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Full Screen Fixed in Mountain Lion?
- Thread starter graytrees
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Run Quicktime-X. If you make it full screen in Snow Leopard, you can pick the window it runs full screen in, and use your other monitor for another application. In Lion if you make it full screen it is always on your primary display and you cannot use your other monitor for another application. And full screen is not the same as "maximized" or stretching out an application window to use the full screen, less the bar at the top of the screen.
And it was pointed out that full screen in Fusion and Parallels was also a problem handed by Fusion automatically doing Snow Leopard style full screen for multiple monitor systems and by Parallels doing Snow Leopard style full screen via a configuration option. In no way is the functionality the same.
nam - While I thank you for some of the new info you added, please understand it is not the same because of the changes that were made when Spaces was dropped in favor of Mission Control in Lion.
Part of this is b/c MC only allows moving between "spaces" on the x axis. So if a app is used in full-screen, it adds the number of spaces to transition through if you are using multiple full-screen apps.
Depending on your job, especially if you where multiple hats, you may end up with a number of spaces. Here is an example of how I used a 27" iMac with a 27" Dell monitor at my last job as web operations manager.
Space 1 imac : Dashboard
Space 1 Dell: Dashboard overflow - nothing on it and wasted
(main working and Content Management)
Space 2 imac: Web Browsers - multiple windows and tabs on various flavors
Space 2 Dell: Mail, Messages for office IM, Adium
(newsfeeds)
Space 3 imac: RadarScope in FullScreen (dealt with sending out severe WX alerts for my multi-site org.
Space 3 Dell: (empty)
(Development working)
Space 4 imac: Kod, Transmit, 3-4 Terminal Windows
Space 4 Dell: Source Tree, Sequel Pro
(newsfeeds)
Space 5 imac: Pulp in Fullscreen
Space 5 Dell: (empty)
(Social)
Space 5 imac: Tweetdeck in Fullscreen with numerous columns watching searches of my org and sub-orgs.
Space 5 Dell: (empty)
I would have loved to combined the Dashboard wasted monitor, the FS RadarScope, the FS Pulp and FS Tweetdeck into pairs of FS apps. Even though I was able to fly through these with a magic mouse and magicPrefs, it would be nice to have those beautiful FS apps with all the dynamic data and devoid of the OS menubars more efficiently grouped.
Some programs are beginning to change what, how they present in FS mode (see Pulp's drawer functionality for instance). It subtly changes how it does things between window mode and FS to use space more efficiently.
Apple is doing this as well. QT in Lion does not operate the same as on SL when trying to fill the screen. The button on the controller that used to be "Fill to Screen" (with letter-boxing bars) in SL is now "Full Screen" in Lion. And for videos that are not 16:9, there is now NO way to fill to screen without losing the second monitor. (Look for yourself with a 4:3 video - Cmd-3 is "Fit to screen" is done without blackout bars and the Cmd-4 "Fill Screen" is greyed out.) So what you are suggesting is impossible.
Part of this is b/c MC only allows moving between "spaces" on the x axis. So if a app is used in full-screen, it adds the number of spaces to transition through if you are using multiple full-screen apps.
Depending on your job, especially if you where multiple hats, you may end up with a number of spaces. Here is an example of how I used a 27" iMac with a 27" Dell monitor at my last job as web operations manager.
Space 1 imac : Dashboard
Space 1 Dell: Dashboard overflow - nothing on it and wasted
(main working and Content Management)
Space 2 imac: Web Browsers - multiple windows and tabs on various flavors
Space 2 Dell: Mail, Messages for office IM, Adium
(newsfeeds)
Space 3 imac: RadarScope in FullScreen (dealt with sending out severe WX alerts for my multi-site org.
Space 3 Dell: (empty)
(Development working)
Space 4 imac: Kod, Transmit, 3-4 Terminal Windows
Space 4 Dell: Source Tree, Sequel Pro
(newsfeeds)
Space 5 imac: Pulp in Fullscreen
Space 5 Dell: (empty)
(Social)
Space 5 imac: Tweetdeck in Fullscreen with numerous columns watching searches of my org and sub-orgs.
Space 5 Dell: (empty)
I would have loved to combined the Dashboard wasted monitor, the FS RadarScope, the FS Pulp and FS Tweetdeck into pairs of FS apps. Even though I was able to fly through these with a magic mouse and magicPrefs, it would be nice to have those beautiful FS apps with all the dynamic data and devoid of the OS menubars more efficiently grouped.
Some programs are beginning to change what, how they present in FS mode (see Pulp's drawer functionality for instance). It subtly changes how it does things between window mode and FS to use space more efficiently.
