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What's the deal with minimizing windows on a Mac?

B

bpetruzzo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 22, 2005
102
0
For the life of me I can't figure out why this feature is still here. I've been searching for ways people use it, but I can't really find much. Any time I need to clear things, I just hide them. The only thing I can come up with is in the event that someone wants to hide just one of an application's window.

But also, it seems inefficient. There's a keyboard shortcut to minimize windows, but there doesn't seem to be one to bring it back. Most of the time, it's just annoying because I accidentally click it.

So, if I may ask, how do you use the minimize function if at all?
 
I use it to minimize windows when I need to

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
Different strokes for different folks.

Some people will prefer minimising a windows so it's still physically on the desktop rather than hiding the window.
 
I minimize my Safari window because when I was new to Macs I didn't know about the hide thing. I usually have just one Safari window open that takes up my whole screen.

I don't usually minimize more than one window to the Dock at a time. The rest I let run free on my desktop.
 
If you have multiple safari windows open it works to minimize one of them while you are working on another.
 
I know that, but I just don't like to do that. If I've got more than one Safari window open it is more like three or four.

I don't like the way the Dock feels cluttered when I minimize too many windows to it.
 
If I hide Safari, I may forget about having a window open.

I minimize pages that contain videos/intense graphics and let them load. It would be great that if in the minimized state they would update the icon.

Anyways, minimizing is useful for some and it is dumb that Apple doesn't have a command to bring back the window.
 
FSMBP said:
If I hide Safari, I may forget about having a window open.

I minimize pages that contain videos/intense graphics and let them load. It would be great that if in the minimized state they would update the icon.

Anyways, minimizing is useful for some and it is dumb that Apple doesn't have a command to bring back the window.
Click to expand...

Well, you can't send key shortcut commands to an inactive application. And when you click it to make it active, it brings back the attributive window anyway. If there's more than one window to the same application and it's the active one, clicking the icon won't do anything.. That's quite annoying, but if there were shortcuts to bring back individual windows, that would be tedious.
 
Yeah I was just being picky.

Hopefully, Snow Leopard's minimization technique (where it hides minimized windows essentially) will be updated to show the minimized window behind the applications icon in the dock (ex. the original stack icon view)
 
bpetruzzo said:
The only thing I can come up with is in the event that someone wants to hide just one of an application's window.
Click to expand...

This is the only reason I ever minimize a window, and it's rare at that. Usually, I hide windows using the keyboard shortcut and use command-tab to bring them back when I need them. I hate minimizing windows because I need to use the mouse to bring them back.
 
When I use Photoshop, I often have multiple images open. It's nice to be able to minimize the ones I'm not working on, so as to unclutter the screen. I wouldn't want to be able to hide individual windows, because it's nice having the icon there in the dock.

Working with multiple images in Photoshop on Windows can be annoying, because of the way MDI (doesn't) work.
 
It doesn't seem like it would be too much trouble to make a command-tab type system for minimized windows. I would almost definitely use it then. I often want minimize a single window from an application, but I hate having to move my hand back over to the mouse.
 
I have a button on my mouse mapped to double-click, so I generally double-click the window title bar to minimize. It's faster than navigating to the button.
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
I usually have just one Safari window open that takes up my whole screen.
Click to expand...

Ewe.


and I'm with you OP, I never minimize windows unless I'm playing with the shift slow motion feature. Ever since Exposé, tabs and Spaces I've never really found a situation where I wanted to minimize a window.

For all you clutterbugs out there go download Spirited Away. It's a tiny menubar application that tracks all your apps and hides them after X* amount of time that they aren't the focus.

*specified by the user.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
Ewe.


and I'm with you OP, I never minimize windows unless I'm playing with the shift slow motion feature. Ever since Exposé, tabs and Spaces I've never really found a situation where I wanted to minimize a window.

For all you clutterbugs out there go download Spirited Away. It's a tiny menubar application that tracks all your apps and hides them after X* amount of time that they aren't the focus.

*specified by the user.
Click to expand...

That app is definitely pretty cool. I'm gonna see if it fits my workflow.
 
Minimize isn't the problem per se. It's minimize plus the poorly designed Dock.

I dare say, the original NeXTSTEP did it right: minimize created neatly ordered rows of icons along the bottom of the screen without interfering with the Dock at all.

Minimize as OS X has done it screws up muscle memory, by moving "fixed" icons around in the Dock, and hindering access to commonly used items. It also confounds the Dock metaphor: do Apps go there or Files? Or Windows? Or Dialogs?

Minimize + Dock = Mess
 
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