MakeUseOf.com » Growl

How To Customize Windows Notification Messages with Snarl

Saikat Basu — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:01:00 +0000

A snarl is something you would associate with a really cross guy. But the software which takes the same name does its job ever so silently.

Snarl is a universal notification handler for Windows. Under normal running, applications (or Windows) display bits of information in a comment balloon or a bubble in the area of the system tray called the notification area. They simply inform or suggest a course of action for us to follow – through the instructions or by clicking on the notification itself.

Windows offers very little by way of customizing Windows notification messages. You can, at the most, change the color by modifying the Tooltip color or disable/enable them from some individual applications. There is no universal notification manager.

Snarl is a freeware program which attempts to change that by giving some customizing power to the user. By the looks of it, it’s almost similar to Mac’s Growl (another huffy name!). Growl has a Windows counterpart too, which is in the beta stage now.

Is Snarl worth a shout? Let’s check it out.

Snarl R2.21 (V40.15) is a 5.9 MB download and, on installation, can be accessed from the Start Menu and the system tray. The first time Snarl starts up for your system, it tests the rate of blended images which your graphics card can render. A few seconds later, Snarl is ready to go.

Snarl operates in the background silently using a very light memory footprint. The interface can be accessed with a right click on the system tray icon.

Working with a Snarl

Snarl supports a variety of applications and manages their notifications from its centralized interface.Straight after an install Snarl supports system notifications like battery level warnings, system events, timer and on the hour clock alerts.

Snarl is extensible through many available extensions. Extensions are like small modules, each for a specific application or task.Snarl’s real use lies with the gallery of extensions. Extensions are like modules designed for specific applications. Installation and registration of these little extension files with Snarl’s allows the program to capture the Windows notification messages and display them through Snarl’s centralized system.

The extensions are grouped in various categories. They can be managed and disabled from within Snarl.
Snarl can display multiple notifications and does not take keyboard focus away when displaying a notification.Snarl brings all Windows notification messages for applications it supports under a common umbrella. Whether it’s a Firefox download progress or a Gmail notifier, a user knows where to look for all the info. The user can also select or deselect the types of notifications from a single program from the Preferences box.

Notifications can also be setup with sound alerts using Snarl. A ‘view only’ mode makes the notification box invisible to the mouse pointer, so the user can click any Windows program right through it.
Snarl allows the user to customize the appearance and the display characteristics of individual notifications.Snarl supports a variety of styles (23 in its gallery). The styles can be downloaded for use. Styles have themes which are like color schemes for each style.

Notification appearance can be customized by setting there opacity levels, duration of display and positions.
Snarl captures missed notifications.A right click on the system tray icon and you can access the Missed Notifications box in case you missed an important one.

So is it worth the shout?

As a notification manager, yes it has lots of bells and whistles. The real essence though lies with the extensions and the program’s extensibility to the wide range of applications out there. Some of the most used ones like Gmail notification, iTunes, Firefox, Sunbird, Google Reader, PidGin, Skype, Thunderbird and a couple of Twitter clients are covered. But definitely a lot more need to be added. Handling the app takes a bit of trial and error and though the Preview button on the program helps, a Help file would have been better.

Snarl is pleasing to the eye with its gallery of looks enhancing styles. It is very light and does act as an attractive shell replacement program.

Snarl is a free and open source program and is compatible with Windows XP/Vista

What are your thoughts on the program? Have you used Snarl or a similar notification alternative?

Related posts

Facebook’s New Toy – Desktop Notifications for Mac OS X

Jackson Chung — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:00:06 +0000

A dozen of social networks have graced us with their presence but not all of them stood up to the test of time. Luckily, a small social network called Facebook has what it takes to keep us clinged on and socially addicted to pokes, growing gifts and those weirdly entertaining flash games.

As if it wasn’t enough that I kept being bothered by emails every time my friends decided to comment on my status or tag me in a photo, Facebook has now completely ruined my life and brought my productivity down along with it. They’ve introduced a new menubar application exclusively to Mac OS X — it’s called Desktop Notifications. And it does exactly that.

Like all Mac apps, installing is a piece of cake: drag it to the Applications folder.

Setting it up takes a few more clicks that usual because it requires you to authorize the app to access your Facebook profile.

Then I noticed something, perhaps one of the features that will be implemented in the future?

Once the setup process is through, the app will sit quietly on your menubar until an activity in your Facebook account triggers a notification. The Facebook icon will turn blue if there are unread notifications.

