Sitting in front of a 22″ widescreen monitor can be pretty tiresome for the eyes. Bright web pages like Facebook is a pain to visit (I don’t know about you, I’m talking about my own experiences here) late at night when the rest of my apartment is dimly lit. It’s like staring into a flashlight.
I needed a quick and easy fix. I found one, it’s called Shades. It’s free. From the delevopers site;
Shades is a FREE utility for controlling the brightness of your screen. It runs in the background providing always-available fine-grained control over the brightness of your display via a slick Mac-like interface.
Shades installs into the System Preferences window and it’s very easy to use. If you run into any trouble/questions there’s a useful FAQ.
The other app is Menu Eclipse (no direct link, find it under ‘Software’), it goes nicely together with Shades. From the developers site;
Save your constant menu pixels from getting burned into your screen!
Gain better focus on your work & play, and away from the menu bar!
Its single purpose is to dim the top menu bar in Leopard. The effect is pleasant when watching a movie but I’ve found I use it all the time at about 40% ‘strength’. When you hover over the menu bar the effect goes away. Nice. Oh, and did I mention it’s free? It is.
