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Question for Mac/Windows users: I develop on Linux, but occasionally on Mac or Windows. To be honest I'm pretty happy with a text editor and a few terminals on

by dtf 17y ago

Question for Mac/Windows users: I develop on Linux, but occasionally on Mac or Windows. To be honest I'm pretty happy with a text editor and a few terminals on any platform, but one thing I miss is fast window management. Specifically: * Focus follows mouse * Alt+LMB drag to move whole window * Alt+MMB drag to move nearest corner (ie resize) The default Mac interface in particular I find difficult, as there's just one tiny resize tab in one corner. Is there anything that can help me here? Or do you do things differently?

psadauskas 17y ago
I'm the same. I use Windows for gaming, and I have a case of Mac envy for all the slick apps, but everytime I get more than a couple windows open, I really, really miss my tiling window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/). Not having anything I need within one or two keystrokes (or having to reach for the mouse) feels very cumbersome now.
- krakensden 17y ago
  I feel the same way about window managers. For some reason, the less user friendly they get, the more usable they are.
mixmax 17y ago
Related question for Mac users: Don't you ever view windows in fullscreen? It seems there's no easy way to get windows to fullscreen, except for laboriously resizing and dragging to make it fit with the screen. This is one of the things that threw me off Mac (I bought one that I used as my main OS for about half a year, but I just never really liked it) So do Mac users simply not like fullscreen windows, do they all have some utility that does this, or am I just missing something? To me it seems like an extreme shortcoming, but I'm sure there's a reason for the limitation.
- bayareaguy 17y ago
  Although it does me little good at the moment since HN's text area is a mere 6 lines, I'm posting this from Opera's fullscreen mode which I use quite frequently. While few applications on any platform seem to support this kind of true fullscreen mode, I use "almost fullscreen" windows all the time: on OSX the green orb in the upper left corner of every window acts as a toggle which maximizes the window or returns it to its original size. I say "almost fullscreen" because the omnipresent menu bar and window decorations remain visible when you work this way.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  The reason: Apple designed OS X to focus on using multiple windows at once, and they didn't want developers making single-window apps that ate at the screen. It's why, of their own applications, the only ones that allow full-screen are their video players, the iWork suite, and the pro apps. Those are the only applications Apple thinks ought to be maximized. There's an application called Mega Zoomer that gives all Cocoa apps a sexy fullscreen view. But mostly, the answer's that Mac users don't like fullscreen.
  - kashif 17y ago
    Nah, Its not that Mac users don't like full screen - they dont have a choice!
    - zimbabwe 17y ago
      But they do have a choice, thanks to the aforementioned app. I have it, yet I'm still using only half my screen for Safari, despite no other apps being open. I like not being forced into this maxed-or-not mentality; on Windows, it was too easy to make every app take up the whole screen, and tab over. On the Mac, I've never gotten into that mindset, which I love.
      - mixmax 17y ago
        Actually this kind of reasoning was the primary reason I turned away from Mac. It's pretty obvious that you don't have a choice and that Apple, right or wrong, has mandated that you don't need to have your windows in fullscreen mode. Instead of openly discussing the shortcomings of the OS you come up with this sort of reasoning: I really don't like being forced into maxing my windows, much better not to have the choice. You don't need it. Besides if you really want it it's easy - you just go to site xyz and download the app that makes it possible. To me that just a semi-circular argument, and not a very good solution to a problem that I'm sure a lot of people have. There are many examples like this, and the reasoning is always the same: You don't need that, it's much better to do it the Mac way. We know much better than you what you want.... Sorry to be harsh, and it's not picking at you Zimbabwe, it's picking at the Mac cult.
