Growl Notifications Visible Above Screensavers/Visualizers?

[acenright]

Currently I use grolwtunes to notify me of a new song on my iTunes-based media center. Unfortunately, these notications are not visible when the computer is displaying either a screensaver or an iTunes visualizer.

How can I get Growl notifications to display on a layer above the layer that screensavers/visualizers use?

Help appreciated,

A.

[bgannin]

You cannot. There are certain means of 'going fullscreen' that preclude any other app from interfering (like screen savers, visualizers, games, and the like - sometimes it's simply of matter of implementation.) Either way it's a matter for the app developer and not something we can workaround to my knowledge.

[uselessness]

I just discovered Growl and would also be interested in above-screensaver notifications. Perhaps there's a workaround possible? What would be involved in creating a Growl screensaver that simply displays a screensaver of the user's choice but has the ability to overlay notifications?

I've never developed screensavers before (apart from dabbling in Quartz Composer) but I wouldn't think it would be too difficult for a programmer who knows what he or she is doing. I bet acenright and I aren't the only people who would be interested in such a thing -- maybe it's just that no one else has thought of it yet.

[bgannin]

I just discovered Growl and would also be interested in above-screensaver notifications. Perhaps there's a workaround possible? What would be involved in creating a Growl screensaver that simply displays a screensaver of the user's choice but has the ability to overlay notifications?

Notifications don't appear over a screen saver because screen savers run in a window that's at a very high level in the window server's ordering. To appear over it, you have to be at that+1. Thus you'd have to hack Growl itself to appear at that level, not change the screen saver to allow it to occur. In addition, such functionality unintentionally exposes information - if you have these notifications appearing over the screen saver and you lock the screen with GrowlMail enabled anyone can still see what emails you are receiving. Not trying to be a total wet blanket, just throwing out additional bits.

[uselessness]

No no no, I understand that. I'm not talking about modifying a screensaver to allow Growl to display over it... I'm talking about creating a screensaver that emulates Growl within it. It might not necessarily support all the Growl styles, though that would be nice. Essentially it's just a screensaver that mimics Growl by displaying notifications when they are sent, entirely separate from the actual Growl app. Wouldn't that be a more feasible solution?

[uselessness]

I do wish I had the knowhow to build something like this myself; I hope the idea isn't forgotten...