Dual monitors and fullscreen fiasco, is there a work around?

I am a huge apple fan but i totally agree that this feature NEEDS to be included in an update that comes out sooner rather than later!! I would defintiely use this a lot, It doesnt even seem that hard to include.

Here's what works for me.

First some info: MacBook Pro 2012 with Mountain Lion and 42 Inch LG HDTV

I use the Moshi Mini to HDMI to output from the Mac to the TV

On Mac, I go to the Display settings and 'arrangements', I put the TV to the left of the Mac (works on the right, too).

I then open iTunes and manually put it on the HDTV with the mouse and start the video playing

I then use two finger clics on the trackpad (or right click mouse) and select 'Pay video in separate window'

I then click on the video, then use the two finger click and choose 'Fit to Screen'

NOT 'Full screen', but 'FIT' to screen.

I think have the video playing full screen on the television and can do whatever else on the MacBook Pro, like surf the web, etc....

Again, the idea that solved this for me: use iTunes to view the video, put in separate window and then put the separate window as 'Fit' to screen!!

Glad that works for you.

Not to belabour the point, but as you indicate, you're not using full-screen mode.

I recently noticed that Firefox 14.x now has full-screen mode (well, single-app mode) which now makes it impossible to put Firefox in kiosk mode - which is now full-screen mode - and still have the other monitor(s) available.

Imagine if you had an external display (let's say a projector) for giving a talk and you want Firefox full screen on the external monitor/project and your notes for the talk on the Macbook Pro screen. Nope. Can'be be done. You have to print out your talk notes if you want Firefox in full-screen mode on the external monitor/projector.

Oh boy. I wish Apple would address this, or at minimum acknowledge the issue.

OK. After reading this last message about an app full-screen on a projector and notes/docs on another monitor, I have to ask: What is the definition of full screen?

For me personally, it basically just means hiding the menu bar to have use of the whole screen with the secondary effect of creating a new space for that app. So, in KB from Ontario's example, if I just have my MBP and a projector hooked up to the HDMI (or other port) as a second screen and make my presentation app fill that 2nd screen - which won't have a menu bar or dock - how would this be any different from the presentation running full screen mode?

unfrostedpoptart wrote:

OK. After reading this last message about an app full-screen on a projector and notes/docs on another monitor, I have to ask: What is the definition of full screen?

The generally accepted definition is a full-screen utilization of the entire display area, without window borders, menus or other widgets visible in the periphery of the application space. By using a special presentation application that defaults to this mode of operation, i.e., NOT using the built-in OS X API, you're experiencing an application-specific implementation of full-screen mode.

This has been how it has always been done in OS X pre-Lion. The problem comes with applications that use OS X's API. These typically feature the full-screen button (diagonally-opposed arrows on the upper-right corner of the application window). THIS is the culprit. Applications invoking their homebrewed full-screen implementation work just fine on Lion and Mountain Lion. Apps that choose to implement Apple's own API for that feature, e.g., Safari or Firefox 14, now blank out all displays that are not home to the full-screen application.

So, to be redundant and hopefully clear: Your application in full-screen mode does not appear to use the OS X API to implement that feature; therefore, you are not experiencing the problem being discussed in these 41 pages of the thread.

Following up on myself: I watching the Apple keynote presentation of full-screeen and read this article:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mac-OS-X-10-7-Lion-Features-Full-Screen-Apps-1909 94.shtml

So, it's pretty much what I wrote with the added "feature" that all windows for that app will be on the new, virtual screen together. Again, for me, that's virtually useless. I'm always using multiple apps at once and often copying and pasting between them. I want the opposite: multiple windows visable on the iPad!

I'm in full-screen mode right now on my 11" MBA running Safari. The only different I see between it and regular mode with the window maximized is hiding the menu bar. So, if the green traffic-light worked like maximize does on every other operating system, and I installed a menu-bar auto hide program, there would be no point to full screen, other than a very slight convenience factor.

OK. After reading this last message about an app full-screen on a projector and notes/docs on another monitor, I have to ask: What is the definition of full screen?

As far as OS X Lion (and Mountain Lion) is concerned here's what "full-screen" means - and this is what we have problems with:

(Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4530)

Again, full-screen vs. maximized window is not the only issue at hand. When multiple monitors are used, you cannot switch between Spaces. In my opinion, that is the primary issue. Try hooking up a projector and switching Spaces on the monitor - it will do the same on the projector, regardless if the app being projected is in full-screen mode or not. If you want to show a presentation, you have to go back to 1-Space mode.

