iTerm

gnat on 2002-12-15T23:30:04

gav++ for his journal entry recommending iTerm. Tabbed terminals on OS X. Supersweet.

Curiously enough, transparency has never done anything for me. What value do people see in having transparent terminal windows?

--Nat

---

Transparency

Matts on 2002-12-15T23:46:00

I use terms with a low transparency (~10%) so that I can see slow loading web pages behind it render, so I can watch other overlapped terminals displaying some sort of continuous output (e.g. make test or tail -f), and also so that I can easily copy down something in the background (e.g. if I've been reading an article about some coding thing I can easily copy it down).

I lose a small bit of usability, but nothing tragic, and I do feel like I gained something worthwhile. Of course I'll probably turn it off soon and never worry about it again.

It's super easy to implement ...

ask on 2002-12-16T10:20:00

If I recall correctly (I haven't actually used it), then it's very easy to implement it with the Cocoa API. I think that's the reason, more than any usability factor, that it is in so many applications. :-)

Re:It's super easy to implement ...

gnat on 2002-12-16T16:52:43

Yeah, most applications that have transparency seem only to have it because it's trivial to implement. Matt's use of it to copy text from another window makes the most sense of any use I've heard. It's a shame--I wish it was as useful as it is sexy.

--Nat

Re:It's super easy to implement ...

ask on 2002-12-17T00:51:03

It's useful like quicktime movies playing minimized in the dock is useful. It looks spiffy to windows users when you try to convert them to "Think different. Do like us. Get a mac." :-)

  - ask

Re:It's super easy to implement ...

pudge on 2002-12-18T03:58:47

I use it similarly to how Matts does. I have so many Terminal windows open sometimes that it is useful to be able to read what is underneath. I sometimes find it makes things harder to read, esp. when I am tired, but I find the utility outweighs this. YMMV.