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Safari and Office are tiny..what the?
- Thread starter Switched
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Switched said:My very first mac was delivered yesterday (black macbook) and I've been madly testing everything out. My problem is that Safari and Office are only taking up roughly half the screen. How do I make them full screen?
Safari takes up as much of the screen as it needs, expanding it to full screen not only limits your ability to drag and drop to other apps but it doesn't grant you any more information.
You can make the window bigger by dragging the bottom right corner.
Office does a similar thing, either zoom in to 100%+ and hit the green button or drag the window resizer.
This is the first and most major thing new switchers have to deal with, OS X is designed from the ground up to multi-task. With Safari taking up as much as it needs you still have access to the desktop and are able to run more apps in the window allowing you to move items amongst them without having to minimise windows. I have a 1024x768 screen and can run Safari, Messenger and iTunes in mini-player and still have access to my desktop for drag/drop of information to the desktop - all this is visible at the same time.
Similarly, with Word taking up the whole screen, your workflow speed is reduced as you switch apps to move your information, you can have two Word documents open side by side and drag stuff between them, it also allows for direct comparison between the two documents.
Windows was originally designed for single-user, single-app usage, it's less efficient but you get used to it. Once you get used to the Mac OS' approach to working with applications you'll find it much quicker to get things done. When i go home to my parent's house I often find myself trying to drag an image from Safari to the desktop or to a folder - but no, you have to right-click, save to desktop, then navigate to the desktop to find it. With the Mac, you have the space and the ability to just drag it right to the desktop and continue using Safari - no swapping back and forth.
It's a more efficient, more "organic" approach to window management.
Chundles said:
Not to mention when you have two displays, to move a maximised window from one display to the other you need to unmaximise it first, drag it across, then maximise it again at the other end. Of course, the apps are designed to be run maximised and you lose half the toolbars when the window's not big enough
Chundles said:
Okay, I didn't realize that (also a new user). So then, if I resized my browser to take up the whole screen, how can I reset Safari so that it goes back to the default of just taking up as much screen as it needs? As it is, the browser now opens to the full screen...
Safari (and most other apps) will remember the screen size when you close the program, and use that when you open it again. To optimize the window size, just click on the 'plus' button at upper left.