Zooom 2: Resize with Ease
I think we can all agree that when using our Macs, be it your aging G3 to an 8-core Mac Pro, every microsecond delay is irritating. For example, when a website decides to resize your web browser window, you then have to move your mouse for what seems an eternity to the resize tile or the title bar to get your workflow back the way you want it.
For the more techy of us, CodeRage has a useful utility which can save us those valuable fractions of a second with Zooom2, which brings with it Leopard compatibility.
Zooom’s core functionality is something that is very simple in concept, but after using the utility you’ll begin to wonder how you could live without it. Through the use of hotkeys (which you can define from the Zooom prefPane) simply clicking and dragging your mouse from anywhere within an application window, you can either drag or resize it to your heart’s content. This doesn’t sound so amazing when you think of ‘metal’ interface apps; you can drag from wherever the brushed metal appears in the border.
After several days of use, even dragging those windows the old way will seem slow. Being able to start dragging or resizing from anywhere within your application soon becomes as intuitive as using command-c to copy or bringing up quicksilver; Zooom is lightning fast to activate so you soon won’t even notice that you’re using it at all.
There are still a few issues that exist with Zooom however. Firstly there are still some problems with compatibility, notably with the older versions of Microsoft Office and (unsurprisingly) Java applications, but CodeRage are very proactive in this area and will often try and adapt the utility if your favorite app doesn’t respond for some reason. There’s also a small bug where if you drag an area that is usually draggable, the window will then jump around, which is rather disorientating.
Zooom2 is available for Leopard users only (Tiger users are stuck with the 1.5.2 release) and is available as Shareware for a reasonable sum of $19.99 — although you can trial it for 15 days first.
are there really people out there willing to pay 20 bucks for a few milliseconds…
Yes.
Love it.
And those paying the $20 likely aren’t doing to merely “save a few milliseconds.” They’re doing it to support an developer, that’s elegantly improved a UI action, in their computer’s favorite operating system.
There’s something to be said for appreciating efficiency.
Zooom2 could be really required by many MacUsers if it had one more feature : the possibility of to fit the window to the screen with only a clic. (actually, this how stuffs work on microsft windows…)
Since I operate my Mac almost all the time within the GUI rather than using the command line — as I imagine most people do — this is my most valuable 3rd-party software. In fact t’s the first thing I download into a new computer. I find Zooom2 Invaluable, and only more so with the fabulous new trackpad in the late 2008 MacBooks.