Despite the title of this article, I love WindowShade X. It’s software for Mac OS X that brings back the functionality of rolling up windows to just the title bar that OS 9 had. Not only does it do that, but it also lets you shrink windows down to small boxes you can place anywhere on your screen.
What frustrates me is that when WindowShade X is running, windows get “stuck” behind other windows. I happens sometimes with pretty much every program I use, but it seems like Firefox and Dreamweaver are the biggest culprits. Even newly created windows will sometimes appear behind existing windows and they’re impossible to get at unless you minimize the windows in front of them. It’s frustrating.
Even more frustrating is that I emailed them a few months ago and they replied saying they’re aware of the problem but have still done nothing as fix it. It’s not so much that I’m frustrated at them, but more at the fact that a program that has almost eliminated my need for the dock (and that I paid for) is almost unusable because of this pretty major bug. I hope they work it out soon, or that someone comes up with some competition. The concept is excellent and overall, so is the implementation.
For Windows, Winroll does a great job of Window Shading.