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

@sparklellama Wanted to thank you for your tip.  I, for one, didn't know you could add desktops.  I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to figure that out, and it makes me wonder how many other hidden features there are.  Sorry for some of the obtuse comments here...

Mission control is actually supposed to automatically add desktops for you based on your app usage and which apps run in full screen.  Open safari, then hit the button to run it in full screen mode -- it creates a new desktop (or space, what I call them).  It's also supposed to automatically gather windows on certain desktops and arrange them for you.

It doesn't work out too well imho.

If I want to create a new space, I'll do it myself thank you.

If I want to arrange apps in certain ways -- I'll do that myself as well.

The only thing I like are the gestures that allow you to flick between apps and spaces.

I think this whole mess is a result of Apple trying to make things "too" user-friendly.

The problem with this notion -- in this specific situation -- is that people who want things to be uber-user friendly aren't going to concern themselves with using virtual desktops.

Richard Olpin wrote:

 

Spaces or multiple desktops have absolutely nothing to do with the problems people are having.

Richard, I would agree with everything but this statement. They are intertwined and they don't work if you are using multiple monitors unless you're setting up two difference scenarios where they don't relate to each other. Most of the time I want all my apps to work with each other so I have ignored spaces and wait for apple to improve on it in the way I've already suggested or someone else's way. The fact that Full-screen apps use desktops and blanks out the other monitors is because mission control/spaces is flawed and needs to be addressed to handle multiple monitors better.

Other then that, maximizing the window and fullscreen apps are completely separate and I agree with you. But the root of the problem IS spaces/mission control

Here is is, a year since this thread started, and nothing has changed for the user's benefit.  I'm a new mac convert, and after working very hard and spending a very great deal of time looking here for answers, I'm on the verge of perferting this pretty mac and installing an OS that has the windows thing down.

I just installed 10.7.3 update and dual screen Mission control does seem to be a little smoother !

Still apparently no option to stop full screen apps from blanking the display though .

Yeah I said the same thing awhile back, like 6 months in to Lion...I feel they purposely designed things this way and probably won't change them, ever.  Even the mac fanboys \ girls don't like this *feature* - and they will defend everything apple does in an argument until they die.

One possible solution -- there's methods to "upgrade" back to SL (:P) on the 2011 mini \ air (or other macs that ship with lion), might just check those out.

One of the best things that I really miss about the old spaces is the auto drag -- drag a window towards the top \ bottom \ left \ right of the screen, it automatically puts it in a new space. 

This situation drives me crazy. I left feedback following TheSmokeMonster's advice. This thread has over 47k views. I hope some sizable percentage of those viewers left Apple feedback.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Already sent feedback, hope they fix this soon. Cheers.

Well....you gota dream big.  When I first started looking for a solution to this, I found the same issue going back to 2007.  When I tried to get help from the so called "Apple Care" I quickly was told that they don't care if any part of the problem can in any way be linked to something without the Apple Logo...even though the problem clearly exists with dual Apple monitors.  Bitter?  A tad.

I also submitted feedback for this. For some reason I have the feeling that this is not gonna be changed, simply because the initial idea and technical implementation is so flawed that it would require some massive rethinking and basically starting from scratch. Fullscreen works really badly in Lion because the whole system is geared towards having a million windows on top of each other.

Sometimes even finding two windows of the same application can be a pain - especially if one window is a system message / popup and doesn't show up in mission control.

This window management system that apple has created looks more and more like "fixes" to a problem that is underlying the whole system.

But it sure is pretty to look at, though...

@ Phero2: disagree. The fix looks simple to me, just do what the current version of Chrome does when fullscreen is selected. When fullscreened, it leaves the other monitor free, no matter what monitor it is running on.

QuickTime 7 also works perfectly fine.

Thanks Phero2...I thought it was just me.  I often feel like I'm dumpster diving, trying to find a document on an extremeliy cluttered desktop just because I'm multi tasking. 

@ Phero2: disagree. The fix looks simple to me, just do what the current version of Chrome does when fullscreen is selected. When fullscreened, it leaves the other monitor free, no matter what monitor it is running on.

Seriously?  I gotta try this.  I've never used chrome on mac.  Let me give it a shot ^_^

So I'm not a developer (for OS X anyways) but if what you're saying is true then it looks like there's something that individual app developers can do to make sure that when their app runs in full screen, it doesn't blank out the other displays.  Obviously for safari, quick time, and anything made by apple, they won't do this, and let's say they never unlink displays from mission control (ie. they never implement smokemonster's solution) -- this is at least hope that *something* can be done.

EDIT:

Can you tell me what version of chrome you're using?  The latest one is afaik 17.0.963.46 -- and it's still blanking out the secondary monitor when I run it in full screen mode on 10.7.3 with all the latest updates....

Also btw not to be mean but your post crushed my hope