iAnnoyance Winner: "Stoplight"

I responded to the Ars things in my "Justification" front page article, fwiw. Patrick and Andy, good points. Not everything is going to annoy everyone... and sometimes "correct" behavior can be annoying to some people. Stoplight might appeal to a small or large chunk of OS X users, but that's ok - we're making it better for them.

And for those wondering, future iAnnoyance apps will likely be 1) easier and 2) less contoversial (adding options to the desktop, etc). We want this contest to be fun, which it has been so far.

P.S. We'll always be taking new ideas for iAnnoyance challenges. Feel free to make suggestions.

Brilliant!

I can now make my mac work how *I* want it to - Those Ars idiots can take a long walk off a short cliff for all I care - if they don't like it they don't have to use it.. (not that hard a decision really..)

I still find some of the finder behaviour annoying, but I'll save those for the other thread..

I friggin' love it! Hell yeah! ¡Muchas Gracias!

Suggestions for next iAnnoyance:

Delete button on non Apple keyboards to delete. (Just display a "do you want to permanently delete this item(s)?" message and then voilà, c ya...

I actually suggest the name Voilà...

Just a couple points I’d like to make as a follow–up to my original post:

• To “jrrjrr” and “Titan999”– I am not “bashing” the idea of utilities or applications that modify the system to make it work the way you would prefer it to work. What I am opposed to, however, is perhaps a semantic issue. The perceived nature of this competition/bounty is to “fix” OS X with its inadequacies or things that it does not do correctly. What I was pointing out is that what this “Red means ‘Stop’, Green means ‘Go’” contest (and the resulting Stoplight application) was that it is contrary to the design of the OS. The manner in which the Close button functions is documented and predictable; for those situations where it is not predictable, then perhaps there is an inherent problem with that particular application and the developer ought to be contacted.
  Likewise, the Zoom button is well documented, but not properly coded for my developers (usually). The behavior that was expected from this competition is not fixing the Zoom button, but instead changing its functionality. It should also be mentioned that [shift] + [Zoom] (that is, holding down the [shift] key and clicking on the green Zoom button) achieves the fullscreen-esque functionality asked for by this challenge; the functionality is already in the OS, but most users just did not know about it.
  
• To “lemniscate” – As long as the nature of Input Managers is understood, and that users are made aware that by using the software they may be opening themselves up to instabilities, then I have no problems with it. Personally, I refuse to install any such applications/hacks on my system, but that’s my prerogative, just as it is yours to install them.
  Also, if you’re going to break the mold and modify the system, you may as well go all the way. The fact that you were able to meet the challenge of the competition and submit a winning entry in such a short period of time warrants congratulations. (Were I to attempt it, I doubt I could have done so so swiftly.)
  
• To “Mash” – I’m sorry you felt the need to rework your “Justification”, as that is not what I was attacking or taking note of—just that it was a semantic difference. I think this “iAnnoyances” are great in theory, I just feel that your initial challenge was incorrectly branded. There is nothing wrong with OS X’s current system of window behavior, and were all developers (including Apple) to stick to the published HIG, then there would be much less confusion in the future. (BTW, Apple is not the only company/organization with a published HIG: both GNOME and KDE have published HIG for their environments; they’ve even found their way into Linux ;-)
  

Once more, I did not intend to offend, just merely make my points known (both good and bad). Good look to future participants, and congratulations to the winners. Although I may neither feel this competition is fully justified nor use the software developed from it, I will still follow it—it’s a great idea.

I don't understand this. If people don't like it then they don't have to use it. You can't yet be opposed to the entire iAnnoyance contest yet because there has only been one contest. You have no clue what future requests will bring to this contest and whether or not it will be something that you actually were annoyed about. So you may not be bashing it but you are making out points that people are already fully aware of...because they run the os. People want it how they want it...this just gives them more choices.

lol...i wish i could be more fluent with my writing but for now i'll just leave it all over the place like it is. hehe

Yeah, party pooper...

