It's taken me a bit to realize what is going on with the "Quit" command (CMD-Q) in an application running under Lion. It certainly doesn't function as we are used to, and for me it created quite a bit of confusion.
Forgive my simplification here...
Quitting an Application in Lion is really more like "hiding" an application. For all practical purposes, when you quit, the application and all of it's windows are gone. This part looks just like it always has.
What is different is if you relaunch that application again, it doesn't launch fresh, but it "reveals" itself with all of the windows that were open when you used "quit".
Note, that I am not talking about just the new applications from Apple that take advantage of things like the Versions and Resume capabilities, I am talking about legacy apps like Office 2008.
So lets say you want to work on a Word document: You double click on the document and it opens. You make your changes, save it with CMD-S and then Quit with CMD-Q. So far so good - things work just like they always did.
Now lets day tomorrow, you need to work on another document, so you double click on the second document. Word launches as normal, but you see not only the document you double-clicked on, but also any other document that was open when you last quit Word.
In general, I guess we shouldn't be using CMD-Q, when we are finished with a document, we should be CLOSING THE WINDOW (CMD-W?). THis way you don't leave windows open when you are finished with an application, and you relaunch it.
It makes sense, I guess, but I wasn't expecting anything like this.
Here are a couple of other examples, I ran into with this:
Double Click on an image on your desktop and look at it in Preview (I know you can use Quick view, but bear with me...). CMD-Q when you are done, and then later double click on another image. Now you have two open. Seems like we are going to have to retrain ourselves to use CMD-W to close windows and forget about CMD-Q, unless we want to "suspend" all of the open windows for now? Seems like a much less likely used function, but maybe I am just too old school...
One more:
Say you are searching for something on the web, and you have a number of windows open with tabs, etc. When you are done, you quit Safari with CMD-Q. See where I am going with this? When I come back tomorrow and relaunch Safari? Boom - all of my windows are open again, even though I am done with them.
I need to retrain my brain to use CMD-W and not CMD-Q...
Now a more technical question: What happens if I have a misbehaving app that I would normally just quit and relaunch (like Safari)? Lets say Flash is kind of wacky and is making your fans run, etc. Normally, I CMD-Q and relaunch. Now the CMD-Q won't stop the Safari process. Not sure of closing a Window would either. Do I have to kill it off in Activity Monitor?
Obviously this parallels the issues with IOS, where you can double click the home button and then truly kill off the running programs.
How do we accomplish that in Lion? Does Force Quit do that, or do you go to Activity Monitor?
Forgive my simplification here...
Quitting an Application in Lion is really more like "hiding" an application. For all practical purposes, when you quit, the application and all of it's windows are gone. This part looks just like it always has.
What is different is if you relaunch that application again, it doesn't launch fresh, but it "reveals" itself with all of the windows that were open when you used "quit".
Note, that I am not talking about just the new applications from Apple that take advantage of things like the Versions and Resume capabilities, I am talking about legacy apps like Office 2008.
So lets say you want to work on a Word document: You double click on the document and it opens. You make your changes, save it with CMD-S and then Quit with CMD-Q. So far so good - things work just like they always did.
Now lets day tomorrow, you need to work on another document, so you double click on the second document. Word launches as normal, but you see not only the document you double-clicked on, but also any other document that was open when you last quit Word.
In general, I guess we shouldn't be using CMD-Q, when we are finished with a document, we should be CLOSING THE WINDOW (CMD-W?). THis way you don't leave windows open when you are finished with an application, and you relaunch it.
It makes sense, I guess, but I wasn't expecting anything like this.
Here are a couple of other examples, I ran into with this:
Double Click on an image on your desktop and look at it in Preview (I know you can use Quick view, but bear with me...). CMD-Q when you are done, and then later double click on another image. Now you have two open. Seems like we are going to have to retrain ourselves to use CMD-W to close windows and forget about CMD-Q, unless we want to "suspend" all of the open windows for now? Seems like a much less likely used function, but maybe I am just too old school...
One more:
Say you are searching for something on the web, and you have a number of windows open with tabs, etc. When you are done, you quit Safari with CMD-Q. See where I am going with this? When I come back tomorrow and relaunch Safari? Boom - all of my windows are open again, even though I am done with them.
I need to retrain my brain to use CMD-W and not CMD-Q...
Now a more technical question: What happens if I have a misbehaving app that I would normally just quit and relaunch (like Safari)? Lets say Flash is kind of wacky and is making your fans run, etc. Normally, I CMD-Q and relaunch. Now the CMD-Q won't stop the Safari process. Not sure of closing a Window would either. Do I have to kill it off in Activity Monitor?
Obviously this parallels the issues with IOS, where you can double click the home button and then truly kill off the running programs.
How do we accomplish that in Lion? Does Force Quit do that, or do you go to Activity Monitor?
