Both have “been in development” for a long time — that’s a good thing.

Both of them are in Version 2.x — they haven’t been “in beta” in a very long time (although they still release betas of new releases, they have solid non-beta releases with installers etc.).

As on mac, Growl and Snarl exist for the purpose of unifying notifications from apps you (already) use — not for creating new notifications. I don’t see why Growl and Snarl should have a plugin system for people to write … what? web-scrapers? email-checkers?

Anyway. No. there’s no more room for growl clones. if you have ideas and coding time, help advance one of the existing apps, or plugins for your favorite apps to make them growl/gntp/snarl compatible or help start campaigns to get apps to implement this natively.

1. GfW and Snarl both have stable (non beta) releases available with big ‘Download Now’ buttons right from their homepages. both offer a standard Windows Installer installation, so it is as simple as clicking Next,Next,Finish. (Snarl’s files are hosted at SourceForge, but i dont know why that would matter)

2. GfW and Snarl both have sections of their websites devoted to listing apps and plugins that support them. Neither offers rankings or user comments, but Growl/Mac does not offer this either. It is the goal that apps integrate support directly, thus reducing the need for extra plugins and helpers, so at that point, there would really be nothing to review anyway.

3. As stated in #2 above, the goal is that applications will build in support natively just like they do on the Mac. However, in the mean time, people want to get notifications from their favorite apps that don’t yet have support built in, so plugins and helper apps fill that gap. as to why some plugins are standalone apps in their own right, that comes down to the specific app. some apps have a plugin system (firefox, pidgin, winamp, etc) that allows developers to write plugins that run in the external app’s process. some apps dont offer this, so the next best thing is a helper program that can watch/poll for notifications and then forward them to the notification system. it is a balancing act between ‘why are there so many plugins required’ and ‘why doesnt app X support Growl/Snarl yet?’.

As the developer of GfW, I agree with Sven that both apps still have room for improvement and getting more apps to support them natively is always a top priority. i appreciate the feedback – hopefully my comments will help clear up some of the misconceptions.

As for external apps: Snarl has such an interface (this is the difference betwenn “Apps” and “Extensions”. Until now no one (including me) wrote extra extensions (there are some included as you might know). Why? In my case because I like to have it as external apps

So if you think this is your greatest pain just mail me and we will give you an documentation of the extension/plugin-api of Snarl