The quickest route to the tools you need

Trampoline is a Dock-like application that brings your most used Mac applications onto your desktop in a smooth circular palette. Choose and arrange the programs, folders and files that you use most in the palette and you’re ready to go. We quite liked how easy Trampoline was to activate, whether by hotkeys or mouse movements. This last option is quite fun if you haven’t selected too many programs in Trampoline.

With a clear interface, Trampoline blends in perfectly on your desktop and makes your most used applications easily accessible. However, we do wonder whether it will be that useful once Leopard is launched, as the Finder and Dock will offer many ways to quickly access and even organize your applications and Finder.

Trampoline is an attractive Dock replacement to quickly launch any application or file.

Scroll wheel to advance between pages – a scroll wheel event causes a page advance.Fixed a bug where quitting an app from the Trampoline could cause Trampoline to crash on non-English systemsFixed another crash in the Add Special menuThe Add Special menu will no longer follow aliases to other folders inside the Applications folder.Moved the quit menu item to the top of the contextual menu for running applications

Changes

• Scroll wheel to advance between pages – a scroll wheel event causes a page advance.Fixed a bug where quitting an app from the Trampoline could cause Trampoline to crash on non-English systemsFixed another crash in the Add Special menuThe Add Special menu will no longer follow aliases to other folders inside the Applications folder.Moved the quit menu item to the top of the contextual menu for running applications

If you’re like most Mac users, you just thought of about 7 things. Maybe it’s Photoshop. Maybe it’s your favorite website. Maybe it’s Quickbooks. Maybe it’s iChatting with your grandson. Chances are, though, that there are somewhere between 7 and 12 things you use your Mac for constantly.

You’ve just identified your core set of Mac tools. Yes, your computer may have dozens, or even hundreds of installed apps, and you use each of them when they’re necessary. Still, there’s a core set, a few select apps, documents, or web apps that you use all the time. You almost never close them. You move back and forth between them all day long. You want to get to them fast. This is what Trampoline is for.

Click its hot key, and it appears directly under the mouse. The things you use most, those core tools, appear all around your cursor, each one just a few pixels away. Move your mouse up, and there’s Safari; left, and there’s Microsoft Word; right, and there’s your To Do List. You choose what you want in your trampoline, and then when it’s time to open it, it’s right there.