Maximizing Desktop Area

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spaces!!!!!!
that's what its for!

 

Yeah leopard has some awesome new features for this. The first is spaces. It's like having up to 16 computer monitors with apps in each one or mixed however you like, very useful. You can go so far as to lock apps to specific spaces so they will always show up there which is what I do. Another option is to manage the windows within a space with expose. For example mail, safari, and calculator in one space can be cleaned off the screen or spread out and more with simple key commands.

Really utilizing these features will make any monitor much easier to work with. Especially small ones.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spaces.html

 

I'm not generally a fan of 'hidden' menu/toolbars, but I find since switching to the Air I really like having the dock set to automatically hide/show. It gives you that much more room for application windows as they're able to fill the screen. I seem to spend most of my time between Safari and Mail, and it definitely improves these two apps having that much more space to work.

 

Unfortunately, i am not a MBA user but i would agree that spaces is the way to go. On my iMacs i have taken full advantage of spaces. You can specify which applications open in which space so you know exactly where everything is. I also changed the shortcut keys to change which space you are in to altgr(i think) and the direction arrows. This means you can swap between spaces with one hand in split seconds. I sometimes use expose if i have a lot of apps open in one space but that is rare.

 

Expose works well too when switching between apps in a particular space.

 

spaces or expose should get the job done no problem.

 

My mom has a macbook, so its the same 13 inch screen as the air. (at least size wise).

I am not a big fan of "widescreen" laptop displays. Widescreen also means "shortscreen".

I find a 13" screen with the dock at the botom is annoyingly "short".

So I put the dock on the side. It works well and preserves the prescious screen height.

Don

 

I feel the same exact way. I can't stand the dock on the bottom on only 1280x800... there's barely any vertical space. I use TinkerTool to move my dock to the bottom left and then I hide it.

If I'm plugged into an external display than I show the dock but it's still small and on the bottom left.

 

No, it doesn't. Widescreen displays have additional horizontal reasolution. Your typical non-widescreen notebook, back when such things existed, had XGA resolution, 768 pixels high. Widescreen notebooks are still 768 pixels high, or more. They are just--suprise!--wider.

 

^ rofl

 

Sorry,
You're just wrong. I'm not talking about pixels. I'm talking about screen area.

If you have a given amount of real estate. (and thats what your eyes see, AREA, not pixels) then a wide screen is a short screen.

Conversely, you speak of higher pixels. Now take that greater pixel density you describe and apply it to a taller screen.

Botom line is that most of the content that we look at would benefit from a screen with the old 4:3 aspect ration. i.e. most web pages and text docs (which is what most people use computers for) scroll vertically.

So having more vertical space is better.

Now if you do something specialized, like photo editing where there are a lot of tool bars ont he side of the screen, or maybe video processing where you want to be able to view 16:9 content full screen, its a whole 'nother thing.

 

But it's not shorter than a 4:3 screen.

 

Yes it is shorter. if you have a given diagonal measurement. And you make it wider, you have to make it shorter.

Here are some hard numbers.

My 4:3 Lenovo laptop has an lcd that measures
9.0"h x 12.0"w with a diagonal measurement of 15"

15 inch macbook pro measures:
8.25"h x 13.0"w with a diagonal measurement of 15.4

So, in summary, the wide screen 15.4" macbook vs my Lenovo is:

1) .4 inches bigger overall
2) .75" shorter
3) 1" wider