- chewbranca 17y ago
  You can definitely get some windows in full screen. There is a program called megazoomer which will allow you get fullscreen for a lot of OSX apps. I use it all the time to have a full screen terminal. I also use full screen in Mac Vim which I believe is a built in feature, not added in by megazoomer. Edit: typo
thenduks 17y ago
Put your windows where you want them at the size you want them and don't ever touch them again... that's what I do, anyway. Expose to get at things that are hidden. I also use hiding apps in general a lot, cmd+h to hide and then either click the dock, use opt+tab or use a launcher like quicksilver or launchbar to get those apps back. Personally I don't use the mouse much at all so I don't need focus follows mouse, and I don't move windows and instead use the methods described above to move between them.
- cpr 17y ago
  Also, note that you can use Spotlight to do fast app switching, just like Launchbar or Quicksilver: just type your Spotlight search shortcut (mine is control-space), type the first few letters of the app name, and hit return. It's good enough I gave up on Quicksilver. I never used the fancier features.
  - thenduks 17y ago
    I'd hardly call it fast, but true. The only 'fancy feature' I use in LaunchBar is it's speed :)
jhickner 17y ago
There are a couple of mac apps I use that get you most of the way there: MercuryMover - lets you move windows and resize them to preset positions with hotkeys (left half of screen, top half of screen, etc.) MondoMouse - adds hotkeys that allow you to drag or resize a window from any position
zimbabwe 17y ago
On the Mac, the trick is to figure out what size you want for your apps and keep them there. Safari's always big for me, iTunes I almost always keep shrunk down, Mail shows a few messages at a time and has a large window for message display. Then I control everything via keyboard so focus never really bothers me. There's also a Mac application that lets you resize your window from any side, but I don't recall what it's called.
jodrellblank 17y ago
There's an app called KatMouse for Windows which might be able to do focus follows mouse. (I really use it because it lets me use the scrollwheel on any window, without bringing the window to the foreground or giving focus to it).
- Zancarius 17y ago
  I'm not so sure about Vista/Win7 but Windows XP's tweakui allows a primitive form of "focus follows mouse." It doesn't work exactly like I'm used to with other managers, but it also doesn't require loading additional software (well, beyond going to MS' site and downloading tweakui).
mmphosis 17y ago
I do things differently. In 1986, I used QNX with primitive window managers -- I still miss a scroll button with a large usable trackball to scroll through code, and the focus followed pointer. I started using Macs about 1987, and the interface felt awkward at first, but I liked it's overlapping windows as opposed to apps that filled the screen, or only ran at a specific resolutions. I remember Microsoft Excel for DOS which was ported from Macintosh. Since it was DOS, they built an entire Window Manager for Excel. I think that this is why Windows inherited the application windows within windows (Multiple Document Interface) that some applications still have, and some people still love MDI in apps like Opera. I think that because of this Excel port, Windows inherited function names from the original Mac API. I don't like the gymnastics of using my pinky finger to hold down the Control key in Windows, I'd prefer using my thumb on the Command key in Mac OS, but thankfully Microsoft put out a little hack to reverse those keys. To me, Linux inherits X Windows, features from older Unix window managers, and a bias from Windows because that's what a lot of people have used. But Linux brings lots of choices and possibilities, and lots of configuring if that's what your into. Since the advent of USB mice, the Mac now has more than one mouse button. I remember seeing a mouse at a CAD/CAM show that probably had about nine buttons on the mouse. Don't flip the bozo bit.

