Comments on: Hey Apple! Fix the green button already!

By: Matthew Kennedy

Matthew Kennedy — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Apple please fix the green button it’s too dam contextual it needs to serve one function throughout the operating system it will stop switchers from windows moaning and make your operating system feel loads better in an instant.
At the moment in most apps it just shrinks the window to fit content apart from Skype iCal most the iLife stuff ( mini player in itunes ) blar di blar

Id go for switch between too sizes set by user simple, (apart from in quicktime it would have flick between the original size of the movie and a resized by user size!!

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:13:02 +0000

So, what happened in Leopard?

By: Making the Switch, Part I: Windows

Making the Switch, Part I: Windows — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:16:55 +0000

[...] Hey, Apple! Fix the green button already! [...]

By: Apple is Not Fruit » Blog Archive » Hey Apple! Fix the green button already!

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:06:49 +0000

[...] read more | digg story [...]

By: iamkeir

iamkeir — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:59:45 +0000

“#82 iamkeir says:

…very distracting to have other windows/apps visible…”

Edit: I meant to say “very distracting to have other windows/apps visible in the background, in the space around the unmaximised window”

Heh heh, Mac OS X needs a maximise button, like this blog needs an edit button!

By: iamkeir

iamkeir — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:32:34 +0000

“#65 michel says:

green button MAXIMIZES THE WINDOW TO SHOW, when possible, THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT!

some others developper can do what they want but IT’s a button TO ZOOM to MAX the DOCUMENT! NOT the window!”

Whilst I appreciate that the green button for the main part does what it is ‘meant to’, when I’m working in, and trying to concentrate on, one window I actually find it very distracting to have other windows/apps visible which is why I like to maximise it to full screen.

I think both the intended functionality of the the green button and the ability to maximise to full screen are both useful (if not almost fundamental) and I see no reason why the latter is left out. Macs are becoming a lot more mainstream so a function that is useful just for developers is really quite short-sighted.

Also, thanks to the chap who posted the tip about holding down the shift key and clicking the green button…but it only works in some apps and not others.

I’m off to download that Stoplight tool…

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:24:49 +0000

Green button Abyss….Just bought my son a MacBook for college and can’t understand why the “user” has no flexibility to set screen size to what “WE” want it to be. First Mac experience and enough to sell me on staying with Dell-IBM-Toshiba-HP-Acer-ANYONE else…

By: tachyon

tachyon — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:01:54 +0000

The Windowshade behavior from OS 9 is still lingering in the app “Stickies”.
As for what Windows switchers do- they hit the “white blob” or chiclet on the right side of the window, because that is where they are used to seeing window controls and they can’t comprehend any interface differing from The Great Seattlian One. Of course you know pressing this removes the sidebar and brushed metal look of the window and gives it a more Classic/OS 9 feel. In other apps it collapses button bars or other unexpected behavior. In any case, they are confused with that one too!

By: Felix

Felix — Tue, 15 May 2007 03:17:29 +0000

Hi, really great article! Can I translate it into Chinese and publish it onto my personal blog, so that you could share your thoughts with more people?
Actually, I’v already translated the whole part, so it’s up to you.

Cheers!

By: Motorcycle Guy

Motorcycle Guy — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:04:18 +0000

I kind of like how macs don’t maximize the browser window full screen.

By: Ray Cruz

Ray Cruz — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:45:22 +0000

I agree with Eddie! Fix this irritating problem Apple!

By: g

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:22:43 +0000

@ gb - I can sympathize! No one considers the colorblind - ever. It’s simply amazing to me that this aspect of the OSX interface is unconfigurable.

By: gb

gb — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:54:46 +0000

Another problem is the use of aqua colors. I am green/red colorblind. I cannot tell which button is which looking at them. As a part time windows user I cannot remember left from right order so I end up not using the buttons because I don’t know what they will do. I wish I could have a preference to always show the plus (+) and minus (-) symbols all the time (like in Windows where an icon us used instead of color — so you can set the colors too using prefs)

By: Hasnain

Hasnain — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:36:54 +0000

wow! i thought i was the only dork who didnt understand what the green button does. i was embarrassed to ask because i’m a mac newbie and it seemed like such a simple and essential part of all mac windows. its so pointless. fix it apple! its gotta be consistent. thanks appleblog for making me feel less dorky about using the mac.

By: warren

warren — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:24:56 +0000

I think that users should be able to change green-button behaviour:

1. zoom to content (default OS X behaviour).
2. maximize/restore-to-prior (windows-like)

Warren

By: Cory Kilger

Cory Kilger — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:17:04 +0000

I use the green button all the time, and it always does exactly what I expect it to. Maybe I’m just used to it.

By: SHRIKEE

SHRIKEE — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:49:16 +0000

After reading your article i tried some of the windows to zoom.

I realized I actually never use the button because it does not maximizes stuff like in MS Windows.
Anyway, i tried several programs and the zoom button works as expected. It respects the dock and menubar. It resizes to the amount of icons in a windows or the size of the current content… I tried maybe like 10 programs and a whole bunch of finder windows. All worked fine.

I’m using OSX 10.4.9 on an Intel macbook pro

By: Steven Jobs

Steven Jobs — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:49:56 +0000

with stoplight you can let it do what it does in windows. you hav eto google for it but its well worth it!

By: Chris Howard

Chris Howard — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:17:29 +0000

Almost totally agree, Eddie. Except, I reckon the maximize function should be accessible with a modifier key. As a switcher, I’ve grown to accept - and expect - Apple’s widespread implementation of modifier key-clicks.

By: g

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:05:16 +0000

Hmmm so I guess you can’t you simply change the behavior of the windows and each button that decorates the window? Sorry if that’s a silly question - I have not yet had the opportunity to try OSX.

