Explanation of Growl utility for Mac OS X
Growl is a very handy utility program that runs on Mac OS X.
It is one of those utilities that, while not vital or a matter of life-and-death, can make life more pleasant and the computer a little more friendly.
Anyone who wants to spend a little effort can use it to make their computer a very communicative/helpful assistant
While Growl makes it easy to keep an eye on things that are going on, it never interrupts your work or gets in your way.
The purpose of Growl is to display notifications from Growl-enabled applications when events you care about occur.
The way it does is is by acting as a central notification facility for any application on the system that wants to use it. The way they use it is sort of like they would use a logger like Log4J in Java or the SysLog facility on Unix/Linux.
Rather than log messages, Growl displays them on the side or bottom of your screen. Instead of popping up an unbidden modal dialog box, the way some truly ill designed applications do - Growl just sort of draws it on your screen for a few seconds. The GUI it puts up is not modal, and it does not grab your keyboard focus - nor wait for you to give it any mouse input. The notification pane just is.... and then is not.
Sending everything to one place gives the user some control of it. In the case of Growl, the user gets to pick the look and feel of the Growl notification panes and where they go.
Growl can also log incoming events, if you wish, and - if you like - send the notifications to the Growl running on another computer. Kind of handy if you work at one computer but are responsible for several or a bunch more. Especially, if they are not nearby - where you can see them.
If an application is not Growl enabled but it somehow provides a way to communicate with other software, someone can write a Growl adapter for it.
Right out of the box, Growl works with iTunes, iScrobbler (the Last.FM app), Mail.app, and a bunch of other applications. So it already proves useful right out of the box.
There is also a Gmail Notifier adapter for Growl available from a 3rd party that you might want to get too, if you use Gmail.
Many people are using it and it has been out for over a year.
As to why it is not a part of the operating system, there are a few good reasons for that. One, Apple did not write it. Two, it changes periodically, and more frequently than the OS changes. Three, it is not quite to version 1.0 yet. Four, it is free - so why complain?
You can customize it easily with your own notification message display style, if the dozen or so that come with it are not to your fancy. There is documentation for How to create a WebKit-based Growl style that you can take a look at.
You can communicate with Growl from different programming languages, there is even AppleScript Support for Growl.
About Growl:
Growl is kind of cool. So if you own a Mac why not check it out?
It is one of those utilities that, while not vital or a matter of life-and-death, can make life more pleasant and the computer a little more friendly.
Anyone who wants to spend a little effort can use it to make their computer a very communicative/helpful assistant
While Growl makes it easy to keep an eye on things that are going on, it never interrupts your work or gets in your way.
The purpose of Growl is to display notifications from Growl-enabled applications when events you care about occur.
The way it does is is by acting as a central notification facility for any application on the system that wants to use it. The way they use it is sort of like they would use a logger like Log4J in Java or the SysLog facility on Unix/Linux.
Rather than log messages, Growl displays them on the side or bottom of your screen. Instead of popping up an unbidden modal dialog box, the way some truly ill designed applications do - Growl just sort of draws it on your screen for a few seconds. The GUI it puts up is not modal, and it does not grab your keyboard focus - nor wait for you to give it any mouse input. The notification pane just is.... and then is not.
Sending everything to one place gives the user some control of it. In the case of Growl, the user gets to pick the look and feel of the Growl notification panes and where they go.
Growl can also log incoming events, if you wish, and - if you like - send the notifications to the Growl running on another computer. Kind of handy if you work at one computer but are responsible for several or a bunch more. Especially, if they are not nearby - where you can see them.
If an application is not Growl enabled but it somehow provides a way to communicate with other software, someone can write a Growl adapter for it.
Right out of the box, Growl works with iTunes, iScrobbler (the Last.FM app), Mail.app, and a bunch of other applications. So it already proves useful right out of the box.
There is also a Gmail Notifier adapter for Growl available from a 3rd party that you might want to get too, if you use Gmail.
Many people are using it and it has been out for over a year.
As to why it is not a part of the operating system, there are a few good reasons for that. One, Apple did not write it. Two, it changes periodically, and more frequently than the OS changes. Three, it is not quite to version 1.0 yet. Four, it is free - so why complain?
You can customize it easily with your own notification message display style, if the dozen or so that come with it are not to your fancy. There is documentation for How to create a WebKit-based Growl style that you can take a look at.
You can communicate with Growl from different programming languages, there is even AppleScript Support for Growl.
About Growl:
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications.
Growl is kind of cool. So if you own a Mac why not check it out?
posted by John Collins | 7:10 PM
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