Currently, Desktop Notifications has only 2 purposes. Obviously, one of them is displaying notifications. Whenever a friend pokes you, sends you a game invitation, a message or a gift, asks you to join a network, a clan or be his/her neighbor in Farm Town, etc; you’ll receive a Growl notification. Unlike TweetDeck (an Adobe AIR application that connects to Twitter and Facebook), Desktop Notifications will not display your News Feed i.e. your friends’ status updates, posted pictures or videos, that sort of thing. This app is streamlined to showcase you. Your notifications. Your messages. Your profile. Your status.

Secondly, it will allow you to update your status from your desktop via a global hotkey, which is set by default to Control+Option+Command+Spacebar. Convenient as that is, it’s not really a breakthrough feature. But let’s not be pessimistic, keep in mind that Desktop Notifications is currently only a beta.

As you can see from the screenshot above, clicking on the menubar icon will bring up a list of recent notifications. Also, it will display a few messages from your inbox. And if any of them are unread, they will be labelled with a blue dot.

If you notice, there are options to read your News Feed, browse your profile and compose a new message but they are basically links. Clicking on any one of them launches your browser and brings you to the appropriate page. I’m actually hoping that the developers will allow us to browse the News Feed (at the very least) in the next version.

After scrutinizing it, I actually like Facebook’s Desktop Notifications, not mention grateful that they haven’t forgotten about us Mac users. The idea as a whole is great and this is definitely an attempt to hook us on Facebook all over again.

Try it out for yourselves! What would you change about the app? Any missing features? Facebook needs your feedback to ready the app for the world.

Lastly, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that we’re on Facebook. Check out our fan page and if you’re a fan, join us!

Related posts

Get Front-Page Digg Stories on your Desktop with DiggUpdater

Jackson Chung — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:01:37 +0000

Inc.com labelled Kevin Rose as the most famous man on the internet. Just the mention of his name would probably make his fans, most of whom are men, follow him around like a horde of zombies and salivate profusely while waiting for him to say something juicy. Like what the next iPod will look like, for example. His creations have ridden on his fame and took off to stardom as well. Digg and Diggnation are both large household names on the internet.

If you have just come out from hibernation and have no idea what Digg means, allow me to shed some light. Digg is a website created by Kevin Rose which allows users to submit news and links of interests; and promotion of those submissions by voting or “digging”. If a link is heavily “dugg”, it will end up on the front page of Digg and thus, brought to fame.

Any story on the front page of Digg will carry a huge influx of visitors to the submitted links, slowing the website down to a crawl or decapitating it altogether – what we now know as the “Digg effect”. MakeUseOf is a common victim of said effect and we’re proud of it.

The front page of Digg is traversed by many links in a very short period of time. So, it’s very difficult to keep up with every little bit of news that comes through – unless you have the right tools under your belt. I recently found one excellent Digg tool – and it’s a keeper.

DiggUpdater is a tiny menu bar application which scans the front page of Digg and sends those submissions right to my desktop, making it a million times easier than browsing through the website for anything that could catch my eye.

When I first start this application up, it asks me for the kind of style I’d like my updates to be presented in: a Classic Digg window, a Slim Digg window, using Growl, or without any windows. I chose the Slim window since reading the titles of the submission is enough to tell me if I’m interested in it. Plus, I wouldn’t want the limited screen-estate of my 13″ MacBook to be hogged by Digg notification windows.

After choosing my notification style, the application launches properly and the 5 most recent front page stories are sent to my desktop. Wicked. Clicking on any one of them will lead my browser to the corresponding page on Digg.

Many users will stop here saying “Oi, this means I can’t digg a submission right from my desktop? This application is rubbish”. Hold your horses with the dissing. How do you know which links from Digg are worth digging unless you view them first? Do I make any sense?

Carrying on, DiggUpdate is pretty configurable. You can choose how many stories you’d like to display each time it refreshes, the refresh interval (I’d suggest a longer interval because the stories on Digg take a while to rotate, so searching for new stories every minute is a waste of time), you can even enter your Digg username to retrieve stories which were dugg by your friends. If you’d like to monitor only certain categories from Digg, you can select the ones you want from the story categories drop-down list. It gives you the option to choose a whole category group (e.g. Technology) or specific categories (e.g. Apple news).

When I first ran DiggUpdate, I constantly checked Digg and wondered why some stories have yet to reach my desktop. I was pretty irritated with it and started tweaking the refresh interval. Indeed, I realised that the stories will eventually come to my desktop. That’s when I learnt that I had to set the refresh interval slightly higher to get the best out of this application. Currently, I get a few new stories for me to sift through every now and then.

The Digg icon on the menu bar is pretty awesome. The “board-like thingy” beside the man figure turns yellow indicating that there are new stories which I haven’t taken a look at.

