Review: Zooom/2 Helps You Keep A Tidier Desktop
7:23 am, November 13th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Screens of all shapes and sizes can end up cluttered with windows and palettes all over the place. On tiny little MacBook screens you get everything overlapping everything else; on ginormous 27″ iMac screens, everything’s so far apart you have to crane your neck to take it all in.
Step forward Zooom/2, a utility designed to make managing all those windows a little bit easier.
It’s pretty simple to understand, although the keyboard shortcuts might take a while to get into your head (even though they are very configurable): while Zooom/2 is running, you can move, resize, and bring forward individual windows without have to click on anything. You can hold down a key and simply move your mouse (or your finger) to do the job.
It’s quicker than standard pointing-and-clicking, and somewhat easier on the finger and wrist muscles. If your work involves a lot of window management, something like this might come in very useful.
The screencast above explains some of the basic features, but there are more buried away inside Zooom/2. One is bringing windows forward on mouseover; just click your pointer over a window and boom! it’s at the front. This one takes a bit of getting used to, but some people love it. Another is the way the app was built, which was entirely with Apple-approved APIs. That means there’s nothing shady going on the background. And finally an Ignore List means you can make app-by-app adjustments for what does and doesn’t get affected by Zooom/2’s controls.
On first hearing about Zooom/2 I thought it sounded similar to SizeUp, another window manager that I already own. While it’s true that the two of them share a lot of functionality, they are not identical or mutually exclusive. If you’re in the market for a window manager, I recommend you try them both out before choosing one (or possibly buying both).
When he heard we were writing a review, Zooom/2’s developer John Clayton offered Cult readers a 15% discount off the $15 license. If you want to use the discount, enter NICELIFECULTOFMAC into the promo code field when paying for Zooom/2. This discount code expires on January 12th 2010.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Reviews, Software | Comment on this article
I tired zoom when it came out.
the problem is that one has become hardwired by 20 years of experience to do these basics another way, thus it is impossible to change.
if only these tricks had been introduced originally it would have been great.
ged, on November 13th, 2009 at 9:01 am