Anyone grasped dual monitors with Lion yet?

screens are individual.

Go to Settings > Displays

and turn off the option MIRROR DISPLAY inside Arrangement on your main monitor.

that should do the trick.

Todd,

Indeed that's normally a handy feature, except at the end of my lengthy and convoluted description of what I had to do...

"- ironically one can't even trigger Spotlight and do the calculating in there - as menubar is disabled when creating an email - but anyway, I digress."

Which TBH, I think is also a bit a faux pas as Apple's part, as preventing access to menu bar gains nothing, it also makes it impossible to access the "Format" and other menus - I suspect this behaviour must be a bug, and expect it'll be fixed in a short time.

Regards,

Ryan

Not sure that's what he meant.

But screens aren't individual. They're extended. But with all these new innovations from Apple (mission control, full screen apps), that doesn't make as much sense as it used to. There needs to be an option in display preferences to make them completely individually separate from the other - each has it's own mission control, it's own full screen apps, it's own spaces. The menu bar and dock can live on the "primary" display, but that's it.

This might be complicated to pull off on the back end. I don't know. But I have faith in Apple engineer's ingenuity. They just need to be convinced it's worth the effort!

Ryan, we are so off topic with this calc geekiness, but... When I'm running Mail full-screen, I have zero trouble triggering Spotlight by using command-spacebar (and dual monitors). Does that not work for you?

DeaPeaJay is right: it doesn't help to uncheck 'mirror displays' (was never checked) as AddFone suggested.

<Edited by Host>

I haven't changed my settings and I have 2 monitors working as if one screen, as with OS 10.6. The new facility seems to be unnecessary to me.

I'm working slowly on getting to grips with Lion on a triple monitor setup on a Mac Pro. It's gradually coming together, but I am prepared to spend time playing.... It's looking good so far. Life is for learning.... 🙂

Toby - you're right, we're drifting off topic, so I'll make this my last on the off-topic talk.

Odd - I definitely had no access to menubar (via pointer moved to top of screen), and command-space didn't bring up Spotlight (as you pointed out, spotlight is very useful for calculations - I normally use it all the time, which is why it struct me as so disquieting when it didn't appear ;-)) - just to be clear this only occured when the Compose Mail window was opened in Mail.app (with Mail fullscreen) - works fine when viewing emails, though. Odd nonetheless, I'll try it again tomorrow to make sure I'm not going bonkers and possibly start a relevant thread up to see if it's just an oddity on my machine.

Regards,

Ryan

This problem is really annoying. My external monitor is mostly for watching movies since its twice the size as the MBP screen, but I can't get DVD Player to fullscreen on the secondary.

Also, if I full screen an app, as the OP said, the secondary is shrowded in grey tartan. For my work flow, I always keep reference material open on the secondary, and the active, writing screen open on the primary. What's the point of full screen if it cuts your usable space down by 2/3?

For the momnet, I just have to stick with using RightZoom, which at least turns the 'zoom' button into a 'maximize' button, but its nowhere near as cool as fullscreen would be if monitors existed in separate spaces.

Todd Curry wrote:

Ryan, next time you need a quick calc, trigger spotlight. It does math quite well, handling parens nicely. Only thing it doesn't do is put a thousands separator in results, but it has completely replaced calculator for me.

Oh, and yes this reply does nothing to address the issue of the OP, which I share -- I, too, am baffled by the big-screen-of-gray-linen on my 2nd mon.

Why I haven't tried this before now is irrelevant; brilliant tip, Todd!

I am not sure if my experience falls into the correct category here, but my dual-screen setup works just as it did in 10.6.x. I usually use screen 2 for Apple Mail, Remote Desktop, or a VM, all in full-screen (...or taking-up the screen's entire space). Screen one has multiple applications windowed. A full-screen experience on a 27" iMac would be a bit of a waste anyway.

Jason, we are talking about using the new full-screen feature where the app becomes an entire space on its own. When an app is in this mode, the second monitor just goes grey and can't be used.

Yes. That can be a real drag if you are used to something else.

I'm betting Apple's solution would be a knowledgebase article telling us to buy the new Thunderbolt Displays.... which somehow would trigger the code and handle second monitor support perfectly.

:-\

Seems to me that the logic behind fullscreen mode for apps was just that - nothing to distract you, including anything on other attached displays.

Not saying that I agree that this is a good thing - just saying that this appears to be what Apple had in mind. 🙂

And in a way, this does work - if you really want to work distraction free (as a writer, I can understand the need for that).

It doesn't work if all you want is the app to be full screen for max real estate usage.

What's stupid, of course, is to force the full screen display to the primary display - it should go fullscreen on the display it was triggered on. There's a reason why I have this 27" display attached to my MBP, you know 🙂