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I'm curious what the perfectly reasonable work around is. Does it let me run 2 apps full-screen on 2 monitors (something Windows does without any issues whatsoe

by ojbyrne 14y ago

I'm curious what the perfectly reasonable work around is. Does it let me run 2 apps full-screen on 2 monitors (something Windows does without any issues whatsoever)?

epo 14y ago
Drag out the windows by hand to as large as you like, good enough.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  This is downvoted, but I think there's some smartness to it. My experience with the Mac is that apps for it are more often geared to work in not-full-screen windows; my personal hypothesis (with absolutely no documentation or backing) is that more Windows apps are most comfortable to use when maximized (and thus many new-from-Windows users look for a maximization button) because of MS-DOS' full-screen ancestry. In support of this unsupported theory: many more Mac apps seem to look silly when resized to unexpectedly large dimensions than do Windows apps. Full-screen apps in Lion are a bit of a different thing because they exist in a conceptually separate place from "maximized" windows — they are to the side of the desktop, not on top of it.
masklinn 14y ago
The one and only workaround is "don't use fullscreen mode" so it definitely isn't going to let you run 2 apps full-screen because it's not going to let you run any application alongside a fullscreen one in the first place. > something Windows does without any issues whatsoever That is not entirely true, depending how the fullscreened application is coded interacting with the other one may e.g. make the windows toolbar reappear, or (very common for games) minimize the fullscreen application.
- freehunter 14y ago
  I really wish Windows apps had more consistency in their fullscreen behavior. Sometimes they bring up the taskbar, sometimes they behave like normal windows, sometimes they don't even let you scroll off the side anyway. This last behavior is most annoying in strategy games when I'm scrolling the map and have to use the arrow keys for one of the directions, but equally annoying in some FPS games where the cursor scrolls off the side but still behaves normally until you click to fire and then the application loses focus. I'm not even a Mac user but I would take a consistent but irritating behavior over an inconsistent and also irritating behavior. It's more inconvenient to have to disable my second monitor while I'm playing a game.
  - varunsrin 14y ago
    I've found that Dota2 has a very good implementation for multi-monitor behavior. When you're in a menu or waiting to find a game in queue, you can move your mouse off to the second monitor, and click on something and the game will minimize. When you're in game, the game captures the cursor, and doesn't let it move to the second screen unless you alt-tab out of the game window.
    - THE_PUN_STOPS 14y ago
      That's the source engine default behavior and it works really well. Even better when running in window mode with no borders.
res0nat0r 14y ago
The workaround for now is to just run both applications maximized and deal with the small amount of taskbar clutter at the top.
X-Istence 14y ago
Does Windows even have something akin to the full screen mode that is provided in Lion/Mountain Lion? Because as a long time Windows user and recent Mac switcher I am not familiar with it. On the Mac you can run multiple windows and have them all maximised to take up the maximum amount of screen real estate + applicable chrome.
- sk5t 14y ago
  Some Windows apps have supported this via F11 for a very long time (ten years at least?).
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    So it is not an OS wide feature like Mac OS X where implementing it is fairly simple (at least from my experience). Some apps like VLC have supported full screen for years, even before this feature was brought to Mac OS X itself. So I wouldn't say that Windows has something akin to what is available to on Mac OS X.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  Windows might not, but KDE certainly does. It lets you make any window full screen, which gets rid of the borders and makes it take up the whole screen (whichever one it happens to be on). Moreover, it also lets different programs customize their full-screen behavior: for example, Chrome and the Dragon Video Player both have their own full-screen modes. And this still lets you use all of your screens. It's great.
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    Xmonad or others do the same. The open source window managers have always had advanced features that would confuse a lot of people.
    - tikhonj 14y ago
      I could see something like XMonad confusing people just because it's so different. But KDE? Not so much. It's designed to be elegant and easy to use, and I think it's fairly successful. It's actually rather easy to go from Windows to KDE--even easier than Windows to OS X, I think. (Admittedly, this is in large part because KDE is similar to Windows in a lot of ways.) Also, full screen isn't a confusing feature :P. And, of course, Apple is just as happy to confuse people as anybody else--it seems half their users are vague on what exactly the green button does!

