In what may be the first (and last?) press release datelined simultaneously "Glasgow, Scotland" and "Tel Aviv, Israel," TLA Systems and Sig Software have announced that, henceforward, the upgrade path of the latter's Drop Drawers is now the former's DragThing 5.8.

DragThing is essentially a launcher - a Dock supplement or substitute - and TidBITS has been covering and recommending it since it first appeared over 12 years ago (see our first mention in "Making Choices: Desktop Launchers, Part III of IV," 1995-05-15, and "Version 5.1: A DragThing of Beauty," 2004-04-12, for more up-to-date details). Drop Drawers is also a launcher, which restores the Mac OS 9 feature of tabbed pop-up windows that slide into view from the edge of your screen and lets you put aliases into them (see "Top Mac OS X Utilities: Alternative Controls," 2002-04-29). But DragThing, too, has long employed the sliding drawer visual metaphor as a way of accessing its windows; thus, a merger between the two applications is a natural fit.

To enable this merger, DragThing 5.8 can now import Drop Drawers files, maintaining settings and appearance so that Drop Drawers users will find the transition comfortable. At the same time, DragThing's drawer behavior gets a number of tweaks that even long-time users will find very welcome.

Drop Drawers users can keep using Drop Drawers if they like, but support and development will stop at version 1.6.6. The cross-grade to DragThing is $20 for Drop Drawers users, and Sig Software has provided an extensive guide to the importing process, explaining how the DragThing experience will differ. DragThing 5.8 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, and is a universal binary. It's a 7.3 MB download and costs $30. DragThing 5.8 is a free upgrade for DragThing 5.x users.