Maximise Windows? Background applications confusing the desktop space

[bammac]

Hi Guys,

I am recent switcher and I am certainly not looking back.

I do have a question regarding the way application windows sit on the OS X workspace.

Basically if I am running a few applications such as Entourage, PowerPoint & Word, the applications are still visiable in my workspace to the point that it is distracting.

Maybe it's just a fact that I am so use to "Maximising" windows in XP so that I can focus on that application only. The issue is that if I am running word sometimes I hit the bold function on Powerpoint which the buttons are visually just sitting behind the word buttons by mistake.

What I was wondering is if there is a function that either automatically minizes (instead of manually doing so) the backround applications on the desktop or at least shades out the background applications on the desktop to help me avoid the clutter.

Any advice that would help is very much appreciated.

[FredAkbar]

There's no way to maximize an entire app like PowerPoint (you can try clicking the green button in the upper left, or dragging the lower right corner, to make individual windows bigger), but you can easily hide other apps. When you're in the app that you want to work in, you can hide all other apps by hitting Command-Option-H; by selecting Hide Others in the application menu (the menu just to the right of the Apple menu); or by right-clicking the app's icon in the Dock and holding down Option, enabling a "Hide Others" item. Note that right-clicking can also be done by clicking with the Control key held down, or in some cases by clicking and holding the cursor in one spot.

[mkrishnan]

Someone in another thread suggested a utility called Spirited Away (http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/en), which can make programs automatically hide. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I think you can set it so that apps other than the focused app immediately hide until they're apple-tabbed to again (or clicked on in the dock).