Like I said before, DiggUpdate is a keeper. It’s available for free on both Mac and Windows. Give it a go and let me know what you think of it, especially the Windows version. I have no idea how the Digg notification windows look like on XP, so please let me know in the comments.

If you’re an avid Digg submitter, check out Mark’s article about monitoring your own submissions; and if you’d like to rise to fame in the Digg community, Mark will show you how.

Related posts

Facebook Updates sent to your Desktop via Subsume [Mac Only]

Jackson Chung — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:26:31 +0000

A relatively unknown experimental freeware called Subsume provides you with Growl notifications every time your Facebook and MySpace friends update their statuses. When I first started writing for Make Use Of, I covered MoodBlast, which sends out status updates to popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook but this application does the opposite, mainly.

Subsume currently only supports updates from Facebook and MySpace friends. It integrates nicely with Address Book, showing the picture attached for the contact but is optional and you can have Subsume work independently from Address Book. Besides that, every time a computer joins or leaves your network, Subsume will let you know; and can even automatically send out status updates for you on Adium and iChat when you watch something in VLC, Joost, Miro or DVD Player (so your friends know to leave you alone!)

More specifically, Subsume will provide you with alerts regarding:

New Notifications from Facebook
New Wall Posts
Status Updates from Facebook and MySpace
Connected/disconnected computer son your local network (Bonjour)

Subsume is more or less for the people who enjoy checking out what their friends are up to. This is the kind of program which you turn on and leave it on in the background, if you know what I mean. Since it works with Growl, Subsume pretty much feels like it is part of the system, not a separate application and doesn’t really bother me or decrease my productivity. My only gripe is that I can’t get the Subsume Dock icon to hide when I run the application. It also sets itself to start on login, so that saves a bit of trouble.

Subsume hasn’t been updated since November last year but still it is quite functional and does the job. Maybe if there were more Subsume users, that would encourage its creator to focus more attention and time into the project.

Subsume is compatible with Tiger and Leopard and again, it’s free.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

Related posts

Manage Your Time Effectively Online With Slife [Mac Only]

Wez Pyke — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:02:32 +0000

Slife is a free time management and tracking tool for Mac OS X that you can use to visually see what applications that you have running and the length of time that they have been active for. If you want to see what kind of applications you generally have open throughout the day and the amount of time you spend using each application, or you want to set goals, then Slife is the perfect tool.

Slife is also the perfect tool for business professionals who bill their clients by the hour. By monitoring your online time usage of software, you can have a more accurate picture of how much to charge your clients.

Features

Growl Notifications
If you have Growl installed on your Mac then Slife will notify you when you have or haven’t completed activity goals so you can keep up to date with things.

Tracking
When you load up Slife, all the applications that are open will then start being tracked automatically so that you can easily keep track of things. Slife will tell you how long you have had an application open and how long you have had a document or webpage open. If you’re using Safari it will tell you how long you have spent on each webpage and if you are using Microsoft Word then it will tell you how long you have been working on each document.

Within Slife you can choose to view tracking by day, month, application, web and documents, activities and goals.

When tracking by day, dots and lines will show you how much time you have spent on an application. By clicking the dot you will see the document or webpage you were at, how long you spent at the webpage or how long you had a document open for. Each time you switch between different applications dots are created.

When viewing by month, you will see the dots which represent each application by using a different color but you cannot click them and view the information like when viewing by day.

Viewing by ‘Application’ will show you how long you have had Slife open for and what applications you have had open for that period of time by highlighting a grey bar in red.

When viewing by ‘web and documents’ it is displayed by viewing each application but shows how long a document or webpage was open for each application.

When you set activities you can choose which applications you want to be monitored under each activity. The default activities for Slife are checking email, preparing budget, designing web pages, reading news and doing online research. These can be deleted or modified and of course you can create your own. If I was to check my mail using Apple’s Mail application, Slife would monitor how much time I spent checking my email which I could then look at later.

When you create an activity you can set whether it is a goal or not and if you set it to be a goal you can then select whether you want to spend more or less time using certain applications. Once you have completed your goal you will get a notification through Growl telling you that the goal is completed if you have Growl installed.

If you use many applications and have browsed many web pages while Slife has been open then you can use the search function within Slife to see how long you spent on a particular webpage, how long you had a document open or how long you spent within an application.

If you want Slife to stop tracking your use of applications then you can click ‘Private Mode’ within the icon on the menubar and it will stop tracking. To start tracking again just simply press ‘Private Mode’ again and tracking will then resume.

So what do you think of Slife? Do you see yourself using something like this? Or is it more trouble than it’s worth? Think you know something better than Slife? Let’s hear about it….

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

Related posts