News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 28, 2006

software

Growl: it’s grrrrrrreat

Posted May. 28, ’06, 8:16 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

GrowlWe’ve mentioned Growl a few times in passing, but I think it deserves its own post. As a project, Growl is fairly ambitious: it attempts to create a framework that OS X applications can use to notify a user of various events. It might not sound particularly glamorous, but it’s an important part of the user experience.

Think of all the ways an application can notify you: dialog boxes, dock icons, sheets, etc. Not to mention all the various thing applications need to notify you of: you’ve got mail, RSS stories, IMs, hardware disconnected/connected, downloads…the list can go on and on.

Enter Growl, a preference pane that lets you manage how applications push to you all the information you want in a consistent, predictable fashion. Once you install the preference pane and a supported application, the app registers with Growl; you can then configure its notification preferences in the Growl preference pane to display in a number of styles. At the moment, my favorite notification is the Music Video style (pictured), which pops up a transparent band across the bottom of the screen.

My only regret at the moment is that although more and more apps are adding Growl support, my current RSS reader, NetNewsWire, only has it via a third-party AppleScript, which is somewhat flaky. Rumor is that it’ll show up in a future release, though, and I’m looking forward to it.


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