

TylerWM - a tiling window manager for OSX - preek
http://www.tylerwm.com/

======
spooneybarger
Tyler is not ready for prime time. I saw this video a few monthes back, got
excited and bought it. It took me less than 24 hours to turn it off due to
various issues.

It does not work well with various OS windows, windows like the adium contact
list and other 'non standard sized' windows.

If you use it with spaces, it often loses your settings if you tell it not to
use on space number X.

I could go on with the variety of issues.

I would love a great tiling window manager for OS X. I use XMonad on linux all
day at work and would really like to have the same joy when using OS X.

~~~
jwr
Ahh, thank heavens for HN comments. I clicked the link, said "hooray!
finally!" and was about to buy it in the App Store. Then I figured I'd read
the comments first.

I guess I'll wait.

~~~
jsavimbi
I bought it five minutes ago and it has now been turned off. I'll stick with
Size-Up.

Damned discretionary spending.

~~~
moreorless
Try to get a refund if you're that displeased with it.

<http://cybernetnews.com/apple-app-store-refund/>

~~~
jsavimbi
Thanks for the tip, but hopefully they'll use the 75% of $9.99 and apply it
towards making a better product.

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hemancuso
This is a perfect example of the type of application where demoing before
purchase is essential. I feel like I just lit $10 on fire. Additionally, I am
more inclined to provide negative feedback via the MAS rather than sending the
developer a helpful list of comments.

Hopefully the developer reads this thread and can comment on the possibility
of publishing a demo outside the app store. A 7 day trial is trivial to
implement.

~~~
io41
Agreed. I sent the developer an email and promptly received a response:

..."I did not expect the publicity Tyler would receive after the revival -
please allow for a few days for us to organize and react.

An update is under way."...

In conclusion, no need for refunds yet. I for one can't wait to see updates.
It's almost there... a few more bug fixes and 1 or 2 small features and it'll
be worth the €7.99 I spent on it.

------
yankcrime
There's also Moom [1], but the reliance on arrow keys for most of the key-
based functionality is annoying. I've mailed the author to ask if this could
be configurable (so that I could use hjkl instead), no reply as yet though.

[1] <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12>

Edit: Developer replied, turns out this functionality is already there -
problem solved (for me)!

~~~
lloeki
You might want to take a look at Window Magnet [0], which has the key
configurability you want.

As noted elsewhere, Moom, like others, is not a WM. I still like those nifty
utilities though.

[0] [http://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/window-
magnet/id441258766?mt=...](http://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/window-
magnet/id441258766?mt=12)

------
albertzeyer
There is also ShiftIt
<[https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt>](https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt>),
although I haven't tried it yet.

The functionality of TylerWM seems quite simple. I wonder wether there is any
Open Source clone of it.

~~~
nileshk
While it's not quite the same as TylerWM, ShiftIt works great and I've been
using it for years.

I am actually using my own fork of ShiftIt, where I added being the ability to
resize windows to various percentages of the screen:
<https://github.com/nileshk/shiftit> Though my fork is off of an older version
of ShiftIt (the original from Google Code), and also pretty specific to my
preferences, so I'd recommend checking out the official one first. I really
need to update my fork with the latest changes from the official fork, because
they added things like definable keyboard shortcuts.

TylerWM looks more like what I really want, as it appears to be more like the
tiling window managers you see in Linux, where it dynamically rearranges all
the windows on the screen.

Also, I've tried Divvy (not open source) and like it, and you can accomplish
the "percentages" thing really easily with it, but ShiftIt has been more
reliable for me, so I've stuck with it.

Edit: This was also mentioned in this thread and looks pretty compelling:
<https://github.com/jigish/slate>

~~~
sofuture
Hi, I use your fork of ShiftIt. It's great. So, thanks!

I keep meaning to spend some time making it a little more automatic ala
XMonad/TylerWM. One of these days...

------
5h
wow, the quicktime plugin installation routine in chrome is pretty horrible,
then it hung for about 10 seconds. arg!

to detail:

    
    
        visit website, get yellow bar for missing plugin  
        install plugin  
        reload tab  
        browser hung for a bit  
        told plugin was out of date, clicked update  
        got sent to apple site to download new version  
        downloaded binary, uac checks etc  
        update went ahead, then asked to close all my quicktime  applications, of which chrome is now one, nope, clicked cancel.  
        advised that installation would continue but a reboot would be required  
        gave up, clicked cancel  
        informed installation was complete.
    

that was rather unpleasant.

~~~
davidradcliffe
Agree. Won't even play for me when I got the plugin started.

~~~
5h
I obviously havent rebooted, but visiting the website and hitting "run anyway"
now causes the same hang, then the tab closes with no further notification.

needless to say that plugin is being removed,

to the author: check out <video> elements, and a quick nod to sublime video

------
bittersweet
This looks great but after browsing their twitter feed [1] I can see that they
have troubles getting updates approved in the app store because of the
sandboxing.

