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Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

mauriciogardini.com

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Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#21

Post by jawngee »

MaysonL wrote: post #2

Am I the only one who hardly sees any value in window managers? About 99% of the time, I'm wanting only one window visible at a time, with others quickly accessible via cmd-tab and cmd=`.

I think it depends on how you "grew up" as a developer. Being "raised" in a Windows(tm) and OSX environment, alt-tabbing is a natural process, where maybe coming from an terminal/xwindows existence you are accustomed to the screen being carved up into squares.

I think it also depends what kind of development you do. Doing iOS dev, I am constantly flipping between XCode, Photoshop, Chrome, Tower, Simulator and a bunch of other tools which don't play well with the idea of being sequestered to individual areas of the monitor. When I do openFrameworks development, I have to add multiple virtual machines to the mix (Windows and Linux while running on OSX) for cross-compiling and testing.

I use two thunderbolt cinema displays and I still constantly run out of screen real estate so tools like these, though I've tried to use them, end up not fitting into how I work.

ymmv.

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#23

Post by wting »

MaysonL wrote: post #2

Am I the only one who hardly sees any value in window managers? About 99% of the time, I'm wanting only one window visible at a time, with others quickly accessible via cmd-tab and cmd=`.

I usually have 1-2 windows of documentation on one screen and 2-4 terminals open on another.[0]

This allows me to prototype, compile, test, build, look up info with minimal window switching. The biggest advantage is never having to hunt for the correct window--everything is one keyboard shortcut away.

[0]: http://i.imgur.com/xctkdtq.png

The empty black box is due to my right monitor being in a vertical position.

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#24

Post by drivebyacct2 »

MaysonL wrote: post #2

Am I the only one who hardly sees any value in window managers? About 99% of the time, I'm wanting only one window visible at a time, with others quickly accessible via cmd-tab and cmd=`.

Maybe on my Macbook Air (and even then, it's almost always Chrome/Sublime side by side, or Sublime/terminal), but there is no application that needs my full 2560x1440 resolution. I can have two columns of my text editor, documentation and a terminal up. But I usually layer my terminal over my text editor and have it "stick to top".

Just another thing I had to "hack" to make work in OS X that works out of the box in all Linux Window Managers. With Ubuntu working perfectly out of the box on my MBA, I don't know why more people don't just take the step and use Linux instead. It's so nice to leave the world of outdated development tools and a stupid window manager behind.

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#25

Post by abstractbill »

jacques_chester wrote: post #13
MaysonL wrote: post #2

Am I the only one who hardly sees any value in window managers? About 99% of the time, I'm wanting only one window visible at a time, with others quickly accessible via cmd-tab and cmd=`.

Lots of people -- I'm one of them -- find that switching whole windows seems to pop the mental stack. Whereas turning my head left and right does not do so. Most programming requires at least 4 logical views, IMO: 1. The code 2. The result of the code (web page, test results etc) 3. Documentation that supports coding 4. A control mechanism (ie, a terminal) No doubt there will be quibbling that some of these are reall…

Lots of people -- I'm one of them -- find that switching whole windows seems to pop the mental stack.

That's really interesting! I have the opposite problem - switching windows doesn't pop my mental stack, but if there's anything on the screen other than what I'm trying to focus on, it keeps diverting my attention and ruining my concentration. Fullscreen emacs on OSX (without even the system menu bar!) is just awesome for me.

Here's a screenshot of what my entire desktop looks like when I'm working on code: http://abstractnonsense.com/desktop-2013-02-17.png

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#26

Post by calinet6 »

MaysonL wrote: post #2

Am I the only one who hardly sees any value in window managers? About 99% of the time, I'm wanting only one window visible at a time, with others quickly accessible via cmd-tab and cmd=`.

Agreed. And for quick shortcuts when I do need a window manager, ShiftIt works just fine. http://trisweb.github.com/ShiftIt/

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#27

Post by DeepDuh »

trotsky wrote: post #12

I use Better Touch Tool to bind keyboard shortcuts to window actions like halves & corners to achieve a similar result. http://www.bettertouchtool.net/

That's an interesting solution, especially since the suggested way for controlling spaces is already a touchpad thing on macs - extending the functionality for windows seems quite natural.

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#28

Post by ronyeh »

trotsky wrote: post #12

I use Better Touch Tool to bind keyboard shortcuts to window actions like halves & corners to achieve a similar result. http://www.bettertouchtool.net/

I also love BTT. I have some keyboard and/or trackpad macros that allow me to organize my windows very quickly, to my desired quadrant or half of my screen.

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#29

Post by gurkendoktor »

esolyt wrote: post #8
jfb wrote: post #5

Back in the Dark Ages, before OS X was truly usable, I rocked ion on my FreeBSD machine and MachTEN (to run Emacs) on my Macs. This experience conditioned me to not fight the platform -- slate, as nice as it looks, seems to me a great deal like fighting the platform. Is it?

Maybe so. But I don't see a problem with that. OSX window management currently satisfies average users, but not power users. And since power users are exactly the kind of people who can do something about it, they are doing it.

I disagree: OS X window management is geared towards people on a single laptop screen, no matter their level of proficiency. I am absolutely happy with OS X 10.8 on my MBA 13", and I use the new-style fullscreen quite a bit.

Once I arrive in the office and sit down with two external displays, everything suddenly works against me. I don't want to use spaces (it confuses me to have 2 displays x N spaces), but Mission Control insists on the spaces bar. Putting Xcode into full screen will effectively disable the other display. I'd go insane without Divvy.

Re: Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users

#30

Post by danielpal »

Slate is amazing, been using it for a few months. Biggest issue is it takes a bit of config to get it just right.

Here's my config file.

# Configs config defaultToCurrentScreen true config checkDefaultsOnLoad true config windowHintsShowIcons true config windowHintsIgnoreHiddenWindows false #config windowHintsDuration 5 config windowHintsSpread true #config windowHintsOrder persist config windowHintsFontColor 0;0;0;1.0 config windowHintsFontName Futura config windowHintsFontSize 70

bind e:cmd hint ASDFGHJKLQWERTYUIOPCVBN # use whatever keys you want

# Abstract positions alias full move screenOriginX;screenOriginY screenSizeX;screenSizeY alias lefthalf move screenOriginX;screenOriginY screenSizeX/2;screenSizeY alias righthalf move screenOriginX+screenSizeX/2;screenOriginY screenSizeX/2;screenSizeY alias topright corner top-right resize:screenSizeX/2;screenSizeY/4 alias bottomright corner bottom-right resize:screenSizeX/2;screenSizeY/4*3

bind down:ctrl ${bottomright} bind left:ctrl ${lefthalf} bind up:ctrl ${full} bind right:ctrl ${righthalf} bind ;:ctrl ${topright}

# Resize Bindings bind right:alt resize +8% +0 bind left:alt resize -8% +0 bind up:alt resize +0 -8% bind down:alt resize +0 +8% bind right:ctrl;alt resize -8% +0 bottom-right bind left:ctrl;alt resize +8% +0 bottom-right bind up:ctrl;alt resize +0 +8% bottom-right bind down:ctrl;alt resize +0 -8% bottom-right

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