Menuette

created by Tiger Technologies

Menuette is a control panel written by Robert L. Mathews that replaces the text in your menubar with icon representations. The result is a much cleaner and much cooler menubar. With today’s programs taking over the menubar with a myriad of feature categories, it’s nice to keep them at bay with this utility, especially if you have a small monitor. Menuette also extends the Macintosh spirit of customization, allowing users to choose which icon replacements are used for certain menu titles and providing an icon editor to create new ones. New with version 3 is the addition of animated icons, giving a Zipple-like feel to the desktop. While it may be an awesome feature to some, however, these animated icons have the potential to drive users crazy, so Mr. Mathews provided a preference to only animate an icon when a menu configured with one is selected.

The Menuette control panel lies at the heart of this enhancement. Here is where a user configures and creates. The Icons section contains a list of all the icons Menuette’s disposal. By selection one, a user can edit it by clicking the “Edit” button at the bottom of the section. New icon creations can be created by clicking the “New…” button. The Menu Replacements section contains a list of the user’s programs in addition to some that are preset. As other programs are opened, menus with no icon replacements will automatically be entered into the Menu Replacements list under the program they appeared in. The Global Settings item at the very top of the list contains icon replacements that are applied in any program. The individual application settings apply only in their respective programs, but they take precendence over global settings. To set an icon to replace a menu title, one simply drags the desired icon from the Icons section over to a menu listing in the Menu Replacements section. The More Replacement Choices section includes some additional features. A menu can be set to not display an icon at all by selecting the “Nothing” radio button, while the “Icon” radio button provides the same functionality as the aforementioned replacement procedure. The “Text” and “Current Application Name” radio buttons offer the ability to change the name of a menu. These advanced replacement options can be toggled by clicking the disclosure triangle at the top of the section.

The Icon Editor offers a digital canvas for icon creators and editors alike to shape their own unique menu replacement icons. The Icon Name section indicates the name that will be displayed in the Icons section of the control panel; so keeping it short but unique is recommended. The icon tools on the left side of the screen provide the standard arsenal available in ResEdit. The blue dots on the pixel grid indicate transparent pixels that will allow the menubar pattern to show through. Animations can be created by clicking the “Add…” button to create another frame. A dialog box appears giving a choice to add the additional frame before or after the current frame as well as the option to copy the current frame’s contents over, a handy feature for animation. The “Delete” button, of course, will remove the currently displayed frame, and the “Set Width…” button permits the creation of a longer pixel grid, making the icon wider. However, while this is a cool effect, it should be used sparingly as it can make the placement of icons in the menubar look haphazard. The “Frame” control allows the viewing of any frame in an animation sequence, while the Preview section shows a selected and unselected version of the icon. Animation can be previewed by turning the “Animate” checkbox on.
Note: Icon creators can upload their masterpieces to Tiger Technology’s website for consideration in the Menuette icon archive where others can view and download user-submitted creations. Icons can also be distributed among friends by dragging an icon within the Icons section in the main window to the desktop, creating a GIF animation file. To import icons, drag them to the Icons section.

Besides offering icon replacements for menu titles, Menuette can change the font displayed in menus. While the Appearance control panel included with Mac OS 8.5 and later provides menu font changes to a limited extent, Menuette allows the use of any font. As an added bonus, Menuette also sports a WYSIWYG font menu option. This will display fonts in their own typefaces in a program’s Font menu. However, this does cause a noticeable delay when a font menu is being built, especially if many fonts are installed.
Menuette also makes it easy to toggle the menubar between icon and text mode by providing a contextual menu accessed by control-clicking the menubar.

Menuette is a solid program with a variety of features ranging from the icon replacement capabilities that made it famous to WYSIWYG font menus. It reserves a mere 136K of memory to do its magic, and it runs natively on 68K and PPC machines. A Macintosh with System 7 or higher is required, though. For more information on Menuette, visit the Menuette page on the Tiger Technology site. To collect more icons for use with Menuette, visit the Icon Add-ons page. Menuette is shareware, costing $19.95 if it is used after the trial period. Please reward Mr. Mathews for his efforts on this system enhancement so that he will have reason to improve it in the future.

Review by Jeremy Hoesly
Dec. 16, 1999
ResExcellence Software Tester