Apple is doing this as well. QT in Lion does not operate the same as on SL when trying to fill the screen. The button on the controller that used to be "Fill to Screen" (with letter-boxing bars) in SL is now "Full Screen" in Lion. And for videos that are not 16:9, there is now NO way to fill to screen without losing the second monitor. (Look for yourself with a 4:3 video - Cmd-3 is "Fit to screen" is done without blackout bars and the Cmd-4 "Fill Screen" is greyed out.) So what you are suggesting is impossible.
Wrong. In SL I used to run a full-screen app (e.g., a video) on one display--yes, sans menu bar and other "distractions"--and at the same time run something completely unrelated on the second monitor. Plus, I wasn't forced to run full-screen only on main monitor.
As far as "distractions" are concerned switching monitors on me when I didn't ask for it is a helluva distraction. But that is exactly what Lion does if I enter fullscreen mode on my second or third monitor.
Lion most certainly does not work "the exact same way" as Snow Leopard.
Michael
I clicked my shoes together three times and said "there's no place like full-screen."
Honestly, I am a little puzzled you would ask such a basic question. But OK I will bite. If I was watching a video, presumably it was in VLC, I would have just double clicked the video window. Voila, full-screen.
Fortunately VLC has added a way to not use Lion's full-screen mode and go back to the old way. But not all apps have those options.
Mike
Last edited:
Well, that's halfway there. Now if you could run something else on the other monitor we would be nicely back to Snow Leopard's capabilities!
are you sure you can't? Sounds me to me like it will leave the other display free to run another. If not, its a pointless fix.
So we just set up a 6 display analytics panel at our company. The analytics software runs in a browser so we simply got 3 new macminis and attached to each 2 monitors with the intent of cmd-f chrome to display a full screen analytics page ( maps, graphs, etc ).
Of course on Lion the other screen is unusable if you use a "full screen" app.
Simple maximizing the browser on each panel and having the borders is not desirable.
Solution: Use an ancient version of Chrome ( version 8 in this case ) that was available pre lion and therefore is unaware the os full screen crap. This allows chrome to go full screen on each.
For the next 3 minis I bought I ended up buying previous gen hardware with snow leaopard so I was not limited by Lion.
Verdict: If users of the product are forced to buy previous gen hardware or use 3 year old app versions to get functionality that existed previously, this might be a sign that something needs to be fixed.
Note: We tried putting SL on the new mac minis but there really seems to be some problems with some drivers. I did revert to SL on my early 2012 MBP but this is because SL was available on this in early 2011 and I happen to have a disk from that machine.
Note 2: I HATE that I can't run the new version on xcode on my SL mbp I actually have a second machine that has Lion ONLY because I need it for the latest XCode. Yes, I jump through all these hoops of multiple machines, downgrading OSs, etc just because of some show stopper, undesirable features in Lion that prevents me from using it as my main OS.
Please Apple, help me, help you.
Of course on Lion the other screen is unusable if you use a "full screen" app.
Simple maximizing the browser on each panel and having the borders is not desirable.
Solution: Use an ancient version of Chrome ( version 8 in this case ) that was available pre lion and therefore is unaware the os full screen crap. This allows chrome to go full screen on each.
For the next 3 minis I bought I ended up buying previous gen hardware with snow leaopard so I was not limited by Lion.
Verdict: If users of the product are forced to buy previous gen hardware or use 3 year old app versions to get functionality that existed previously, this might be a sign that something needs to be fixed.
Note: We tried putting SL on the new mac minis but there really seems to be some problems with some drivers. I did revert to SL on my early 2012 MBP but this is because SL was available on this in early 2011 and I happen to have a disk from that machine.
Note 2: I HATE that I can't run the new version on xcode on my SL mbp I actually have a second machine that has Lion ONLY because I need it for the latest XCode. Yes, I jump through all these hoops of multiple machines, downgrading OSs, etc just because of some show stopper, undesirable features in Lion that prevents me from using it as my main OS.
Please Apple, help me, help you.
I was just able to check. Only ML-aware apps, at the moment those that come with ML, can run in either screen, so it seems to be a new feature in the ML API. However you still cannot run separate full screen apps on different monitors simultaneously. It's not pointless since you could run something full screen on an attached projector or large screen TV, but it's not really what most of of want!
You could use the current version of Firefox as well. Not all applications have bought into the Lion full screen API.
This is incredibly annoying, and it's easily my biggest gripe with Lion; I was looking forward to finally having fullscreen support in Safari, but instead I'm just using a maximised window like I always have, and that doesn't seem like it's going to change for Mountain Lion.
