Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Maximizing Windows? How could Apple miss this?

Tymmz said:
Off topic, but try following: press ctrl + scroll (mouse wheel or two finger on glide pad).

Just discovered that and had to share.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! It was like UOW! :)
 
jtown said:
Maximizing windows is an annoying quirk. And it's application independant. Maximize the mail program and it goes full screen (mostly). Maximize a finder window and it just stretches vertically. Can't even blame that on vendor issues since they're both Apple programs. Firefox will actually get narrower in some cases! It's a pretty lame inconsistancy that just shouldn't exist. Maximize = maximize, not "change to some random window size that's taller but not necessarily wider and maybe even narrower".
Click to expand...
Some notes: It's a "Zoom" button, not "Maximize". Second, since it's a zoom button, it zooms the window to the largest size necessary to fit the contents of the window to whichever dimension of the screen is closer to being filled.
 
Before I was online and had to use the windows computers in the Library, I absolutely loathed and hated full screen IE, which is how I *always* found them. It felt so spastic. Duh, I need this window to be really really biiiiiiiiig. Even worse, because most web pages are set for type to wrap around, having a full screen window means very long lines.

There are only a few apps that I like to have a full screen window, those are Illustrator, InDesign, Zbrush and sometimes Photoshop and Painter. Lo and behold the first three apps' 'zoom' button *does* fill the screen and the latter two have their own shortcut full screen mode anyway. So there you go.
 
dukebound85 said:
i would say expose is the greatest thing to hit an os.everytime im on windows, not having expose is what bugs me the most
Click to expand...

I completely agree. The few times I have to use a Windows computer now, not being able to hit F9 to see all of my windows or hit F11 to get to my desktop, it's a pain. I know Windows has the "Show Desktop" quicklaunch icon, but it doesn't function like Expose- once you open a new app, everything remains minimized.
Even on Macs running OS X pre-Tiger. In college when I was a photographer for the campus paper, their computers didn't have expose and it was a huge pain trying to navigate multiple windows and dragging photos from my camera's card to the server.


Anyway... in another thread a few months back I posted this, but it still doesn't seem widely used. So here it is again FWIW:


This utilizes Quicksilver's triggers. Make sure you have "access for assistive devices" enabled in System Preferences under Universal Access.

Open Script Editor and paste this

Code: 
tell application "System Events"
	if UI elements enabled then
		set FrontApplication to (get name of every process whose frontmost is true) as string
		tell process FrontApplication
			click button 2 of window 1
			--button 2 is the green "zoom" button for all applications
			--window 1 is always the frontmost window.
		end tell
	else
		tell application "System Preferences"
			activate
			set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
			display dialog "UI element scripting is not enabled. Check 'Enable access for assistive devices'"
		end tell
	end if
end tell

Save that in /Library/Scripts . The filename can be whatever you want. Now in Quicksilver, make a trigger to run this script and set a hotkey for it... or mouse gesture. Just for the sake of having this available if I ever decide I want it and to make it something kind of obscure that I won't hit by accident, I set mine to cmd+opt+shift+z (Z for Zoom).

Since Quicksilver's hotkeys are global, now whatever app you've got active, just hit your hotkey and voila, it's stretched across the whole screen. Note that you'll need to hide the dock to make it cover the bottom portion of the screen where the dock resides, otherwise it won't cross the docks' invisible boundary.

Watch what you set the hotkey to, you don't want it to interfere with other shortcuts that could cause errors and make it not work.
 
MarkF786 said:
I'm a convert to Mac OS X and though I love the OS, their's one major flaw; when I hit the "zoom" green button, the window does not maximize like on Windows. Instead, it seems to only maximize top-to-bottom, not side-to-side. When I maximize a window, I want it to fill the entire screen. The problem seems to exist with all applications I've tried.

Is there a trick or fix for this? It's quite annoying having to manual resize a window to fill the screen every time I open an application.

Thanks!

Mark
Click to expand...


vista 2.0 will hve it
 
just to insert my own two cents lol

I find that when I'm designing Keynotes, or working on Magazines, or even downloading pictures for various reasons (changing the desktop background, etc.) to have the right side of the desktop visible is a MUST for me. that way, I can easily access the desktop, my Hard Drive, or any folders that I usually keep there to stay organized.

in conclusion, the zoom button works for me; push it once, it sometimes goes somewhere I don't want it to, but a second time and it aligns itself to the left side so I can stay busy. :)

-Bobby
 
jtown said:
Sad to see so many people defeding a lack of choice. You don't want it so anyone who does just doesn't understand how things are supposed to work? Puhleez!

Maximizing windows is an annoying quirk. And it's application independant. Maximize the mail program and it goes full screen (mostly). Maximize a finder window and it just stretches vertically. Can't even blame that on vendor issues since they're both Apple programs. Firefox will actually get narrower in some cases! It's a pretty lame inconsistancy that just shouldn't exist. Maximize = maximize, not "change to some random window size that's taller but not necessarily wider and maybe even narrower".

When I bought a new Mac, I noticed a lot of quirks in OSX. Most annoying was (text smoothing). I couldn't turn it off. I could adjust the settings but it was not an optional feature. If I want to put on rose colored glasses, fine. But don't make me wear them. I don't like it. ~75dpi is not high enough pixel density to do it well. Even more annoying was the fact that not all apps were subjected to it. The terminal window doesn't screw around with font smoothing so it can obviously be disabled in the OS. Why not give me that option across the board? Why force me to adapt to blurry text?

Sure, there are 3rd party applications and "tweaks" that let users customize their UI experience but it shouldn't be necessary to seek out hacks and workarounds to make basic functions consistant and unlock controls that should be readily available.
Click to expand...

As has been pointed out earlier, there is no "Maximize" button in MacOS. Hence your frustration with the action of the "Zoom" button while assuming it's a "Maximize" button. Consequently, there is no "Zoom" button in Windows and I'd guess I'd be frustrated with that while insisting on using the "Maximize" button as a "Zoom" button.

The closest action to a Windows "Maximize" is to "Hide Others" from the application menu in MacOS. Different OS's, different working styles required.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back