RevChris wrote:

Again, full-screen vs. maximized window is not the only issue at hand. When multiple monitors are used, you cannot switch between Spaces. In my opinion, that is the primary issue. Try hooking up a projector and switching Spaces on the monitor - it will do the same on the projector, regardless if the app being projected is in full-screen mode or not. If you want to show a presentation, you have to go back to 1-Space mode.

This is a different issue. No other window manager offers "unlinked" virtual extended desktop spaces and, frankly, I wouldn't want one. My workflow over many years of using extended virtual desktops involves multi-screen work areas. Keeping them linked is very much desired. And, frankly, unlinking them is NOT a nontrivial matter programmatically speaking. The video card treats all monitors as a single canvas. Unlinking them would require each monitor to be treated as separate canvases; not something I can easily wrap my head around when you invariably will want to drag-and-drop between them.

Had Apple chosen to not move apps to a new Space and blank the extended desktop areas, we'd have the capacity to populate our additional desktops with whatever apps we want. And wanting a full-screen app to "stay in place" regardless of which space you moved to would easily be accomplished (as it is on Snow Leopard) simply by putting your full-screen app on all desktops. Problem solved.

*golf clap*

Message was edited by: Trane Francks (to correct linguistic buffoonary)

unfrostedpoptart wrote:

I'm in full-screen mode right now on my 11" MBA running Safari. The only different I see between it and regular mode with the window maximized is hiding the menu bar.

AND YOU CAN'T RUN ANY OTHER APPLICATIONS AT THE SAME TIME.

So, if you want to use Grab to get a chunk of the screen... nope.

If you want to use the ColourDropper to get the colour of the screen... nope.

etc.

That's the effect on a *single* monitor. We're also miffed about the multi-screen functionality, which is different to this.

I found this post, googling, while trying to slingbox. Basically, I have a 17" MacBook Pro, with an external LG regular Screen and SlingBox. I put it in Full Screen move the window, and had a little difficulty with the remote but had it in full screen on the external and was able to work on the 17". I tried to open it up and watch the Olympics again, while on the road, at my Aunties, but it stopped working. I couldn't remember what I had effortless done two days before. Then I started googling....

Found this thread.

Esentially what you do with SlingBox, oh and DirecTV I guess, is:

Get your external going

I choose 720p and 1280x800

Put the displays in Mirror Mode

You should have a cropped 1280x800 at 720p and the External at 720p

Double click the actual video in the browser window

It should go full screen on both (with the top black and bottom black on MacBook 17)

Double click them again, and get the browser window playing video

Click the remote button in Slingbox window

Double click the video again to get it fullscreen (DON'T USE FULL SCREEN BUTTON from Sling or Apple)

Just Double click the video

Now you are back in Fullscreen and if you move the cursor (mouse / touchscreen) you get an auto toggle remote

While in Fullscreen get the remote to auto toggle on

Goto the remote, click drag the remote just a little, don't click a Button on the remote

Drag the remote and the "invisible window" will offset it by about 80x80 pixels (appr.)

let go of the mouse

At this point turn off mirroring

now you have a 1280x800 and the external 720p

with Windows Style Video Window and the remote attached to the left

once you turned off mirroring it might be a little tricky but you can

Drag the remote again, to the 720p external display

once you get this adjusted the way you like

Double click the video - it goes back to browser

Double click the video - it goes back to external

While on the external

You can mouse over to the other desktop and start doing other stuff

Enjoy!!!

Agree this is a pretty big oversight in functionality. I should be able to go full-screen in my code on one screen and have a browser to test the code in the other. Right now, my poor external monitor just becomes useless in full-screen mode.

i was in an email discussion with a friend for a LONG time about this. he'd been forwarding me posts from this thread. so i thought i'd share some of this here. i'd sent a much longer reply to jerry but have edited it down here. hopefully, this still makes sense after deleting a lot of text. i have an implementation recommendation i'll send to apple at the end...

--

i'd been reading some of these posts a while ago, but i wasn't quite sure what was going on since i only have 10.7 on my MBPro, but not my desktop, which has 2 monitors. so i thought this was a 10.7 issue, but i think i understand what is going on with this now. it goes back to what i learned about apple's "spaces" when i connect my MBPro to a projector for a meeting when 10.5 first came out in 2008... i was trying to run a meeting with a projector from my MBPro. my setup was with a laptop and a projector with the projector set as "not mirrored" in the display system prefs... when i connected my MBPro to a projector and had spaces turned on, spaces drove me crazy because the MBPro display and the projector display would switch "spaces" together when what i wanted was the projector to say on a space and my MBPro projector to be able to do what it needed (switch spaces).