As I see it the problem is partly how to handle transitioning via Mission Control/Spaces, and how to do the menu bar. In the past, a full-screen app on a secondary monitor would still pull up the normal menu bar, ideally each screen should get its own menu bar (or rather, each full-screen app should get its own menu bar on the screen it's on, with secondary screens skipping things like menubar widgets, clock, etc.).
Still, even with proper Fullscreen support on multiple monitors, it still wouldn't solve cases where you want two different windows of a single app full-screened on different displays. In Quicktime 7 for example it's possible to watch two movies simultaneously on different screens. I suppose Apps could probably implement this, but it'd be a pain to do right.
On that note, has anyone tried Quicktime 7 on Mountain Lion? Support for Perian and proper full-screen support (as well as the much more precise skipping around within movies) are still years ahead of Quicktime X's backwards behaviours.
At the end of the day though, Fullscreen apps are just not a feature suitable for desktops. What we need are Fullscreen windows, which sounds similar but is functionally very different in practise.
As I see it the problem is partly how to handle transitioning via Mission Control/Spaces, and how to do the menu bar. In the past, a full-screen app on a secondary monitor would still pull up the normal menu bar, ideally each screen should get its own menu bar (or rather, each full-screen app should get its own menu bar on the screen it's on, with secondary screens skipping things like menubar widgets, clock, etc.).
Still, even with proper Fullscreen support on multiple monitors, it still wouldn't solve cases where you want two different windows of a single app full-screened on different displays. In Quicktime 7 for example it's possible to watch two movies simultaneously on different screens. I suppose Apps could probably implement this, but it'd be a pain to do right.
On that note, has anyone tried Quicktime 7 on Mountain Lion? Support for Perian and proper full-screen support (as well as the much more precise skipping around within movies) are still years ahead of Quicktime X's backwards behaviours.
At the end of the day though, Fullscreen apps are just not a feature suitable for desktops. What we need are Fullscreen windows, which sounds similar but is functionally very different in practise.
From http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html#system
"Go full screen on any display
If you have a secondary display connected to your Mac, you can take an app full screen on either display. Drag the window to the desired display and click the full-screen button."
"Go full screen on any display
If you have a secondary display connected to your Mac, you can take an app full screen on either display. Drag the window to the desired display and click the full-screen button."
Unfortunately it's not a fix, as you're only now getting to choose which screen(s) are blanked, rather than it always being the primary display. It'd be fine if Apps could decide not to blank the other screen(s), but that doesn't appear to be the case; you get one app in fullscreen visible at a time, or don't use fullscreen, which is a pretty poor choice.
Especially when Quicktime 7's behaviour was essentially perfect; I really hated Quicktime 7 at the time, but when I started using Quicktime X on Lion I soon realised how good we'd had it in the past!
I can verify that the issue of fullscreen on one screen while the other is available for other apps/functions HAS BEEN FIXED in DP4 ...
Don't have a screenshot BUT I just tried watching a movie on Movist on one screen and the other screen was there for me to browse the web on Safari ...
NO MORE LINEN !
Have you tried that with other app? Because on Lion I can use MplayerX on fullscrenn mode and the other monitor still available to use.
--
Actually, MPlayerX doesn't use the "real" full-screen I just went to mission control and it's not in his own space...
Mad Mac Maniac
macrumors 601
I can verify that the issue of fullscreen on one screen while the other is available for other apps/functions HAS BEEN FIXED in DP4 ...
Don't have a screenshot BUT I just tried watching a movie on Movist on one screen and the other screen was there for me to browse the web on Safari ...
NO MORE LINEN !
Wow really?? I'm quite shocked... How about two full screen apps? Is that a no-go?
I think I read that is still a no-go.
But for me, just allowing one screen fullscreen while I can run a different app(s) on another monitor(s) is good enough.
Michael
Mad Mac Maniac
macrumors 601
Yeah. I'm interested to understand it's behavior though. Specifically how do 3 finger swipes to change spaces work.
Does it automatically change spaces in the primary monitor? Does it change spaces in whatever monitor the cursor is on? Does this allow for two separate "desktop spaces" on two different monitors? If so, then whats to stop two separate full screen apps on two different monitors? Maybe there is no 3 finger swipe to change spaces when using both monitors? What does invoking mission control do on your screens?
I know, but my point is that it highlights how the Fullscreen feature should work, unfortunately it's now the only Apple app that seems to
Can you please verify that Movist uses the Fullscreen feature introduced by Lion/Mountain Lion? VLC for example works fine across multiple screens but that's because it doesn't use the Fullscreen feature, it just uses old-style fullscreen windows.mindlessmissy said: