Exposé: Why all windows in a row???

[Damitri]

I searched the forums but could not find anything about a problem I am having with exposé.

Sometimes (seemingly random) when I use exposé, instead of displaying all the windows nicely distributed all over the screen, all windows appear in a single horizontal row in the middle of the screen. With many apps/windows open that makes them tiny on my iBook's screen. Is this a feature I have missed or a bug? I usually restart the computer or live with it for a while and then it goes back to normal. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

 

[TBi]

Happens to me too. No idea why and i don't know how to fix it.

 

[smokeyrabbit]

I searched the forums but could not find anything about a problem I am having with exposé.

Sometimes (seemingly random) when I use exposé, instead of displaying all the windows nicely distributed all over the screen, all windows appear in a single horizontal row in the middle of the screen. With many apps/windows open that makes them tiny on my iBook's screen. Is this a feature I have missed or a bug? I usually restart the computer or live with it for a while and then it goes back to normal. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

This is the normal behavior for equal-sized windows with F10 (current app windows). To try it out, hit Command-N right now a few times and then hit F10. As long as you don't have a smaller window like Downloads open you will see them all lined up horizontally. (I couldn't get this to work in Firefox, just Safari)

 

[bankshot]

Yeah, it happens to me with Safari when all windows are the same size and at the same vertical position on the screen. It's been this way since 10.3.0. I often think about filing a bug report with Apple (http://bugreport.apple.com/) but I've been too lazy. Presumably they already know about it, but it's a low priority issue.

The fix for me is to simply move one of the affected windows up or down. Even a one-pixel offset will do it. Seems that if Apple were to fix it, they could simply randomly perturb the vertical positions of windows by a small amount when doing an Expose operation, so the placement algorithm doesn't get into this weird boundary case.

 

[Eric5h5]

As long as you don't have a smaller window like Downloads open you will see them all lined up horizontally.

No I won't. It only happens if windows are lined up exactly, which never happens by accident (to me, anyway).

--Eric

 

[xUKHCx]

No I won't. Sorry, but this has never happened to me and I can't get it to happen no matter what I do....

--Eric

Get safari open, make sure it is lined up to the menubar. Hit command+N a few time and then active expose. Just did exactly that and managed to reproduce it.

 

[Damitri]

Wow that is amazing. It seems to work exactly like that. Making several new windows with cmd-n reproduces it but moving one of those windows just 1 pixel fixes it completely. Thanks guys! No more rebooting the computer because of this...

 

[decksnap]

It doesn't matter what app. If the windows are all the same size, they all line up perfectly.

http://images.macrumors.com/im/contest200611/decksnap.html

(This is an example using Illustrator)

 

[crees!]

Wow that is amazing. It seems to work exactly like that. Making several new windows with cmd-n reproduces it but moving one of those windows just 1 pixel fixes it completely. Thanks guys! No more rebooting the computer because of this...

Rebooting doesn't fix perfect math

 

[NickElls]

I just realized something: If safari window #2 is to the right of #1, in Exposé it will appear to the right. If #2 is to the left of #1, it will appear to the left. Etc.

If #2 is a little bit down and to the right of #1, it will be in the lower right corner of #1 in Exposé. Same works with lower left, upper left, and upper right.


Hard to put into words, but it's fun. Try it.

 

[epochblue]

I don't understand the confusion. The way Expose tiles the windows has to do with the size and placement of the windows in relation to each other. The Cmd+N "trick" works because the windows are all the same size and tiled a certain way. ...and that's why moving the window as little as a pixel fixes it.

Like a poster above me said, it's a simple math equation...given the same input (same size and specific relative positioning), it will always produce the same output (all your windows in a nice neat line).

It's not a bug - it's a feature