MondoMouse gives your mouse super powers

This is the second mouse add-on I’ve seen lately that lets you resize windows by dragging in them. MondoMouse installs a preference pane that lets you customize this behavior and also adds features for controlling the mouse’s “window focus” (which window is receiving input) and for moving and resizing windows without giving them “focus”. Definitely a super-user add-on, but well worth checking out as long as you think $14.95 is reasonable if you decide to keep it.

Update 4/28/07. The comments I made about Zooom! ⤴ apply to MondoMouse as well. Even though I’m rejecting it for my personal use, however, I would very likely pay the additional $5 for MondoMouse instead of Zooom!, simply because I prefer its “float” style of window interaction rather than Zooom!’s click style.

A quick aside here, since that last statement makes no sense without a little context. In the world of what I call “Window Tricks” software, there are two basic styles of causing windows to resize and move with your mouse: One is like Zooom!, where you drag or resize a window by invoking a keyboard shortcut while you click and drag with your mouse. The other is used by MondoMouse and at least one other that I know of, where you drag or resize merely by invoking the shortcut and then dragging with your mouse—no mouse click is needed. It certainly seems more like “magic” to me, the I confess to being a sucker for this cool factor.

The only concern I have about MondoMouse is that in an earlier version I observed a couple incidents of runaway CPU usage, which caused me to force quit the software. I haven’t fully tested the latest version against that problem, so you should do so if you consider purchasing MondoMouse. It’s also the case that MondoMouse lacks some features that Zooom! has, and if those are important to you, it will be easy to select the less expensive—but equally capable—Zooom! product. Below is a summary of the notes I took on MondoMouse.

Version as tested: 1.3.1