Fantasktik taskbar app for Leopard

totally useless. why would someone pay 10 dollars, when OSX has Expose, which is much, much better

Rabid Windows-hating aside, this seems, at first glance, like a nice implementation of the taskbar concept. However, as just about everybody else has already said, it does still need some work. I'll try to be a bit more thorough in the hopes that it'll help Fantasktik to improve.

• The taskbar's behaviour with Exposé (staying visible and in place) and Spaces (staying put on the screen regardless of what Spaces is doing) should be fixed. However, if SOME OF THE ABOVE COMMENTERS (*cough*) looked at the developer's website, they'd see that Spaces support is a top priority for future updates.
• The window manager should be told to subtract the area occupied by the taskbar from the screen area available for other application windows and desktop icons, as Darren mentioned. An auto-hide feature would be nice as well, so perhaps the screen real estate could be "given back" when auto-hide is on, much like the Dock's auto-hide behaviour.
• Also as Darren said, the preview feature needs to be configurable, allowing the user to decide how large the preview is (and which dimensions to restrict it by), and whether or not they even want to see it.
• The intro and outro animations for the previews appear to be separate, which you can see if you move the mouse pointer away from a button before the preview has fully "zoomed in". You can briefly see one copy of the preview continuing to zoom out while it fades away, and another copy zooming back in; ideally, the preview should appear to "change course" from whatever point it's currently at in the animation, zooming back in from there.
• Actually, *ideally* we should be able to choose from a few different animations (i.e. fade-and-zoom, straight fade, 3D rotation using the edge of the taskbar as its axis so it appears to swing out on a "hinge", etc.), and perhaps even have an optional Core Image blur effect on the background to prevent underlying text and icons from degrading readability.
• If possible, each application's Dock menu should be accessible by right-clicking/Ctrl-clicking its icon on the taskbar; it's a little disconcerting when nothing happens, and I don't think it's extremely likely that the user wants to continuously go back and forth between the taskbar for app switching and the Dock for contextual menus.
• Users should be able to have the taskbar adhere to the left or right edge of their screen as well as the current top and bottom options — perhaps there should either be an option for which direction to display the text when vertical, or simply point the bottom of the text towards the inside of the screen.
• Some users may not want to see a number at all on an app's icon when it has no windows open.
• Button width should be configurable.
• Yes, painfully Windows-esque, I know, but maybe there should be a "grouping" feature when an app has more than a specifiable number of windows open, to cut down on button overload.
• On a related note, it wasn't immediately apparent to me that I was supposed to drag the taskbar's contents left and right in order to see items that ran off the screen; I initially tried hovering over the ends to see if it would scroll like a menu does when it's overstuffed. When I dragged the contents to the left with around 12 Safari windows open, then closed all but the one I was using, the invisible leftmost items remained where they were, instead of the bar's contents automatically moving back to the right as space became available. It's the little things, sometimes, as much as the big things. :P

Now that the deficiencies have been stomped upon, I'll point out what I liked:

• When the user switches between Top and Bottom display, the taskbar animates to its new position.
• When a button has too much text in it to display it all, it fades the end off nicely instead of just clipping it. (It would be kind of cool to see it start scrolling, Front Row-style, when you hover over the button for a short time, but the label that appears between the bar and the preview works too, despite perhaps unnecessarily duplicating the text shown above it.)
• Finally, I don't think a user interface concept should be shunned or avoided on the Mac platform just because it happened to originate on another platform that happens to suck goat balls due to unrelated factors like shoddy engineering and corrupted priorities. Where would Linux's trademark diversity be if Linux devs thought like that?

All in all, I think Fantasktik shows promise — perhaps not enough to warrant a $15 price tag (

It's ok but it really needs an auto-hide option. I would pay or use this, although the animation and so on is nice.

dont bring windows crap over to Mac

Uh- yeah. One of my favorite features on a Mac is Expose when combined with hot corners. Hot corners in general is the shiznit. Top left- all windows. Top right- Desktop. Bottom Right- Application Windows. Bottom left- Dashboard.

It's use is so ingrained in my mouse gestures, I get frustrated when I hop on other Macs and they don't have it set up. And it's free. And it's included in OS X. This app is a joke.

I wish Apple would open up the Spaces to their SDK/API because this app would be great if it supported Spaces (ie - run in all Spaces)

WTF!?? What's wrong with Expose and Spaces!??

Great app! i love it but need more work.

I tried it and by far Witch is better, simply listing open windows by application:
http://www.manytricks.com/witch/

The Icons for open apps stack up on top of each other. This is a bug that needs to be fixed. I would love to be able to use this on my second display.