red green and yellow buttons

but the green I thought was to either shrink page size to user preference and then when pressed again go to full size.

The green resizes the window to and from the minimum size the program thinks it needs to be to display the content. Option-clicking it may produce a full screen window; if not, drag the window's title bar and the box at the bottom right corner until the window is the desired size.

(53825)

unfortunatly, the green button doesn't always work well. for example, safari does this pretty well: click the green button and safari gets as big as the current page. but in firefox this doesn't work. so it really depends on the app.

I'm fairly certain the red button is supposed to behave differently depending on whether or not the applications can have multiple windows open or not. So most of Apple's programs (Safari, Mail, Terminal, Console, etc) only close the window. Most applications that only have one window simply quit.

Of course, this has only been my general experience, and there have been exceptions; it's really up to the developer to specify the behaviour of their application. And I'm not sure what the Apple Human Interface Guidelines specify for that behaviour, either (although you would expect that the behaviour displayed by most applications probably conforms to the guidelines, on the assumption that most developers try to follow the guidelines).

Niel wrote:
The green resizes the window to and from the minimum size the program thinks it needs to be

Apple has no consistent rule for the green button; it isn't worth trying to figure it out. In Safari and others, it will resize to content. In TextEdit, Mail, and others, it will maximize to full screen. In iTunes 9 and earlier, it will change the window mode. In iTunes 10, the green button is gray...

I think the observation of the red button is correct; if an app has one window it quits, if it has multiple windows the window closes but the app stays open.

Network 23 wrote:

Niel wrote:
The green resizes the window to and from the minimum size the program thinks it needs to be

Apple has no consistent rule for the green button; it isn't worth trying to figure it out. In Safari and others, it will resize to content. In TextEdit, Mail, and others, it will maximize to full screen. In iTunes 9 and earlier, it will change the window mode. In iTunes 10, the green button is gray...

Except for iTunes, it is consistent. But, you have to understand the concept and what is being displayed. The Zoom button toggles between a user state and the smallest size which will hold all of the content of the window. In Text Edit, there is no wrapping. A line of text will stretch across the entire screen. So, if you Zoom to the content state, the window will fill the screen. If you tell TE to wrap to page, the zoom width will be only page width, not full screen. Mail is similar in that there are no line breaks in a message, so the smallest size is the full screen. I can't defend iTunes and the debacle that is it's Zoom button.

I think the observation of the red button is correct; if an app has one window it quits, if it has multiple windows the window closes but the app stays open.

The Close button closes the document window. In accordance with the user interface guidelines, if the App has no reason to stay open without a document window, the app can close if the last document window is closed. Utilities will often do this. A Document editor will likely not close the app as it is much faster (with very little resource overhead) to keep the app open waiting until the user begins a new document.

Also realize that these are not System defined behaviors. They are listed in the User Interface Guidelines, but it is up to the developer to implement the features to comply with the UIGs.

Barney-15E wrote:
Except for iTunes, it is consistent. But, you have to understand the concept and what is being displayed. The Zoom button toggles between a user state and the smallest size which will hold all of the content of the window. In Text Edit, there is no wrapping. A line of text will stretch across the entire screen. So, if you Zoom to the content state, the window will fill the screen. If you tell TE to wrap to page, the zoom width will be only page width, not full screen. Mail is similar in that there are no line breaks in a message, so the smallest size is the full screen. I can't defend iTunes and the debacle that is it's Zoom button.

Well, nice try, but it doesn't explain a lot of things. It doesn't explain why I view a single photo in iPhoto and the two zoom states that the green button does are the last two I used and have nothing to do with the size of the content. It doesn't explain why web pages with no set page size won't maximize. It doesn't explain why Preview does maximize, even when the actual size of the photo in pixels is not even close to the size of the display.

Also realize that these are not System defined behaviors. They are listed in the User Interface Guidelines, but it is up to the developer to implement the features to comply with the UIGs.

When the developer in all the above examples is Apple, and the logic takes so many words to explain, and after all that it still does not explain everything Apple does, the widget in question has long ago left the land of "intuitive and Mac-like."

Well, nice try, but it doesn't explain a lot of things. It doesn't explain why I view a single photo in iPhoto and the two zoom states that the green button does are the last two I used and have nothing to do with the size of the content.

No pictures in iPhoto on this mac, so I can't figure out what your on about.

It doesn't explain why web pages with no set page size won't maximize.

I've never seen an inconsistency with Safari. It zooms down to the width of the content.

It doesn't explain why Preview does maximize, even when the actual size of the photo in pixels is not even close to the size of the display.

I don't see this behavior in Preview. It toggles between the user size and the minimum size to show the image. Maybe your confusing which is the user state and which is the content state. When an item is first opened, it appears to zoom to content. First click of zoom toggles to full screen which appears to be the default user state. If I adjust the size of the window from either state, the next click of zoom takes me to zoom to content.

When the developer in all the above examples is Apple, and the logic takes so many words to explain, and after all that it still does not explain everything Apple does, the widget in question has long ago left the land of "intuitive and Mac-like."

Well, nice try, anyway.

I'd say the Green button is one or the most inconsistent things in Mac OS X. With most of my apps, I find if I manually resize a window from what the default size is, the green button then will toggle between the default and custom sizes. Other than that, I don't really know :P

I seem to remember reading once about a program that made the button work in a normal, consistent way like the maximize button on windows.

Weird thing I just noticed about the red button. It only closes the open window on System Profiler, it doesn't quit the program. One might think that you'd only have one window in System Profiler and that the red button should therefore quit the program, but..........

Regards,
Steve M.

And the red button usually just closes the current page. There may be certain times, maybe with some utilities, that it actually quits the application.

Regards,
Steve M.

You can open a saved report. So, it's just like any other document based program (except you can't edit the documents).