Live data from Hacker News

Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

github.com

151–157 of 157 posts

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#151

This looks great, but my favourite thing might be the Principles section: > Hydra must be stable. It should never crash > Hydra must be lightweight... never use more than 10 MB of memory > API should be completely transparent > API must not be bloated I think these principles should be the standard to which we all hold our software. Looking forward to testing this out! Edit to say: it would be really great to see som…

"Bloat" is emotional, not factual. It's meaningless without well-justified examples and alternatives.

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#152
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did find that one and tried it out, but it doesn't have multiple monitor support. I'll stick with spectacle for the moment. My alfred workflow library is incredibly sparse at the moment, so if you have any other good resources you'd like to share, that'd be great.

I use Alfred a lot, and I've installed a lot of workflows, but I don't use many of them. The one I use the most, by far, is "Plain Text Paste," which I use almost every time I paste anything (I use the hotkey CMD-SHIFT-V). It's here: http://cachefly.alfredapp.com/beta/Plain%20Text%20Paste.alfr... The only other workflows I use regularly are hotkeys to open websites I visit regularly, like our own website and our Word…

Thanks for that one.

I have a similar one to yours that creates a new plain text document from text on the clipboard.

My most often used one is Open current safari tab in chrome. I prefer using safari as I seem to get the best battery life using it. I don't have flash installed so any page that may have a flash component just gets opened in chrome using that Alfred workflow.

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#153
post #48

This looks great, but my favourite thing might be the Principles section: > Hydra must be stable. It should never crash > Hydra must be lightweight... never use more than 10 MB of memory > API should be completely transparent > API must not be bloated I think these principles should be the standard to which we all hold our software. Looking forward to testing this out! Edit to say: it would be really great to see som…

Hail Hydra!

Came here for this. Didn't leave disappointed.

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#154
post #87

I tried a ton of window managers (Divvy [1], Spectacle [2], Alfred worflows, scripts) over the years, but the most advanced , most easy to use and fastest solution is Moom [3]. It's extremely flexible, configurable, have nice design and clever tricks. It has far more features that all of the above. I'm not searching the perfect window manager anymore. [1]: https://mizage.com/divvy/ [2]: http://spectacleapp.com/ [3]:…

I'll second the motion for Moom. Great app, but I'm really glad to see some viable OSS solutions in this space. Environment hacking FTW. I'll also mention a feature I adore from FlexiGlass[1]: the ability to map - to move the window under the mouse. For example, I use - for this mapping. No mouse click & hold required, and the entire window is the "hit zone". FlexiGlass can also resize similarly, but I tend to just u…

I started with the moom trial, but when it came time for me to make a purchase, I ended up going with BetterSnapTool. It might not be quite as flexible as Moom, but a) it fit my personal needs and b) it was less than half the price.

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#155
post #43

If you're looking for a window manager for OSX without having to actually configure anything, you can try using Spectacle: http://spectacleapp.com/ For instance on my imac 27'' I have Option+Command+Left|Right keys mapped to side (similar to windows 7. And I can also have 4 windows open at once using Shift+Option+Command+Up|Down|Left|Right to move them to the different corners. Works really well with less than 2 minu…

I can't find the minimum OSX version on the Spectacle site or github. Do you have any idea which one it is?

According to the info at MacUpdate, it's OS X 10.7 or later.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41147/spectacle

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#156
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't there is anything too surprising about this. "User Experience" isn't something you can measure on a single line, there are different aspects to it. I'm not an expert but I think the following are some of the things that users can appreciate: 1. That things work smoothly. 2. That things look pretty. 3. That it's easy to figure out what a program does when you first use it. 4. That it's possible to control the…

Maybe its just because I came from Windows, but I generally expect hitting the maximize button to take the app to take up the whole screen space. On OS X, some apps do and some don't. This violates #3 for me. Another one is minimizing a window and then Alt-Tabbing to it (whatever the Mac equivalent is..) doesn't bring that window back up.. You are just left staring at the same app. This violates #1 for me.

Check out HyperSwitch ( http://bahoom.com/hyperswitch ) - it makes cmd+tab and cmd+backtick way more useful. Window previews, cycle through minimised windows and other good stuff

Re: Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

#157
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Alfred a lot, and I've installed a lot of workflows, but I don't use many of them. The one I use the most, by far, is "Plain Text Paste," which I use almost every time I paste anything (I use the hotkey CMD-SHIFT-V). It's here: http://cachefly.alfredapp.com/beta/Plain%20Text%20Paste.alfr... The only other workflows I use regularly are hotkeys to open websites I visit regularly, like our own website and our Word…

Thanks for that one. I have a similar one to yours that creates a new plain text document from text on the clipboard. My most often used one is Open current safari tab in chrome. I prefer using safari as I seem to get the best battery life using it. I don't have flash installed so any page that may have a flash component just gets opened in chrome using that Alfred workflow.

I occasionally need to open links in Firefox (rather than Chrome) so I have a FF workflow that simply opens that link in Firefox. I need to automate more of my workflows.
Post reply on HN