Now Menus Reincarnated as Action Menus

Power On Software has announced the release of its Action Menus extension, a new component of its Action Utilities control panel that provides functionality essentially equivalent to the defunct Now Menus (see "Living in the Now – Now Utilities 5.0, Newer and Better" in TidBITS 248 and "Now Utilities Turns 6-Point-Something" in TidBITS 345 for information about recent versions of Now Menus). Action Menus makes the Apple menu hierarchical, like Apple Menu Options, and you can flexibly rearrange items within the Apple menu. In the Applications menu, each application hierarchically displays its current windows and recently opened documents. You can also create additional custom menus that can show recently used applications (with their recent documents hierarchically attached), recent documents, recent folders (hierarchical), the frontmost application’s windows and recent documents, current volumes and servers (hierarchical). Custom menus accept drag & drop of Finder icons: drag into a menu to add an item to the menu, drag into a folder to move or copy an item to that folder, and drag onto an application to open the item with that application. Custom menus can open, quit, or get info on multiple items simultaneously; they can open either an item or its containing folder. You can also modify keyboard shortcuts for all menu items on the fly. Unfortunately, Action Menus does not provide a desktop pop-up menu and is incompatible with Kensington MouseWorks’ desktop pop-up menu option. Action Menus requires a color-capable Mac and System 7.5.3 or later; it’s available as a 30-day demo (2.2 MB download) or for online purchase at $30.