by ojbyrne 14y ago

I'm curious what the perfectly reasonable work around is. Does it let me run 2 apps full-screen on 2 monitors (something Windows does without any issues whatsoever)?

epo 14y ago

Drag out the windows by hand to as large as you like, good enough.

glhaynes 14y ago
This is downvoted, but I think there's some smartness to it. My experience with the Mac is that apps for it are more often geared to work in not-full-screen windows; my personal hypothesis (with absolutely no documentation or backing) is that more Windows apps are most comfortable to use when maximized (and thus many new-from-Windows users look for a maximization button) because of MS-DOS' full-screen ancestry. In support of this unsupported theory: many more Mac apps seem to look silly when resized to unexpectedly large dimensions than do Windows apps. Full-screen apps in Lion are a bit of a different thing because they exist in a conceptually separate place from "maximized" windows — they are to the side of the desktop, not on top of it.

masklinn 14y ago

The one and only workaround is "don't use fullscreen mode" so it definitely isn't going to let you run 2 apps full-screen because it's not going to let you run any application alongside a fullscreen one in the first place. > something Windows does without any issues whatsoever That is not entirely true, depending how the fullscreened application is coded interacting with the other one may e.g. make the windows toolbar reappear, or (very common for games) minimize the fullscreen application.

freehunter 14y ago
I really wish Windows apps had more consistency in their fullscreen behavior. Sometimes they bring up the taskbar, sometimes they behave like normal windows, sometimes they don't even let you scroll off the side anyway. This last behavior is most annoying in strategy games when I'm scrolling the map and have to use the arrow keys for one of the directions, but equally annoying in some FPS games where the cursor scrolls off the side but still behaves normally until you click to fire and then the application loses focus. I'm not even a Mac user but I would take a consistent but irritating behavior over an inconsistent and also irritating behavior. It's more inconvenient to have to disable my second monitor while I'm playing a game.
- varunsrin 14y ago
  I've found that Dota2 has a very good implementation for multi-monitor behavior. When you're in a menu or waiting to find a game in queue, you can move your mouse off to the second monitor, and click on something and the game will minimize. When you're in game, the game captures the cursor, and doesn't let it move to the second screen unless you alt-tab out of the game window.
  - THE_PUN_STOPS 14y ago
    That's the source engine default behavior and it works really well. Even better when running in window mode with no borders.

res0nat0r 14y ago

The workaround for now is to just run both applications maximized and deal with the small amount of taskbar clutter at the top.

X-Istence 14y ago

Does Windows even have something akin to the full screen mode that is provided in Lion/Mountain Lion? Because as a long time Windows user and recent Mac switcher I am not familiar with it. On the Mac you can run multiple windows and have them all maximised to take up the maximum amount of screen real estate + applicable chrome.

sk5t 14y ago
Some Windows apps have supported this via F11 for a very long time (ten years at least?).
- X-Istence 14y ago
  So it is not an OS wide feature like Mac OS X where implementing it is fairly simple (at least from my experience). Some apps like VLC have supported full screen for years, even before this feature was brought to Mac OS X itself. So I wouldn't say that Windows has something akin to what is available to on Mac OS X.
tikhonj 14y ago
Windows might not, but KDE certainly does. It lets you make any window full screen, which gets rid of the borders and makes it take up the whole screen (whichever one it happens to be on). Moreover, it also lets different programs customize their full-screen behavior: for example, Chrome and the Dragon Video Player both have their own full-screen modes. And this still lets you use all of your screens. It's great.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  Xmonad or others do the same. The open source window managers have always had advanced features that would confuse a lot of people.
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    I could see something like XMonad confusing people just because it's so different. But KDE? Not so much. It's designed to be elegant and easy to use, and I think it's fairly successful. It's actually rather easy to go from Windows to KDE--even easier than Windows to OS X, I think. (Admittedly, this is in large part because KDE is similar to Windows in a lot of ways.) Also, full screen isn't a confusing feature :P. And, of course, Apple is just as happy to confuse people as anybody else--it seems half their users are vague on what exactly the green button does!