By: Alonline » Fix the green button, Apple

Alonline » Fix the green button, Apple — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:46:48 +0000

[...] It’s strange this article should arrive now, as we’ve just had a new iMac in work and I too have been completely frustrated by the window behaviour when clicking the green button. I want it to maximise a window, instead it makes a Safari window larger, but not full screen. I really wanted full screen so I resized the window manually, then made the mistake of clicking that button again and lost all my settings. I rather like OS-X (although the lack of 2 buttons on the mouse is my biggest gripe), but the green button is a waste of space. [...]

By: sean

sean — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:34:55 +0000

I totally agree with your article.

I hope you have posted this to Apple’s Mac OS X feedback website as well, otherwise Apple will never know about it.

By: michel

michel — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:56:00 +0000

green button MAXIMIZES THE WINDOW TO SHOW, when possible, THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT !

so if textedit open a litte document , textedit WILL NEVER USE THE FULLSCREEN
the same with safari or omniweb, if the website does NOT need the fullscreen there are NO NEED to go fullscreen , zoom expand the window to what is USEFUL !

application NOT “document” based (as in fact garageband or imovie, with so much controls) goes ALL fullscreen

THAT is that is intended !

some others developper can do what they want but IT’s a button TO ZOOM to MAX the DOCUMENT ! NOT the window!

do NOT change that !

By: MAC.BLORGE.com » Blog Archive » Sticky Windows introduces tabbed desktop for Mac OSX

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:28:31 +0000

[...] a Mac but I know friends who do and I love the Mac OSX experience, if it weren’t for that silly green button that seems to do almost nothing. Here’s a note to Windows users that might have switched to OSX, [...]

By: drum and bass magazin » Blog Archiv » Der Grüne Button in allen OSX Fenstern

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:04:48 +0000

[...] ist es doch ein Bug, den die stolzen Apple besitzer einfach als Geniestreich Jobs angesehen haben. Hier jedenfalls gibts ein Aufruf, den Mist endlich mal zu [...]

By: Geoff Taylor

Geoff Taylor — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:28:57 +0000

I use the green button all of the time. It’s not perfect but I wouldn’t use it if it was too annoying.

By: zoomlines

zoomlines — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:58:10 +0000

Like others, I just avoid the green button. It invariably makes the window worse than it was.

IMHO, I think it should do as planned, resize to the optimal size. And then ‘undo’ when clicked a second time.

It should also ‘maximise’ as it would on Windows, when option-clicked. I have never understood why it doesn’t do this. Apple always love to hide many useful options with option-clicks. Surely this would be easy to implement system wide.

By: illobo

illobo — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:18:23 +0000

install STOPLIGHT (yes, ’stoplight’) and you’ll never complain about green buttons

By: tom

tom — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:56:55 +0000

In Preview, the green button doesn’t do for me what it’s supposed to do. I use Preview to read PDF documents. So usually when I open a PDF, the entire document is shown but it’s too small to read, so I click “zoom in” a few times. Then I press the green button, and the window is stretched horizontally to fit the width of the PDF at my chosen magnificatoin. However, it should also be stretched vertically to show me as much of the document as possible - to the full height of the screen (minus the dock) if necessary. This never happens though. The window actually shrinks most of the time so I can see even less of the document, and I have to manually stretch it vertically. Pressing green a second time reverts the window back to its previous state, which is fine.
So to all who think it’s works as intended - well, you never know what the programmer intended. I don’t know what they intended in the case of Preview, but it is never really useful.

By: non_zero

non_zero — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:46:54 +0000

Regarding the red button, I think the red button should only act as an application terminator when there is only one main window that provides all the functionality. There would be no reason to leave System Preferences or Photo Booth running when the main window was closed, because closing it would cease functionality of that program entirely. iTunes doesn’t terminate with the red button because it’s possible that music is still playing when the red button is clicked.

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:44:07 +0000

The green button works fine for me in Finder. If i have a window in column view with only a ew columns open, the green button makes the windows fit around the open columns. If i have it in icon view it fits around the icons and list view it expands to fill what screen it can without moving the left of the window. I admit that at first these seem to be random actions, but if you think about it, it’s making the window take up the most efficient space it can, and to me that’s a good thing.

I’m running 10.4.9 on a PowerBook G3, maybe it broke on later macs?

By: non_zero

non_zero — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:38:13 +0000

In calculator it switches to advanced mode. I like it, because I can’t imagine a situation where I’d want to maximize the calculator.

By: Duggdeeper

Duggdeeper — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:16:11 +0000

Just in case you guys/girls may not know… holding down Shift and clicking the Green button will maximise the window exactly the same way as Microsoft Windows does. Thought it might be worth pointing out.

By: McJeff

McJeff — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:04:49 +0000

BAH! GET OVER YOURSELVES ALREADY!

The green button does what it is designed to do. If you dont like it go shoot little fury animals.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:12:10 +0000

Safari does something else strange.

The user would probably set the user-defined size to fit a webpage of around 800 pixels by dragging the bottom right corner. However, if you do that, then go somewhere where you need to zoom the window a little, and then go to a third place where you need to zoom a little more again, afterwards the window returns *not* to the user-defined size but to the next size down from the largest window you used.

I really don’t get that. I’ve taken to re-setting it with the 800px Safari bookmarklet:

http://www.apple.com/applescript/safari/bookmarks.html

The other odd thing is that Apple’s own startpage totally fools Safari’s re-sizing. Zoom there and the window re-sizes but still leaves you with a horizontal scrollbar. I think it must be because the rather clumsy navigation bar at the top is wider than the main page content.

http://www.apple.com/startpage/