Window Titles/Labels in OS X?

[Thunderbird]

Recent switcher.

One thing I miss from Windows is the ability to glance at the task bar on the bottom and read truncated title descriptors on the task bar buttons of each open window. It's a way of knowing and locating what (and where) each window is by just looking, without having to do anything -- like mouse over an icon, or clicking, or using Expose.

Is there anything I can do to make all open windows have titles or descriptors -- whether it's a file name, or Safari window name, etc. -- in Mac OS? Is there any third party utility app?

I find Snow Leopard to be more application centric, rather than window centric.

Thanks

 

[maflynn]

No that I'm aware, all of that is really OS dependent and since OSX doesn't rely on the window bar for titles but the menu bar, I don't think you'll find anything.

Both OSs have their own unique approaches to things and their peculiarities, I'd say just learn to except the OSX way of things like this and before too long you'll not even notice that you'll be looking at the menu bar and not the window bar

 

[Mal]

I find Snow Leopard to be more application centric, rather than window centric.

This is the key here. It's not just Snow Leopard, btw, that's been the case since, at the very least, System 7 (the first Mac system I heavily used). The MacOS has always been based on the application model, which Windows does not follow.

Trust me, it has some very nice advantages, such as being able to open a new window within an application instead of just opening another copy of the application. It's just something you'll need to adjust too before you'll be really comfortable using your Mac, but once you do, it's very nice.

jW

 

[tpg]

Of course, Windows 7 now has a much more application-centric model. Remarkable how familiar the new task bar seems - I wonder why?!

I've used primarily OS X for a few years now, and I do work in a rather different way than with something like Gnome, KDE, or Windows pre-7. I generally use Expose a lot, since this reveals all your open windows along with titles, and has the added advantage of being able to recognise a window quickly just by looking at it.

 

[Thunderbird]

Thanks, I guess I'm out of luck with window labels. I do really like Expose (and Spaces), it just seems like an extra step to have to perform just to know what windows I have open.

I'm also still trying to get used to using the menu bar. In Windows, all the menus and function tools are located within the app window itself. In OS X some functions are within the app window and other functions are in the menu bar, so you have to look in two places. When I first got my Mac, I thought something was wrong with TextEdit because for about an hour I couldn't find where to resize the fonts.