by dtf 17y ago

psadauskas 17y ago

I'm the same. I use Windows for gaming, and I have a case of Mac envy for all the slick apps, but everytime I get more than a couple windows open, I really, really miss my tiling window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/). Not having anything I need within one or two keystrokes (or having to reach for the mouse) feels very cumbersome now.

krakensden 17y ago
I feel the same way about window managers. For some reason, the less user friendly they get, the more usable they are.

mixmax 17y ago

Related question for Mac users: Don't you ever view windows in fullscreen? It seems there's no easy way to get windows to fullscreen, except for laboriously resizing and dragging to make it fit with the screen. This is one of the things that threw me off Mac (I bought one that I used as my main OS for about half a year, but I just never really liked it) So do Mac users simply not like fullscreen windows, do they all have some utility that does this, or am I just missing something? To me it seems like an extreme shortcoming, but I'm sure there's a reason for the limitation.

bayareaguy 17y ago
Although it does me little good at the moment since HN's text area is a mere 6 lines, I'm posting this from Opera's fullscreen mode which I use quite frequently. While few applications on any platform seem to support this kind of true fullscreen mode, I use "almost fullscreen" windows all the time: on OSX the green orb in the upper left corner of every window acts as a toggle which maximizes the window or returns it to its original size. I say "almost fullscreen" because the omnipresent menu bar and window decorations remain visible when you work this way.
zimbabwe 17y ago
The reason: Apple designed OS X to focus on using multiple windows at once, and they didn't want developers making single-window apps that ate at the screen. It's why, of their own applications, the only ones that allow full-screen are their video players, the iWork suite, and the pro apps. Those are the only applications Apple thinks ought to be maximized. There's an application called Mega Zoomer that gives all Cocoa apps a sexy fullscreen view. But mostly, the answer's that Mac users don't like fullscreen.
- kashif 17y ago
  Nah, Its not that Mac users don't like full screen - they dont have a choice!
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    But they do have a choice, thanks to the aforementioned app. I have it, yet I'm still using only half my screen for Safari, despite no other apps being open. I like not being forced into this maxed-or-not mentality; on Windows, it was too easy to make every app take up the whole screen, and tab over. On the Mac, I've never gotten into that mindset, which I love.
    - mixmax 17y ago
      Actually this kind of reasoning was the primary reason I turned away from Mac. It's pretty obvious that you don't have a choice and that Apple, right or wrong, has mandated that you don't need to have your windows in fullscreen mode. Instead of openly discussing the shortcomings of the OS you come up with this sort of reasoning: I really don't like being forced into maxing my windows, much better not to have the choice. You don't need it. Besides if you really want it it's easy - you just go to site xyz and download the app that makes it possible. To me that just a semi-circular argument, and not a very good solution to a problem that I'm sure a lot of people have. There are many examples like this, and the reasoning is always the same: You don't need that, it's much better to do it the Mac way. We know much better than you what you want.... Sorry to be harsh, and it's not picking at you Zimbabwe, it's picking at the Mac cult.
chewbranca 17y ago
You can definitely get some windows in full screen. There is a program called megazoomer which will allow you get fullscreen for a lot of OSX apps. I use it all the time to have a full screen terminal. I also use full screen in Mac Vim which I believe is a built in feature, not added in by megazoomer. Edit: typo

thenduks 17y ago

Put your windows where you want them at the size you want them and don't ever touch them again... that's what I do, anyway. Expose to get at things that are hidden. I also use hiding apps in general a lot, cmd+h to hide and then either click the dock, use opt+tab or use a launcher like quicksilver or launchbar to get those apps back. Personally I don't use the mouse much at all so I don't need focus follows mouse, and I don't move windows and instead use the methods described above to move between them.

cpr 17y ago
Also, note that you can use Spotlight to do fast app switching, just like Launchbar or Quicksilver: just type your Spotlight search shortcut (mine is control-space), type the first few letters of the app name, and hit return. It's good enough I gave up on Quicksilver. I never used the fancier features.
- thenduks 17y ago
  I'd hardly call it fast, but true. The only 'fancy feature' I use in LaunchBar is it's speed :)

jhickner 17y ago

There are a couple of mac apps I use that get you most of the way there: MercuryMover - lets you move windows and resize them to preset positions with hotkeys (left half of screen, top half of screen, etc.) MondoMouse - adds hotkeys that allow you to drag or resize a window from any position

zimbabwe 17y ago

On the Mac, the trick is to figure out what size you want for your apps and keep them there. Safari's always big for me, iTunes I almost always keep shrunk down, Mail shows a few messages at a time and has a large window for message display. Then I control everything via keyboard so focus never really bothers me. There's also a Mac application that lets you resize your window from any side, but I don't recall what it's called.

jodrellblank 17y ago

There's an app called KatMouse for Windows which might be able to do focus follows mouse. (I really use it because it lets me use the scrollwheel on any window, without bringing the window to the foreground or giving focus to it).

Zancarius 17y ago
I'm not so sure about Vista/Win7 but Windows XP's tweakui allows a primitive form of "focus follows mouse." It doesn't work exactly like I'm used to with other managers, but it also doesn't require loading additional software (well, beyond going to MS' site and downloading tweakui).

mmphosis 17y ago

I do things differently. In 1986, I used QNX with primitive window managers -- I still miss a scroll button with a large usable trackball to scroll through code, and the focus followed pointer. I started using Macs about 1987, and the interface felt awkward at first, but I liked it's overlapping windows as opposed to apps that filled the screen, or only ran at a specific resolutions. I remember Microsoft Excel for DOS which was ported from Macintosh. Since it was DOS, they built an entire Window Manager for Excel. I think that this is why Windows inherited the application windows within windows (Multiple Document Interface) that some applications still have, and some people still love MDI in apps like Opera. I think that because of this Excel port, Windows inherited function names from the original Mac API. I don't like the gymnastics of using my pinky finger to hold down the Control key in Windows, I'd prefer using my thumb on the Command key in Mac OS, but thankfully Microsoft put out a little hack to reverse those keys. To me, Linux inherits X Windows, features from older Unix window managers, and a bias from Windows because that's what a lot of people have used. But Linux brings lots of choices and possibilities, and lots of configuring if that's what your into. Since the advent of USB mice, the Mac now has more than one mouse button. I remember seeing a mouse at a CAD/CAM show that probably had about nine buttons on the mouse. Don't flip the bozo bit.