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Oh Green plus sign button


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I'm sorta the opposite. I think it should always be a smart resize button. Of course, when I say that, I mean that it should be smart all the time. For example, in Safari, I hate how the button makes a tiny window in the lower-left corner of the screen. But in general, having windows take up only the space they need makes multi-tasking much mroe efficient, IMO.

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Before i ever got a mac, it drove me crazy when the windows weren't full size. Now that i have a mac i've gotten used to it and like templeton said, it makes multitasking a lot easier. They reason why making the windows full sized doesn't work is because there is no toolbar to easily open and minimize windows that are hidden behind other windows, like in XP. They green button has a good idea but they could tweak it a little better, or somehow make it more customizable. I like how it makes it as big as it needs to be to see the full document or whatever, but when it starts moving the window around in random corners, it gets annoying.

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Although there's no easy task switching toolbar, there is expose, which IMO is easier to use than Windows taskbar. I can see the usefullness of not having to maximize windows when you have a huge 20+ inch monitor, but working in small windows on a 15.4" laptop screen just feels strange.

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I'm all for consistency, I feel a button should do the same thing everywhere it appears.

 

Drifting off-topic a little, at least OSX isn't cursed with the 'modal window' problem you sometimes get in XP. That's where a modal dialogue box (one that prevents you from carrying on with the parent application until you've dismissed it) will sometimes pop up BEHIND the application window so it's not visible. If you don't know it's there you think the application has crashed. Multi-monitor setups are particularly prone to this, because they tend to default to throwing new windows in the screen where the cursor is currently sitting.

 

While I've got the floor I'll just vent on my BIGGEST gripe with XP - the fact that applications can pop up a window which grabs focus whatever you are doing. If you're typing rapidly in one window, you unexpectedly type into the new window, which might mean answering a dialogue box in a way you didn't want. There are several methods to prevent popped up windows stealing focus (eg TweakUI, ForegroundLockTimeout) , but not all apps follow the rules and Windows is inconsistent in its handling - which brings me neatly back on-topic with consistency again...

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Officially is called the zoom button (not maximize), thus it zooms it and out. It changes the size, from any custom size to (generally) a smart size , and back. In the case of apps with complex workflows integrated in to the one window (ie iPhoto) that convent size is the the maxi,um possible, and it sort of makes sense, specially if you remember you cAn access virtually anything you need from that window.

 

Unfortunately some apps don't play by this rules and add to the confusion.

 

One of the things that I believe is a key factor in confusing people about the zoom button (in switchers particularly) is iTunes, apparently Apple decided that for simplicity sakes the zoom button will zoom to the mini player (or whatever they call it), this is specially true in windows users that are used to have the mini player as a menu option and the maximizer button working normally.

 

 

 

Other frequent confusion comes with the close button

 

the origins of this is as windows users are not used to using the quit menu (most don't even know it exists, and yes, it exists), they just close all of the windows of the app.

 

and as we know, OS X does not quit the app when the windows are closed, unless is is a one window app. But of curse there are exceptions, those apps that makes sense to keep running without a window open windows, like iTunes and p2p/downloading apps. as in the first case that exception alone could be understood if all the apps followed the guidelines, but some don't and so the confusion goes on.

 

Some windows users argue that apps that keep running with all of it's windows closed doesn't make sense. But there is not real reason why apps couldn't keep running without a a window, many apps don't even have a GUI and only run on the background and even in windows many apps continue running without any windows, they just leave a small icon in the sys-tray, on OS X it's on the dock

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