No matter, because now there is Afloat. Afloat is a great little utility for mac that lets you keep windows afloat (pun intended) on top of all others. Afloat is easy to use and adds more windows management features to most Mac applications.

Using afloat is easy. Once it’s downloaded and installed just click on your application (for me it’s Quicktime), and go the the Window Menu. At the bottom of the menu you will see several new options with clouds by them. To keep your window on top of everything else, just click “Keep Afloat” or if you are a keyboard shortcut junkie like me then press control+command+A.

You can also adjust the effects to make it visible on every desktop of spaces, make it opaque or even just make the window and overlay so you can still click on what is under it. I’ve left some pros & cons below.

Pros

• It does what Apple left out of Quicktime, simple and easy
• It’s free. And we all love free apps right?
• In addition to keeping the window on top (afloat) you can adjust the transparency, make it an overlay, move or resize from any location on the window, keep it on all desktops and pin the window to the desktop.

Cons

• It won’t work if you use filevault. OR maybe it will but you’ll have to get pretty nerdy and what not to do so.
• No application memory. You have to set the application “afloat” each time you use it. You can view this as a pro or a con I suppose but it was annoying for me.

Overall it’s a fantastic addition to mac and can be used with either Leopard or Snow Leopard. For more info or to download try the ∞labs page for afloat. If you liked this app or find something I’ve missed then leave it in the comments!

I work daily as an admin on Windows workstations and servers and have very little desire to look at more Windows once I get home. I play with Ubuntu Linux constantly (which is a great step from how scary Linux used to be to most users), but Linux does still require some outside of the box thinking. Couple that with my severe dislike for all things Windows Vista and you have my solution Mac. By the way, if I hear one more moron say, “Vista is the future, get used to it.” I might just vomit. I sure people said that about Windows ME too and look how well that went… I won’t spend my time bashing Vista as it appears they already have problems. Primarily, Microsoft can’t get users to switch off of XP to Vista. On the other hand, it was almost comical to see people line up for Leopard. And perhaps that is because there was only 1 flavor of Mac OS X 10.5 as opposed to the mind boggling 13 unclear choices of Vista.

I’m evidentially not the only one who felt that way. Doug at superterran.com, seems to have gone through the same decision making process choosing Leopard and used Mac G5 over a pretty beefy P.C. running Vista. I still remote to a small Windows station so I can use Windows Live Writer to blog…if only there were something half as good for the Mac (I’ve tried Ecto, I just wasn’t that impressed.)

To the point though… After doing countless Windows upgrades, I suppose I expected something a little more complex. Maybe it’s just the power geek in me. I mean even Lifehacker wrote about a pc users upgrade concerns of Upgrade or Clean Install. A Mac commentator names John Gruber put my fears to rest by saying:

Arguments that there is something mysteriously dangerous or deficient about the default upgrade procedure—and that you should do a clean install instead, followed by tedious hours manually migrating software and data and preferences from your old installation—are voodoo.

So I pressed on, and I have to say… it was almost too easy. I just said go, and sat back and played drums for a while. It was nice, actually relaxing. I checked after and all was there. Leopard has some great new features too and all without making me feel foreign like Vista did from XP. If you haven’t upgraded yet now would be an excellent time. Thanks to my good friend Dr. David Blazer who hooked me up with an extra Leopard Family Pack License. I had been looking for a family pack to split with someone since Leopards release…patience actually paid off.