Offshoots - 1.1

Offshoots animates the wallpaper of your desktop with growing trees. The growth follows some easy-to-hack parameters. The offshoots lazily follow your mouse cursor. Also available as a screensaver.

* I really like my desktop wallpaper. Can I make the trees grow over it?
Yes: you can set Offshoots to use you current wallpaper as the background. Or you can choose your favorite solid color. Or a mix of the two. The default option is to make it randomly choose among one of its predefined colors.

* What if I really like the current image and I want to save it?
You can copy the image to the clipboard (Command-C or from the menu) and save it from Preview or from your editor of choice. You can also simply hold on the current image with Pause command.

* Will it hog my CPU?
It is very unlikely: the application should take a very reasonable portion of the CPU time. You can also change some parameters to further reduce the CPU load: for example you can change the frame rate. When you're headed for some heavy computation, you can also pause Offshoots from the menu or with Command-P.

* What if I want it as a screensaver?
(NEW) The release now contains a screensaver version of it too. Drop it in the "Library/Screen Savers" folder of your Home and choose it from the system preferences' panel.

* My desktop is always hidden. What if I want the trees more visible?
(NEW) You can choose the level of the window from the preferences. You can even set it as an always on top window, setting a low value (zero) for alpha: the Offshoots window always ignores your mouse clicks so you can interact with the other apps' windows as usual.


Website
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