[1] <https://twitter.com/#!/reflareapps>

~~~
n9com
Feeble excuse, you can easily get temporary entitlements from sandboxing in
order to continue maintaining the product during the transition process. We've
done this for a number of apps.

------
jeffremer
I've been using BetterSnapTool[1]. While it's just a window resizing utility
and not a manager I've found it very useful for quickly assigning windows to
specific screens and specific locations especially since it has very flexible
hot-key preferences. Divvy[3] is very similar to BetterSpanTool though it's
more flexible with the sizing but requires more slightly configuration to
setup shortcuts. Divvy also seems to lack the hot-corner feature of
BetterSnapTool.

Still, it doesn't solve the problem of maintaining specific screen states or
remembering positions across sessions. For example while working without a
second monitor I'd really like one set of window configurations to
automatically take effect and as soon as I plug in a monitor I'd like all the
windows to automatically assume another configuration. I gave Breeze[1] a try,
but I found it very finicky and it rarely actually remembers my window
configurations and it didn't play well at all with spaces.

Tyler seemed promising because it would eliminate the manual configuration,
window organization, and window state problems. I'm a bit disappointed to see
it isn't ready yet but excited to try it when it is.

[1]
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=12)
[2] <http://www.autumnapps.com/breeze/> [3] <http://mizage.com/divvy/>

------
sheff
If your window tiling needs are simple, check out Spectacle (
<http://spectacleapp.com/> ). Its open source as well.

~~~
preek
Spectacle is nice, but it is no Window Manager. You still have to manage the
windows yourself, which is a pain.

Say you have a browser and two terminals to the left, that's easily done with
Spectacle or Divvy. But open a third terminal and now you have to manually
rearrange three windows. With TylerWM, the tiling is done automatically.

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dabeeeenster
I love slate but it does take some configuring...

<https://github.com/jigish/slate>

------
sodiumphosphate
I used various tiling window managers on Linux, and really admired Awesome
(probably because I was writing a lot of Lua at the time), but I ended up
settling on Compiz (standalone) as my favorite environment.

In standalone Compiz, I had window decoration disabled and quick shortcuts to
maximize vertically, horizontally, or both, and back. Most of the time I kept
windows maximized and switched between them with a shortcut. It was simple,
fast, and nicely animated.

I really wish this kind of thing could be done in OSX. 86 the title bar and
it's cute little buttons. Set quick key combos to resize windows. ⌘-click
anywhere in a window and drag to move it.

Make fullscreen apps work properly with multiple monitors. Hide the menu bar
whenever you want to, like the dock.

Why does window management suck on OSX? Even Windows has it beat in that area.

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canthonytucci
I use Optimal Layout <http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/> and it
works pretty well. It's no Awesome WM, but the combination of Optimal Layout,
Alfred and spaces (or is it called mission control now?) is "good enough".

------
gokult
Divvy's a great alternative - <http://mizage.com/divvy/>. I've been using it
for nearly a year now and very happy with it.

~~~
preek
Divvy is no WM. See my previous answer:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3624771>

I've been using Divvy for a good year now, though. It's a great product.

------
zv
Oh god please include the screenshots. The video won't load on my machine,
because I have no QuickTime installed. Or atleast some fallback on youtube
video.

~~~
masklinn
Not much to show, sadly, since it's a window manager the interesting part is
seeing it… manage windows.

You can see some screenshots on the MAS page:
[http://itunes.apple.com/app/tyler-window-
manager/id446759787...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/tyler-window-
manager/id446759787?mt=12) but the behavioral difference with e.g. Divvy or
other tiling applications can not be expressed through screenshots.

------
preek
I was just going to install a VirtualBox with XMonad, because Divvy, SizeUp
and all the other window helpers in OSX just aren't enough for me anymore.
While downloading Debian netinst, I stumbled upon TylerWM.

I'm trying it now and am already pretty convinced that this is close to a
perfect setup. Could use a couple more shortcuts, though - like "use tyler in
this workspace" and "manually manage this window".

------
alimbada
Has the site developer never heard of Youtube? Why should I have to install
the cancer that is Quicktime on my Windows machine at work?

------
Inufu
Is there a good tiling wm for Windows too?

Normally I use i3 on linux, but the few times I have to use Windows I really
miss it.

~~~
icebraining
There's bug.n[1], I haven't used it (I mostly use WIndows for gaming, where
the WM is mostly irrelevant), but some people say they like it.

[1]: <http://www.autohotkey.net/~joten/bug.n.html>

~~~
Inufu
It doesn't work for me - always freezes when I start it.

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nukemap
who uses QuickTime these days? jeez

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alexobenauer
This website should probably have more than just a video of the application;
right now I'm on a wireless network that gets less than desirable speed, so
watching the video would take a lot more time than I would care to spend. If I
could scroll down and see some screenshots, and I see none, then I might have
tried out this app.

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kunalmodi
I love Divvy - it allows me to set sizes for my windows really easily
(opposite approach of automatically tiling them), but it works much better for
me than anything else I've seen

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s1rech
I've looked around a bit, but I didn't find how do you configure the layouts.
Is it with a config in a particular language, a la XMonad, or something else?

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aforty
Although more manual, Moom achieves the same effect. Manual means more
flexible in this case, for me anyway.

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mml
Note for 10.8 users: doesn't work yet

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noduerme
What's hilarious to me about this is that I just spent a week writing a whole
dock/draggable windowing system into a web platform that had resizable tiled
windows, because of an overwhelming number of customer complaints that they
couldn't put large windows on top of each other and everything was too small
or required too much scrolling.

