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Tick · Sep 17, 2004, 05:47 PM

Hi everyone,

This has taken a while, but we've released <a href="http://growl.info">Growl!</a>

It's a notifications engine for os x. Many apps already use it, and many more should have support for it soon.

ManOfSteal · Sep 17, 2004, 05:56 PM

Nice! Do you have a list by chance of what apps already use this?

Tick · Sep 17, 2004, 06:10 PM

Originally posted by manofsteal:
Nice! Do you have a list by chance of what apps already use this?

Apps that support Growl!, in alphabetical order:

Adium (http://www.adiumx.com/)
Beep-Carbon (Growl Example)
Beep-Cocoa (Growl Example)
DriveGauge (first commercial app to support Growl) (http://www.infinitenexus.com/dg/) (Next version will have this)
Fire (http://fire.sourceforge.net/)
gCount (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~natan/gcount/)
GmailStatus (http://homepage.mac.com/carsten.guenther/GmailStatus/)
GrowlDict (Growl Example)
growlnotify (Growl Example)
GrowlMail (Growl Example)
GrowlTunes (Growl Example)
irssi (in growl svn is a howto for this) (http://irssi.org/)
Quicksilver (http://www.blacktree.com/apps/quicksilver/)
XFactor (http://www.xfactor.cc/)

cybergoober · Sep 17, 2004, 08:29 PM

Cool. Looking good. Looking forward to more app support...

Tick · Sep 17, 2004, 09:08 PM

Ya.

A beginning real basic binding just got committed today, so maybe next release we'll have realbasic support too. I've been trying to find a ruby hacker to make a ruby binding as well, since that comes with os x too, so if anyone is around who wants to that'd be awesome.

Millennium · Sep 18, 2004, 12:31 AM

This is very intriguing; I like the concept a lot. Unfortunately, I don't really use any of the apps which support it at the moment. That said, I'll be keeping my eye on this one, because it looks like something which could prove really useful.

Tick · Sep 18, 2004, 12:51 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
This is very intriguing; I like the concept a lot. Unfortunately, I don't really use any of the apps which support it at the moment. That said, I'll be keeping my eye on this one, because it looks like something which could prove really useful.

Contact the dev of all the apps you like, that you would want Growl to use. And all the app makers you like in general. Let them know about Growl. I think that's really how they would get to know about Growl.

Or pm me the list and I'll do it for you

TETENAL · Sep 18, 2004, 01:00 AM

Why should any app use this? An app can just throw up a dialog or bounce the Dock like Apple says it should be done.

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...roduction.html

Tick · Sep 18, 2004, 01:17 AM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Why should any app use this? An app can just throw up a dialog or bounce the Dock like Apple says it should be done.

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...roduction.html

How informative is a dock bounce compared to Growl?

Take a gander to http://growl.info/screenshots.php to see some reasons why.

TETENAL · Sep 18, 2004, 01:46 AM

Originally posted by Tick:
How informative is a dock bounce compared to Growl?

An app can throw up a dialog.

Take a gander to http://growl.info/screenshots.php to see some reasons why.

Looks like the yellow Notification Manager windows of OS 9 to me. What do you think why Apple didn't implement this on OS X?

Turnpike · Sep 18, 2004, 02:51 AM

it would be an option, not a replacement. Bounces say "attention" and dialog boxes are intrusive. Growl is nice and friendly, and would provide a more subtle way for all apps to politely notify the user of goings-on.

Great job, I've been using this with Adium and iTunes for quite a while. I keep meaning to add this to a couple python scripts I use for myself.. when I get time

eevyl · Sep 18, 2004, 06:58 AM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Why should any app use this? An app can just throw up a dialog or bounce the Dock like Apple says it should be done.

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...roduction.html

Bounce Docks are annoying as hell, most users hate that. Dialogs need to be coded properly, preferences for them set, will look different in each app.

By using Growl, a developer can free a lot of work into it, so he just have to publish a notification to it and it will take care of the rest. The user will be able to configure the notifications for all his/her apps in a unified place, and the developers of each app won't need to worry about it at all.

And know why, you gave me an idea, a Growl "BounceDock" notification view heh

Millennium · Sep 18, 2004, 08:29 AM

This reminds me a lot of the old Notification Services from OS9, now that I think about it. An app could use these to pop up a tiny non-modal window in front of whatever you were doing (but in the corner so as to try and be as out of the way as possible).

I really liked that, and I'm glad to see Growl bringing it back.

Hmm. I wonder how hard it would be to extend the Mozilla-based apps to use this, as a kind of port of their "Download complete" notifications fron Windows.

lookmark · Sep 18, 2004, 09:23 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
This reminds me a lot of the old Notification Services from OS9, now that I think about it. An app could use these to pop up a tiny non-modal window in front of whatever you were doing (but in the corner so as to try and be as out of the way as possible).

I really liked that, and I'm glad to see Growl bringing it back.

Same here. I've been astonished that previews and leaked seeds of Tiger haven't introduced this (at least yet...). I thought it'd be very high on Apple's to-do list.

Very nice work.

Tick · Sep 18, 2004, 01:11 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
An app can throw up a dialog.Looks like the yellow Notification Manager windows of OS 9 to me. What do you think why Apple didn't implement this on OS X?

Right, an app can throw up a dialogue. If you know how, and if you have the time for that. Growl offers a faster way of implementing, also a more uniform way, and one that doesn't mean switching to that app.

Another reason, and I'll use aMSN as a example here, is sometimes apps cannot get what they want out of a notification. aMSN wanted something that would appear above all other windows, and not make the user switch back to aMSN if they didn't want to. Being that they use TCL, this was not possible unless they made something similar to Growl. We've cut out the work for them.

Also, a lot of people dislike the dock bounces, as eevyl also stated. Myself I like dock bounces only in one app, Adium, and that's because my dock icon is a bunny rabbit for Adium, so it hops like a bunny.

But I like to have it bounce only once. Everything else annoys me when bouncing.

A lot of this came out of need though. Adium had the bezel, the author of the bezel was being forced to change it in a way he disliked. Some other people wanted something completely different.

Other application devs wanted something, but the would have had to write that as well. Proteus, Colloquy, MacIRSSI, and many others were using their own form of popup windows. So apple's own suggestion for this doesn't seem like it was enough for these applications.

And we have tried to accommodate all of them the best we can. With Adium and Fire, it only took around 30 minutes to implement Growl. How long would it take to implement something even remotely similar on your own? If you write an app and don't want to implement Growl, that's fine. But if your users do start asking for it, maybe it would be cool to implement it anyhow? Growl being installed isn't required for your app to run, even with Growl support enabled, so it wouldn't be much more to support, and would make more of your users happy.

And that's the point, making users happy