i discovered that when connecting my MBPro to a projector that the workspace for spaces is a side-by-side virtual viewing space. in other words, think of it as a giant virtual space and each monitor is like a window or telescope to view some part of that virtual space. you can set the displays setting so that both displays view the same location, e.g. mirrored, or you can set the displays to view 2 contiguous spaces with whatever arrangement you set in displays (side-by-side, top-to-bottom, etc.)... this virtual grid has been the basis for macintosh's graphics display since the very beginning. in 1987, i took a mac programming class and the teacher explained it then. in memory, there is a conceptual x-y grid. if i remember correctly, the pixel in the upper left corner of the display corresponds to coordinate 1, -1 on the virtual grid. the pixels in the display extend on the x-y axis. for each virtual workspace in "Spaces", there is a completely new grid. so moving windows between a workspace on my MBPro monitor caused the projector workspace to move to the new workspace at the same time. it is like human eyes. we can't turn each eye in an independent direction to look at and process completely different images. it is not how we are wired.

so i couldn't try to run a meeting from my laptop and switch do different spaces on my laptop monitor. what i really wanted was the projector to be its own space in spaces instead of sharing the multiple virtual workspaces with the MBPro monitor. to accomplish this i always have to disable spaces so that spaces wouldn't jump to an alternate "space" on the overhead project because i was trying to access a window that was in a different "space" than the one i had started using the projector on. i wrote to apple in 10.5 and said that spaces needed better integration with the display program so that it didn't work this way. my preferred approach would be to make the project it's own space and only have the other spaces available on the internal monitor.

what is interesting is that since i have a second monitor on my desktop i actually want that one to work the way apple set it up, with both displays switching to spaces and track each other. so space 1, i keep ical open on the second display and email and other types of admin window open on my primary display. for my projects space, i keep PDF files with diagrams and schematics open on the second display while i'm editing my own files in the primary display. or if i have to scan something, i have acrobat and the scanner windows in the second display while i'm working on the primary display in a 3rd space...

now that 10.7 uses spaces to implement full screen mode, it is just built on top of spaces, where hitting the full screen setting puts a program in a new "space". but because apple implemented "spaces" as an extension to the work area on the primary display when not mirrored, when jumping to a new space, the second display swaps to the virtual space associated with the new space created by the full screen mode. and because it hasn't put anything on that external monitor, it displays a blank background, just like the experiences i had with spaces when i connect and external projector. so in effect the problem people are having is the same problem i had in 2008 with a MBPro display and a projector. because of the underlying way spaces works, it is a little hard to figure out how apple would make it different, except that they couldn't build "full screen" on top of "spaces".

a possible solution would be for apple to add another setting to "displays prefs" that lets the second monitor either be it's own space or serve as a "side-by-side" space to whatever space one is working it (the way it works now). perhaps i'll send that as feedback again.

I supposed everyone is doing the obvious thing of just resizing a window to fill the screen instead of using the "full screen" feature... that does allow one to keep what ever they want on the second display even though it means ignoring the "full screen" button.

anyway, hope this helps a little and the explanation is not to confusing. it is actually a fairly complicated problem and hard to explain…

jeffery

Jeffery Nunes wrote:

anyway, hope this helps a little and the explanation is not to confusing. it is actually a fairly complicated problem and hard to explain…

You know, I actually get the impression you've read little -- if any -- of the 41 pages of this thread. The mechanics of how it is implemented has been discussed and compared with other versions of OS X. Ad nauseam. And your comment of using a projector and being frustrated by Spaces indicates that you don't quite catch that any application can be made to "stay in place" on a particular monitor regardless of which desktop you're on just by setting it to all desktops. Obviously, this is broken in Lion and Mountain Lion when full-screen mode is used, but it is a useful way of getting certain apps to play across multiple desktops in windowed mode. You can have your apps static on any particular desktop or you can have your apps travel across all of them. Easy-peasy. This has been the case for years.

The implementation of Spaces is fine and always has been. Full-screen mode in Lion and Mountain Lion, on the other hand, is badly broken.

I apologize if that sounded snippy, but the problem, ultimately, is that Apple actually created "single-application mode" and labelled it "full-screen mode", probably because the team that designed and developed it came from the iOS side of the street. iOS hasn't discovered multiple monitors yet. (Boy, will they be in for a shock when they do.)

I can see it now ...

"Hey, Peter?"

"Yeah?"

"Get a load of this! Two apps visible AT THE SAME TIME!"

"Wot? NO WAY!? Blimey, that's innovation!"