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

You can't have it both ways - last year anyone using OS X that wanted a maximize or fullscreen button was laughed at for not having the multi-tasking mindset. This year Apple introduces full-screen so that "now you can concentrate on one thing at a time without distractions".

Etienne Maheu wrote:

 

On OS X, if you maximise a window, it will resize to show all of it's content, but no more. That way, you don't end up with tons of wasted space on each side of a document, or browser window. This is a lot more useful that the maximise implementation in Windows which will make you lose a lot os screenestates in most applications.

 

I can't have it both ways?

Really?

If I use Windows 7 for example, I can run apps in full screen (let's say windows media player) on one monitor, and then on the other monitor, open excel to edit a spreadsheet -- running an app in full screen on one monitor doesn't black out the other monitors -- that's just plain stupid.

If I wanted the other monitors blacked out, there's this thing called a power button on the front of each one -- I could simply push the buttons!

Also the new multitasking system in lion IS good, the problem is very simple and should be an easy fix -- each monitor should have it's own workspaces, and when running a fullscreen app in one workspace, it should not affect the other workspaces.  It's not that hard of a concept to grasp, and should not be that hard to fix.

You're forgetting that there is one big difference between a fullscreen app and a maximized app. A fullscreen app is designed to take up all the space so you don't end up with huge blocks of wasted white space everywhere.

Right, it's designed to take up all the space on ONE monitor.

Why would it take up all the space across all the monitors that you use?

That's silly!

I feel really bad for the people who bought those super expensive thunderbolt displays -- let's say they have two of them along with the laptop's own display...if you're watching a quicktime movie in full screen on one display, it blacks out the rest...Seriously, lol.  This is roflcopter material...Someone just spent 2000$ on two screen that get blacked out every time they want to watch a movie.

I never said I liked it that way. I use three displays so I'am just as stuck with this silly problem as everyone on this thread. I just said that the idea behind a fullscreen and a maximized app isn't the same. At least, there is still applications like VLC that implement the old fullscreen behaviour and you can allway use applications like BetterSnapTools to help get more out of the space on your screens.

Those new fuction that just leave a way the profesional just pis me off. Any way for those of you that made a clean install or bought a computer with lion on it juste download Quicktime 7... it still have the old full screen option and all the classic fuction that were relly important like export(not share..) import image sequence...

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL923

Azathoth101 wrote:

 

You can't have it both ways - last year anyone using OS X that wanted a maximize or fullscreen button was laughed at for not having the multi-tasking mindset. This year Apple introduces full-screen so that "now you can concentrate on one thing at a time without distractions".

You can definitely have MS and multiple displays. Spaces was never about "no distractions" it was about workflows and the ability to isolate them. What this does is expand them to Desktops which takes more time to navigate through and swipe through.

There are a number of things against your poor argument relying on the notion that apple did this to make you conectrate on one thing. Riddle me this though, what if what you are doing requires you to look at more then one thing?

I've suggested in feedback that they unlink the displays so they use MS independently of eachother, this simple fix would solve everyone's issue with FS apps MS and multiple displays and still give other people the function that they have now. a simple toggle for mission control and multiple displays to unlink them would be one feature to save them all!! who's with me?

ontop of monetary benefits (multiple thunderbolt displays), I see this as something that would increase someone's workflow.

My idea:

I am with you "theSmokeMonster"

UnixToy wrote:

 

 

 

I am with you "theSmokeMonster"

woot!

I think the issue is that they have a reduced API for fullscreen to speed things up. Not unlike DirectX games which take over your graphics display. This guarantees no overlapping windows etc and allows for different screen resolutions.

So I think they did this for speed. It bypasses the normal windowing API so things happening in a remote window are not serviced. Should be great for games as they won't be running in a window.

Applications can still do a borderless maximize window if the programmer codes it.

I think this will be a passing issue. In the meantime, just don't hit that button if it annoys you

it's my understanding that that's how macs in general work. So if an application fails, it doesn't crash the whole computer, just that app. If anything, fullscreening an app would make things heavier, not liter. and I doubt it'll make your applications run faster.

It will definitely makes things faster (unless written very poorly by Apple).

There is no multi-windowing stuff, so there is no need to buffer and redraw areas of the screen that are fully or partially hidden by another window, popup, mouseover, taskbar / launcher etc. That is huge.

So the extra layer that re-maps window data to screen data doesn't need to exist.

This is the whole reason for Microsoft inventing DirectX in the first place, to allow for hardware acceleration by bypassing as much of Windows as possible, and also why games are run in full screen and not in a window on the desktop (because running in a window on the desktop has so much extra overhead).

I do think though they should make a alt-click do the maximise-window, so people have both options.

No it doesn't change anything, you still need to compose the screen from the multiple controls in one window. BTW, the fullscreen thing for games has nothing to do with it. It's just because since Windows XP lack a desktop windows manager, only one application at a time can use DirectX so there is no way to compose a hardware accelerated window with a non hardware accelerated window because the buffers can't talk to each other. That's why they introduced a DWM in Vista. Now, the window composition step is handled by the hardware and every windows are actually a DirectX surface. You don't have to redraw the partially hidden windows either since each one has its own buffer. You just need to recompose the screen which is really fast and easy to do. That's why you don't see those http://imageshack.us/f/87/22120951.jpg/ in Vista when the Aero interface is enabled and that's also why moving windows around won't use up all your CPU

To summerise, there is no constant redraw in mordern OSes. They only redraw a window when they need to. Each window has it's own buffer and is hardware accelerated. There is no extra overhead to run a DirectX application in a window since the OS will hate to compose the screen anyway in fullscreen. That composition step is handled by a Desktop Window Manager (DWM on Windows, Quark Extreme on OS X, Gnome/KDE on Linux). What makes application take down the whole system is kernel mode vs user mode code execution and not rendering.

That's an awesome solution...I don't think they'll do it but it's still awesome and honestly how I expected Lion to act to begin with.

Ok, I did some research, and you are correct assuming using modern os and modern graphics cards with loads of memory and opengl optimizations have been setup to mitigate the concerns I had.

I never had such hardware and stopped using Windows after XP.

I think this article explains the concerns also

http://hacksoflife.blogspot.com/2009/12/full-screen-or-windowed-mode.html

It discusses the game x-plane and why they don't use fullscreen mode, but rather full-window mode.

It does say fullscreen is faster though (obvious really as it's doing less) , although not as dramatic as I was thinking.

I have no idea whether fullscreen on a Mac is using the window manager or not. I was guessing as it seems a waste of time to use the window manager when there is only ever 1 window, and it does seem faster to me