To “Mash” – I’m sorry you felt the need to rework your “Justification”, as that is not what I was attacking or taking note of—just that it was a semantic difference. I think this “iAnnoyances” are great in theory, I just feel that your initial challenge was incorrectly branded. There is nothing wrong with OS X’s current system of window behavior, and were all developers (including Apple) to stick to the published HIG, then there would be much less confusion in the future. (BTW, Apple is not the only company/organization with a published HIG: both GNOME and KDE have published HIG for their environments; they’ve even found their way into Linux ;-)

So you've stumbled upon the point of the application but haven't noticed it! The goal is to clean up after developers who haven't stuck to the published HIG. Once you've done that, you might as well offer some more tweaking options along the way.

I don't understand this. If people don't like it then they don't have to use it. You can't yet be opposed to the entire iAnnoyance contest yet because there has only been one contest. You have no clue what future requests will bring to this contest and whether or not it will be something that you actually were annoyed about. So you may not be bashing it but you are making out points that people are already fully aware of...because they run the os. People want it how they want it...this just gives them more choices.

lol...i wish i could be more fluent with my writing but for now i'll just leave it all over the place like it is. hehe

You put it very well. Plenty fluent. I agree 100%. You run the OS and utilities you like, and while people may not agree and may argue their way makes sense, it's plain stupid for them to say that you shouldn't customize to your tastes.

This app really hits the spot - great work, guys. And to the nay-sayers, well, I agree with the previous comments that if you don't like it, don't use it. The iAnnoyance challenge will bring a whole host of new ideas and options for everyone - and to knock the whole idea because you don't like the first pass is just plain silly.

I don't understand this. If people don't like it then they don't have to use it. You can't yet be opposed to the entire iAnnoyance contest yet because there has only been one contest. You have no clue what future requests will bring to this contest and whether or not it will be something that you actually were annoyed about. So you may not be bashing it but you are making out points that people are already fully aware of...because they run the os. People want it how they want it...this just gives them more choices.

 

 

 

lol...i wish i could be more fluent with my writing but for now i'll just leave it all over the place like it is. hehe

Catawalks, you bring up a good point, and one that's been nagging at me since the start of this whole discussion. If you look at the original Ars article, it doesn't take a genious to see that the article in question is about the iAnnoyance challenges as a whole, and not about this specific challenge in particular. Unfortunately, this inagural challenge seems to be the only thing that people see in this article. Our original anouncement stated, there will be multiple challenges, not just one. Like many others have mentioned, the concept of what works or doesn't work the way it should in an OS varies from person to person. Some may feel the Red X works perfectly the way it is now, others may not. The point here, is that because of these differing opinions on what's works and what doesn't, there will also be differing opinions on the usefullness of these challenges.

Thus, there may be challenges that you feel could be useful, and others that you don't. Whether you use the apps or not is up to you. So instead of flaming the idea because it doesn't fit in with your idea of how an OS should "work", instead simply ignore it, and remeber that there may be others of different opinions that like the concept of our next challenge. Also, kudos to the winners of the contest for their excellent work and speed!

Stoplight 1.1 has already been released. The new version fixes a ton of bugs from the last one.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=26669

Wonderful ! Thank you guys!

Hmm, I thought I replied to someone, but that person is gone. Strange...

Well i want to confess that i was skeptical that iAnnoyance would be a success, but i'm glad to see i was wrong! Well done to the winners - who are quite deserving of the recognition.

I do have reservations about using input managers to modify application behaviour but that's just my preference. I can't wait to see what other little tweaks come out of this series.

And to the ars nay sayers...get a life, it's not like it's a utility to give mac os a luna interface!

I don't understand this. If people don't like it then they don't have to use it. You can't yet be opposed to the entire iAnnoyance contest yet because there has only been one contest. You have no clue what future requests will bring to this contest and whether or not it will be something that you actually were annoyed about. So you may not be bashing it but you are making out points that people are already fully aware of...because they run the os. People want it how they want it...this just gives them more choices.

