cocoaforge

For a while there was a Growl prefpane I really liked in which the list pane under the applications pane had two text fields one above the other. The upper one was the Application List, and the lower displayed the notes for a selected application in the upper one.

When I revisited the pane just now (1.1.2) the paradigm has shifted to a second pane with two tabs: Application Settings and Notifications. I actually find this less convenient than the earlier all on one pane setup.

Why the change?

There were two tables in a splitview in 0.76. This was changed in 1.1. There are numerous threads discussing this already.

Oops -- didn't do a search. Too bad though, I've gotta redo several screenshot images in an tutorial on improving your AppleScript communications with Growl. Ugh.

Having now read the threads on the PrefPane and application configuration, I'm hoping that at some time the issues outlined will be addressed -- the current setup is not as good as the older one (and yes, I read the reasons for the change).

An alternative to get more room to do things is to use the very useful Growl menu where you could, with contextual menus, make configuration of growls more direct. In a set of contextual menus you are are not so constrained for real estate.

Enough said -- I won't beat the topic to death.

Pushing functionality solely into the menu and making it contextual forces users to have GrowlMenu running (it is optional) and making it context-aware in some fashion means users have to learn what the contexts are to expect them (computers are never 'smart' enough to get things 100% right)

Also, you really can't make changes on this level without some being put off. The problem is that most 'power users (or old hands)' prefer the old style, but most 'new users' prefer the redone style. I doubt there will ever be a 100% solution, so 80/20 becomes the fallback (keeping in mind the 20 is often the most vocal)