I find having lots of small windows visable at once just makes my screen look cluttered and is harder for me to find what I want. Adding a maximize button would help those that want it, and I fail to see how it would hurt those that don’t.

On the other hand when I am using any design/video/audio applications I always maximize and need more room for all the palettes.

When I hide an application there are always 3-4 smaller browser, email, and finder windows floating on the dexktop…lets say I love expose, couldn’t function without it.

Does anyone have a hack? I really really want a keyboard shortcut that maximizes the current window whatever it is. Again, I’m not saying my way is ‘right’ or better, but it sure is better for me. Any suggestions? And BTW I’m not enough of a programmer to figure this out myself.

By the way if you have windows and have many applications open, you still have 1 click access your desktop, 1 click access to anything open, 1 click access to your shortcuts (quick start), and 1 click access to everything else on your harddrive. It’s called the taskbar.

If you’re the distractable type, just HIDE other applications. As a side benefit, that reduces system load thus improving foreground application responsiveness.

Also, even when my windows are not maximized I like to keep them well stacked one against the other. I dislike windows to overlap — overlapped windows are a problem, not a feature –, so I try to find arrangements that will show most of them at the same time. Three elements are key in managing to do this:

1) Virtual Desktops. Unlike Windows does, in GNU/Linux most window managers support virtual desktops which will allow you a complete change of context within a keystroke. This allows you effectively to have (in my case) six desktops with the windows maximized or arranged the way you want. Since I dislike overlapping, I tend to keep a limited number of windows per desktop (one for the browser, one for the mail, one for the code, etc.). The advantage of this is that I don’t have the feeling of switching windows around (it’s psychological) and in teh rare cases that I do have more than one window per desktop, I don’t have to rearrange them around if I change context. Also, most pagers provide visual feedback on which windows are open, so it is easy to locate an app.

2) A good window manager that will allow window snapping (to the edges of the screen and among windows themselves) and window placement and resizing via keyboard. I use XFWM4 (XFCE 4’s window manager) hardly move my hands off the keyboard anytime, and this allows me to resize and rearrange my windows very fast and effectively.

3) Optionally, a window manager that will do automatic window placement to minimize overlapping. As far as I know, only Enlightenment (16) does this. It’s not perfect, but very handy at times. It *would* be perfect if it had also a good manual control as XFWM4 has. The way it is now, I stick with XFWM4.

All these options will most likely sound strange to the readers of this blog. It’s reasonable. GNU/Linux has done a lot of experimentation on interfaces, which if not as good looking as MacOSX’s, have implemented very useful tricks that I have not seen anywhere else. I would advise anyone here to give them a try, to get familiarized with those ideas, and then try to use an interface like OSX’s or Windows’.

P.S.: The menu bar on top, which so many mac users cherish and that I did praise once too, is a great idea initially, but not so much once you have it intereact with the rest of the desktop. Most GNU/Linux window managers implement a focus policy known as ’sloppy focus’ — in other words, the focus follows the mouse pointer, without need to click –. This is very useful, but becomes a hell whenever you have also a detached menu bar, because most likely while travelling from the window to the bar you will pass over other windows, which in turn will change the menus to their own.

Also, although the fixed menu bar saves space and eases the interface because it is always placed in the same place, I think that all experienced users end up using keyboard shortcuts more than mouseclicks. So I would just do menu bars auto-hiding, or minimal.

Really miss it in OS X to have a standard (real) maximise button (like winxp has)…. Programs like MegaZoomer are a work around but not as well as MS has implemented it…

Apple: At least give the webbrowser such an option to full screen maximise!

p.s. Really find it annoying too that, in things like office for mac, there is no option to get just 1 program (and not 1000’s of little option menu’s)… Office for Windows works much better for me up till now (using parallels just to have a one-program office look :)

It all depends on the screen space i have. Working at 1024×768 yes. Always.

Above that it is dependant on what I’m doing. At work I’ve a 17″ single and work mainly with SAS (base, mainly coding), Excel, Word, Lotus Notes (*shudder*), FF etc. Everything but FF is maximised, and that’s mainly because the vast majority of sites i surf to cater for the 1024×768 or 800×600 crowd (a good thing) and thus it’s not needed. If i had duals I’d have two app’s open at maximum for the individual monitor…

Why have a huge window with tons of wasted space (most likely anyway, like with web browsers, ftp clients, mail clients, etc) when you can just do it the way the os intended? I don’t see the big deal. If you are really that ‘distracted’ by multiple windows then just hide them.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t maximize things or that you can’t or anything… I’m just saying maybe you should try doing it the way apple intended becuase it works for lots of people and maybe if you put aside the maximizing fetish for a while you’ll see it’s better this way anyways :p

Perhaps, and if this actually affects you then you can simply hit opt-cmd-H and it’s problem solved, no maximizing necessary.

Now it drives me crazy when I have my windows tiled on my xp machine at work (pah) and someone comes along to show me something, leans over, and as a matter of course maximises the window I had open because they can’t cope with it not being maximised. Grr!