… And I said I would be following the progress of the contest to see what future challenges arise. People want their OS how they want it, true: that’s why there are so many system modification utilities. And also, as I previously stated, most of them do their work in a less–than–supported manner that may cause problems to the system.

So you've stumbled upon the point of the application but haven't noticed it! The goal is to clean up after developers who haven't stuck to the published HIG. Once you've done that, you might as well offer some more tweaking options along the way.

Ah, but here is where we get into the semantic differences I was mentioning that fall at the crux of the issue. You mention that this is to “clean up after developers”, but if this is for system–wide modification (and as I understood the impetus of the “iAnnoyance” challenges), then these ought to be addressing issues that lay with the system itself, at the OS level. If we’re to be cleaning up after the developers because a few particular applications don’t work they way we feel they ought to, then let’s write the developer, file a bug report or otherwise make it known that the way their application works is not what is expected.

Then let me take this opportunity to ask for a clarification. Are the “iAnnoyance” challenges meant to address annoyances with OS X, or merely as a stop–gap fix for certain (third–party) applications? If it’s the latter, then I feel that the concept is misplaced. If the former, then I’m genuinely interested to see what comes next.

Well i want to confess that i was skeptical that iAnnoyance would be a success, but i'm glad to see i was wrong! Well done to the winners - who are quite deserving of the recognition.

 

I do have reservations about using input managers to modify application behaviour but that's just my preference. I can't wait to see what other little tweaks come out of this series.

As I’ve already said, these are my sentiments exactly.

Well guys.

Installed and ran and it clobbered two programs completely.

On an Intel iMac with 2gigs of Ram:

Doing a NEW mail message from Mail crashed mail.

Any comments / feedback?

Ratty

rattyuk-

Check out version 1.1 and leave feedback in the bugs thread if it's not working.

When is a new challenge coming out? I thought it was going to be once a week...

I think it's once a month, sorry.

Go ahead and test it out and let us know what you think!

This breaks Quicksilver. Despite that probably being Quicksilver's fault... I gotta lean that way.

Way to revive a topic from September.

Well - apparently Leopard won't ship with builtin support for InputManager plugins. Seems to me that SIMBL and therefore Stoplight won't work unter Leopard, correct?

What can I say - without Stoplight I won't touch any new Mac...

i have problems with growl, can it be that stoplight and growl doesn't work....

sorry for my english, i'm german

steph

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!

 

Andy Matuschak and his pal Joe Osborn (both of Pixen fame) have submitted the winning entry for our first iAnnoyance Challenge with an app they're calling Stoplight. (Which is a great name - we'll stick with it. )

 

Stoplight is a SIMBL plug-in that works via a Preference Pane. It allows you to change the windowing behavior for any and all Cocoa based apps (Carbon apps don't work at the moment, but hey, that's why this is open source...).

 

Here's how to install it:

 

1. Download and install SIMBL from http://culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php (Make sure you're running the latest version, 0.8.1)

2. Drag StoplightHack.bundle into ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/

3. Double-click Stoplight.prefPane.

4. Configure as you like on a per-application basis, or exclude certain apps.

 

After you change an application's attributes, restart the app for it to take effect.

 

Go ahead and test it out and let us know what you think!

 

Download the latest version here!

That's it?? That's the discription you're going to give for this? "It allows you to change the windowing behavior" ??? How? Why? Where's your keyboard man?

Seriously though no one who thinks for themselves much would DL or install this with a proper description. :-/

Makes it so you can "maximize" a la windows, that's what she does.

Specifically you can control on an app by app basis whether the green button maximizes to the whole screen, as well as set an app to close when the last window is closed. It is mainly an app to help people who are used to Windows.

um, this program is not so much good ...

I missed all the dissent before I installed, that's my fault ... trying to uninstall because it conflicts with everything it seems and causes random restarts everytime I get near it ...

I deleted it and also took it off the pref pane ... how do I completely remove it? the bundle is sitting in my trash bin but won't clear saying it's in use ...

HELP!