Review: MenuStrip. New Tricks For A Great Strip.

Steve Jobs was away from Apple from 1985 to 1997. That doesn’t mean that Apple didn’t create excellent utilities for the Mac-- meaning, Mac OS 9.x and earlier.

Remember ControlStrip? It was that simple Mac OS extension which provided a handy “strip” of utilties you could place on your Mac screen.

The benefit, of course, was that screen real estate was small and having a diminutive, efficient, and elegant utility to “do all” was beneficial. Mac OS X’s “Dock” feature is similar to the original ControlStrip, but different.

MenuStrip brings back some of the ControlStrip features and capabilities and adds a few new twists.

First, screen real estate required by MenuStrip is about as mall as it could get. You choose to have MenuStrip operate as a ControlStrip-like menu that floats on the screen, or embedded within the Mac menu.

Either way, you’re treated to a simple, elegant file launch utility that can be expanded with a touch of the mouse.

Click, and the MenuStrip bar shrinks to a small, unobtrusive rectangle at the side of the screen. Click again, and it’s back-- a horizontal bar with more features just a click away.

As if we don’t have enough reminders that we’re late for something, MenuStrip contains another customizable clock.

The familiar Mac OS X “document” Green (plus), Yellow (minus), and Red (X) buttons will launch a series of user-definable actions. For example, Red will quit the current application (or perform whatever other task you’d like).

Yellow defaults to hide all running applications, but again, it’s user definable. Green defaults to Show all applications.

MenuStrip also has a QuickLauncher. Type in the name of an application, QuickLauncher finds it (or gives you a list), and launches the app.

Application Switcher lets you see which apps are running at the time you click, so you can select one which may be hidden behind a gazillion windows.

What’s nifty with MenuStrip is the ability to customize the application launcher, add nesting folders (which could contain aliases of different applications-- like Mac OS 9.x of old).

A single click on the MenuStrip “switch” brings up the comprehensive preferences; again, very customizable. New “menu” items can be added in the familiar Mac OS X “+ and -” buttons.

Where is MenuStrip best suited? A Mac laptop with limited screen real estate. The Mac OS X Dock gets crowded quickly and MenuStrip helps get rid of some of the congestion-- point and click, point and put away.

MenuStrip is up to version 3.0.1 (meaning; mature) and is available from PowerUser Software. Click Here for the details page.

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