191–200 of 398 posts
When Adobe suite was de facto standard for designing and coding interfaces (you know, Flash) their own software was so immensely bad that there was enough material for a guy to make fun of them on a daily basis for a good couple of years.
Between the rounded corners that don't reach the edges of the viewport, and the behavior when opening a new app for the first time, it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle. Does anyone actually do this? Especially for heavy-duty applications like my web browser and IDE, this has always…
macOS only recently got an option to make windows fill the screen. For most of history what most people would assume is a maximize button (the green one) was actually a zoom button. It sized the window to what the OS thought was appropriate for the content (to the best of my knowledge and experience with it). Apple then made things go full screen, but in a special full screen mode, so macOS worked more like the iPad.…
It works well for me, makes it easy to get two things side by side without wasting space.
Between the rounded corners that don't reach the edges of the viewport, and the behavior when opening a new app for the first time, it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle. Does anyone actually do this? Especially for heavy-duty applications like my web browser and IDE, this has always…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle IMO, this has been their assumption for years, and it actually turned me off when I tried getting used to Mac circa 2006-2007. Coming from Windows at the time, I just couldn't get over a weird anxiety that my application window wasn't maximized,…
While I don't maximize anything on a monitor that wide, I do appreciate Window's snap to half/quarter functionality for monitors that wide, and I wish Mac had the same ability natively.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen half a dozen Mac users and none of them maximized the window very often. They usually had a mishmash of like 12 windows open and randomly all over the screen. Then they used the Alt-Tab to get between them. Basically wherever it opened is where it stayed.
Maybe this explains some of the bizarre questions I've gotten from mac designers. The other day I was explaining to one that their designs fixed width looks silly once it got up towards 4k resolutions. But the designers main concern was if people actually used full screen browsers on 4k monitors and if there was any point in thinking about the design at that resolution. There are plenty of times I enjoy have 2 browse…
1. On a screen share support call with a mac user
2. Asked them to pull up a webpage
3. They pull up a super tiny ass browser window to the point I can't really see anything
4. I ask them to full screen the browser so we can actually read shit
5. The mac user just straight up panics or acts like like I've spoken an alien language to them.
Then I have to go google it and remember that CMD+comma(⌘+,) exists and reveal it to the mac user like it's actual black magic. And then I immediately forget about it until 6 months later when I need to support a mac user again and I repeat the whole cycle again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
macOS only recently got an option to make windows fill the screen. For most of history what most people would assume is a maximize button (the green one) was actually a zoom button. It sized the window to what the OS thought was appropriate for the content (to the best of my knowledge and experience with it). Apple then made things go full screen, but in a special full screen mode, so macOS worked more like the iPad.…
Right, Macs always have had the premise of "spacial window management" (or that's what Siracusa called it), so that's probably how you are 'supposed to' do it. Full Screen Mode was their answer to maximize, going back many years now (10.7).
Obviously all of that works better if Finder windows don't usually fill the screen, but it's not a hard requirement.
I usually use Linux and Windows (pretty much split 50/50) and tbh this is why I never could switch to Mac full time even though I've have had and still have several Macs at home. The full screen beahavior is weird. Is the dock should overlay every single window all the time? If not then why is the dock not hidden by default? If yes then full screen is actually "maximum size app window without overlaying the dock"? Wh…
What about the minimize and maximize buttons being swapped without any way to customize it. That one drives me crazy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I don't maximize anything on a monitor that wide, I do appreciate Window's snap to half/quarter functionality for monitors that wide, and I wish Mac had the same ability natively.
I can't speak to the quarters but you absolutely can snap windows to the left and right halves in MacOS.
Between the rounded corners that don't reach the edges of the viewport, and the behavior when opening a new app for the first time, it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle. Does anyone actually do this? Especially for heavy-duty applications like my web browser and IDE, this has always…
A lot of stupid things about Mac window management stems from the mistake of forcing all applications to share a single menu that's glued to the top of the screen. This essentially turns your entire desktop into ONE application's window, within which its actual windows float around.
Historically this led to the Mac's penchant for apps that spawned an irritating flotilla of windows that you had to herd around your screen. Not only did this deny users a way to minimize the whole app at once, but it also sucked because you could see everything on your desktop (or other apps' UIs) THROUGH the UI of the application you were trying to use. A dysfunctional mess.
Around 15 years ago, I estimate, the huge advantage of a single application window finally permeated the Apple mindset and things have gotten much better in that regard. But Apple should have abandoned the single menu in the transition to OS X, and put menus where they belong: on applications' main frames. That would make the desktop a truly unlimited workspace and eliminate the daily irritation of the menu changes its contents behind the user's back because he clicked on another application's window (perhaps to move it).
Multiple times a day I minimize an application and then attempt to do something in the application that's now filling the screen... only to find that the menu still belongs to the application that isn't even shown. It's just so dumb.
But then... this is the GUI that, for decades, would only let you resize windows from ONE corner and NO edges. Apple grudgingly, half-assedly, and unreliably addressed that in the 2000s, only now to make it even less reliable in the shambolic Tahoe UI.