AOTW – SizeUp (Size up) – Stealing a Windows feature for once!
SizeUp is small program created by Irradiated Software that is designed to provide you with better control over how your precious, precious screen real estate is being organized. Using SizeUp, you can quickly position a window to ’snap’ into certain areas of your screen using keyboard shortcuts or your mouse (
). This program instantly reminded me of the ’snap’ feature in Windows 7, and it feels great to finally steal something from the Windows guys instead of the other way around (Is anyone else sick of seeing a ‘dock’ on a Windows Vista Dell laptop?).
Upon launching SizeUp, you are greeted with a complex looking preferences window (
). Though this screen can look intimidating, it is actually quite well setup. At this time, you may not know what each option actually means, however hovering over the action text displays a ‘tooltip’ with an explanation of what behaviour that action entails, which is quite useful (
). Though I have kept the default keyboard shortcuts, you may choose to change them at this time to something less cumbersome. Keep in mind that at any time, you can use the Menu Bar icon to both use the actions with the mouse, and to get a quick refresher of the keystrokes you set for the action shortcuts (
).
SizeUp has a fairly comprehensive range of options. Four ’split screen actions’ are available. Each will place the window as taking up ‘50%’ of the screen horizontally or vertically. (If you don’t want a 50/50 split, you can adjust this in the ‘partitions’ tab) (
). In addition, four ‘quadrant’ actions are available as well. By default this splits your window into 4 ‘quarters’ to place your wndows in, however once again under partitions you can adjust just how ‘big’ each quadrant is (25% is overrated!) ().
SizeUp also allows you to take advantage of your multiple monitors with specific actions directed to send windows to and from each monitor. And for those of you who can actually wrap your head around and use spaces effectively, there are actions to send windows to and from the individual spaces.
SizeUp comes with an ‘undo’ feature called ’snapback’, which restores the window to however it was positioned before you began adjusting it with SizeUp. There is also an action to maximize your window, as well as an action to center the window on your screen (along with options to set the size of the window upon centering).
The ‘General’ tab allows you to set some system options, such as starting the program on computer launch (
).
Lastly, ‘Margins’ allow you to set screen margins (i.e. how close to the screen edge the windows go), as well as the space between the windows themselves. This lets you make things more attractive, by adding a bit of ‘padding’ in between each window (Shadows aren’t overrated!) (
).
As you can see, though this program is designed to perform a fairly small task, it has a comprehensive range of preferences and features. In Windows 7, the ‘Snap’ feature has proved incredibly useful, and so my initial hopes for SnapUp were quite high. The idea of snapping open windows to certain parts of the screen will likely appeal the most to the multi-tasking computer user, and those of us who require the use of many different windows and programs opened concurrently in order to accomplish a task. I know I have personally gotten lost in the Command-Tab world when working on complex tasks, and it becomes very tiresome to always resize windows to fit everything on the screen at once. Being able to quickly setup your screen real estate to maximize each pixel then has some obvious advantages.
I have documented my first attempt of using this program, so that together we can discover if this program is useful, intuitive, and something worth keeping around. You’ll see I have three open windows which are overlapping; a movie is playing, a finder window is open, and a Chrome window is open (guess what is being written inside that Chrome window!). I could potentially resize these windows myself, so that I would be able to view all three at once, however I will be using SizeUp to do so. Let’s see how it goes!
As you can see, even on my first attempt of using SizeUp it’s a very intuitive program (though I do have experience with ‘Snap’ in Windows 7). Adding the margin made the windows look much more attractive, and there is something about the window symmetry which just delights my geek-heart. I do find this type of program to be extremely useful, and I believe it will increase productivity and efficiency enough to justify it’s $13 price tag (not to mention reducing frustration).
=-=-=-= Update =-=-=-=
I have been using the program for a few days now, and wanted to give an update based upon more comprehensive use. It was very easy to integrate this program into my daily computer routine, and the keyboard shortcuts have already become second nature to me. It feels so ‘right’ to use this program, and is definitely a ‘missing feature’ of OS X. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple include a similar feature in future versions of OS X.
I’ve begun to take advantage of some of the preferences possible with SizeUp. I have adjusted my halves and quadrants so that the windows are not split equally, but one side of my screen ‘dominates’, which is where I place my main working window.
In the future, I would like to see this program move beyond the idea of ‘quadrants’. For example, with my main window open upon the left size of my screen, I would like to have 3 ’snappable’ areas on the right; each taking up 33% of the screen. Currently, it is only possible to make 2 ’snappable’ areas. A great feature would be to allow as many ‘partitions’ as possible, though this will obviously complicate the currently very simple and intuitive design of the program.
However, the program is very well polished. The options are straightforward, and the developers seem committed to making sure the user has the best possible experience with their products. Be sure to check out their website (http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/) in order to see a list of applications which they ackowledge don’t work quite up to par with SizeUp. Hopefully they can solve some of these issues (The Adobe limitation seems like it may deter some individuals, though Adobe products generally have their own workspace management system).
Again, for $13 this is a fantastic program. I would recommend anyone who has used WIndows 7 and fallen in love with ’snapping’ to get this program. I would also recommend that anyone who is obsessive compulsive and loves symmetry to get this program, as well as any people who really need to make the most of their desktop real estate and are tired of manually resizing windows!
Date of the review : April 5th, 2010
Version reviewed : 1.2.1
Download the demo here : http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/
Full-version price : $13.00 (USD)
