: Network, Keyboard Layout, WinSwitch, Spot... err.

Brad
2004-09-02, 07:41
What kind of jobs do you do where separate virtual desktops would help?Any environment in which you have oodles of windows open for several different apps. Of course, Exposé helps with this a LOT, but some people grew up the Linux/Unix way and just have to have have virtual desktops instead.

There are merits and pitfalls to both.

With Exposé, you can quickly see everything at once. However, since you do see everything at once, if you have twenty big windows open and a dozen little windows, they smaller ones might scale down to be indiscernible. Also, Exposé only brings one window to the front at a time.

With virtual desktops, you never actually see all of your windows when switching. Instead, you see the outlines of the windows in a thumbnail. This method is good for hiding and switching whole groups of windows at a time. The downsides to this method, though, are that the thumbnails are teeny tiny, you never actually can see the contents of those outlines before clicking them, and you might spend more time clicking around if you forget where you last put a certain window you were looking for. Also, this doesn't help you get to windows that are hidden behind other windows.

Escher
2004-09-02, 07:55
nobody else uses weatherpop (http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?str=weatherpop&plt%5B%5D=macosx&mode=basic&action=search) ?

WeatherPop (http://www.glu.com/) (Advance) is the only non-Apple Menu Bar App that I use. So my menu bar looks like this:

WeatherPop, Display Prefs, Bluetooth, AirPort, Sound, Battery

That's plenty for me, especially when I use the internal 12-inch LCD on my PowerBook. In fact, Word has so many menus that they cover up WeatherPop!

Escher

quantum7
2005-08-03, 20:03
I've used You Control (http://www.yousoftware.com/control/) in the past. It has tons of features: virtual desktops, iTunes controls, and a drop down customizable menu with lots of handy stuff. It's the only program i've seen that shows you iTunes rankings, although they use apple's star system, which takes up a lot of menu bar space. Still, if you have i big screen it's a nice program.

atomicbartbeans
2005-08-03, 21:28
The only non-Apple item I have is the network bandwidth meter, included in MenuMeters. It helps to know when you're transferring data. :)

bb823
2005-08-03, 21:54
I'm pretty into rating my songs, so I use iTunesRating (http://www.stolaf.edu/people/handley/projects/itunesrating/iTunesRating.dmg) which allows you to rate any song that's playing in iTunes from the menu bar. I've also started using Synergy, which I've quite liked.

torifile
2005-08-03, 21:59
Holy resurrected from the dead thread, batman!

I've abandoned all menubar apps on my powerbook (not enough room) and use only synergy on my eMac at work. Dashboard has my weather, iCal and other random things. If nothing else, it's been good for that.

Ryan
2005-08-03, 22:06
I just have the battery, iChat, Time, Spotlight, and Airport in my menubar.

Brad
2005-08-03, 22:08
I wish I could get rid of the damn Spotlight icon in my menu bar. I never use it.

onlyafterdark
2005-08-03, 23:07
The only third party menubar apps I use are Temp Monitor and MenuMeters.

Everything else is Apple stuff (Battery, Airport, BT, Clock, Spotlight).

scrouds
2005-08-03, 23:36
menu meters is the absolute greatest. i use the thermometer + percent for cpu usage and the drive one so that i can eject disks out of my external dvd-burner with ease otherwise the airport menu and the classic menu also have homes.

BlueRabbit
2005-08-04, 00:39
I wish I could get rid of the damn Spotlight icon in my menu bar. I never use it.
Yeah, I always use Cmd-Space to open Spotlight. I can't remember the last time I actually hit the menu bar button.

Franz Josef
2005-08-04, 02:10
MenuCalendarClock sits nicely in my menu bar :)

Meltedbutter421
2005-08-04, 08:16
How do you take screenshots... im brand new to macs, and i havent been able to figure it out...

staph
2005-08-04, 08:36
How do you take screenshots... im brand new to macs, and i havent been able to figure it out...

Cmd-shift-3: to do the whole screen
Cmd-shift-4: to select an area (press space to select individual windows/areas automatically)

Brad
2005-08-04, 08:41
Here's more detail from an old post here (http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=7452). In the future, please search (http://forums.applenova.com/search.php?) before asking off-topic questions. :)

From Mac Help (file:///Library/Documentation/Help/MacHelp.help/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/pgs/mh925.html):

To take a picture of the whole screen, press Command-Shift-3.
To take a picture of part of the screen, press Command-Shift-4, then drag to select the area you want in the picture.
To take a picture of a window, the menu bar, the Dock, or other area, press Command-Shift-4, then press the Space bar. Move the pointer over the area you want so that it's highlighted, then click. If you decide you want to drag to select the area, press the Space bar again.
If you press Command-Shift-4 and decide you don't want to take the screen shot, press the Escape key.
Screen shots are saved as files on the desktop. If you want to put the screen shot in the Clipboard, rather than create a file, hold down the Control key when you press the other keys. You can then paste the picture into a document.