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Snarl - transparent notification popups for Windows

by Grant Robertson on February 23, 2007 at 05:30 PM

Snarl is a small application which allows other applications to send unobtrusive and pretty notifications to the user in an easy and unified way. It's not a standalone system like its cousin dotWidget, which I also wrote about recently, but it does allow the unconventional user, who likes to dig in and get their hands dirty, a way to make all sorts of eye-pleasing notifications from applications which have some sort of plugin interface.

Snarl comes with two example notification plugins; Snarl Clock (a clock) and SnarlTunes (an iTunes interface). There is a somewhat active forum around Snarl where you can find third party notification plugins which may fit the bill for your intended use. Snarl isn't well supported yet, but is a really slick idea which could use the attention of more developers.

Tags: dotWidget, opensource, snarl, transparent notification, TransparentNotification

Comments

E J SpiesFeb 23rd 2007 11:58PM

Neutral

When you open the snarl web page and you try to see the screenshots, my NOD32 antivirus system reports a probably unknown New Heur_PE virus. Thought you guys should know about this when you are recommending this application. E J

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RichFeb 24th 2007 7:57PM

Neutral

Judging from the forums it has been brought up and the developer has assured people that Snarl is not a virus. It has been looked up as to why Norton is doing this but so far no reason has been found.

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StevenFeb 26th 2007 6:10PM

Neutral

Snarl isn't well supported yet, but is a really slick idea which could use the attention of more developers.

"Snarl" is a reference to "Growl" - the OSX program that's been doing this exact thing for years. That being said, more power to them. It's great on Mac, and very widely used. If it catches on then it can be nothing but good (see GMail notifier, GrowlTunes, Adium, Cyberduck, etc)

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