
Fullscreen in Mountain Lion still renders second display useless - wesbos
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3196329?start=225&tstart=0
======
da_n
I think this is all related to the iOS X direction Apple is going with their
desktops. they would rather force a broken implementation of full-screen which
mimics iOS than rethink it for a desktop. And you know, I hate to say it (as a
long time user of Apple computers) but in general they really need to pull
their heads out of their arses when it comes to the bizarre direction they're
going with the OS X user experience. Imaginary linen canvas everywhere?
Horrible slow transitions __everywhere __, all the time?

Or maybe I just want to get some god damn work done here.

Apple, we know you can do this stuff ever since the days the genie minimize
effect was introduced (or shift-minimize for ultra slow!). Please, get some
sanity and just put an advanced panel somewhere in the system preferences
with, among other things (tabs in Finder?) an animation =
slow/normal/fast/disabled option. We should not need to resort to plist hacks.

~~~
lloeki
> I think this is all related to the iOS X direction Apple is going with their
> desktops. they would rather force a broken implementation of full-screen

Indeed the current implementation is severely lacking. It's jarring when you
plug a MacBook to a TV, pop in a DVD video, which starts the official DVD
Player, and put it in full screen. Possible scenarios include:

\- you are in mirror mode: this means the TV and the internal display will be
at their common denominator, suboptimal in both resolution and aspect ratio.

\- you are not in mirror mode: the primary display is irrevocably the built-in
one. DVD Player goes fullscreen on that 13", while you can enjoy 42" of
glorious Lion linen. Of course you don't want to close the screen, unless you
have both fed the laptop with AC and have an external peripheral at hand to
control Apple Remote, an external keyboard or a Magic Trackpad, which is a
ludicrous situation.

The current solution is of course to use VLC, which goes around Lion's
fullscreen API.

Yet I see a solution ahead.

In Lion an app "going fullscreen" really means _"the app gets its own space"_
(I thus prefer the term "fullspace" instead). What's more, since Spaces have
been introduced, a multihead setup lies in a single, giant Space all across.
It follows that since the two screens are one unique Space, an app going
fullspace will (under the current implementation) take over the two screens.

That's the problem, and so there's the solution: in a dual-head setup, the two
screens should be two independent spaces, not one across.

This solves a good deal of issues:

\- fullspace immediately occupies only one screen, with the other ones
available to desktops or other fullspace apps

\- windows can be moved from one monitor to an other monitor _from Mission
Control_. This is not possible currently: you have to exit Mission Control and
drag the window to the other screen.

\- windows can be moved from one monitor to _another space on another monitor_
_from Mission Control_. This is not possible currently: you have to exit MC,
drag the window as the previous case, enter MC again and drag the window to
the other space.

\- and why not, Spaces could be rearranged not only inside each monitor, but
_across monitors_. Take Desktop2 on Screen1, drag it on Screen2 after
Desktop3, take fullspaced QuickTime on Screen3, put in on Screen1. There are
problems to be solved, like when resolutions differ, but that's really not the
end of the world.

MC literally begs for those four features.

I don't know if Apple thought of it yet (probably) and if they want to go that
way (who knows, really). For all I know it would mean a heavy deal of
refactoring of the current Spaces implementation (e.g see how currently
Desktop1 is never reorderable, how fishy...).

~~~
barumrho
This is exactly how xmonad handles multiple screens. I am not very hopeful
that Apple will implement this, since it can be pretty confusing to users.

~~~
Produce
God forbid someone get confused at the expense of a better and more efficient
implementation. Little children get confused by long English words. We should
take them out of the dictionary.

~~~
mrich
This has always been the Apple mode of operation. With quite some success, I
might add.

~~~
Produce
I know. It's a tragedy.

------
IanDrake
I'll probably get slaughtered for saying this, but the more I use OSX and see
the really simple stuff that either doesn't exist, doesn't work, or doesn't
work well, I end up really confused where most Mac users' complaints of
Windows comes from (especially compared to Win7).

This comes from working on a '10 MBP with Lion. Full screen is basically like
"Maximize" in Windows. To me it was shocking that in 2011 that was touted as a
new feature.

Other things bother me too, like constantly getting the "beachball" for
seemingly simple actions and xcode crashing if I breath too hard.

I just assume most people aren't having a similar experience.

~~~
superuser2
Because most people's experience with Windows is through the cheapest
keyboards, trackpads, motherboards, and displays Dell/HP could buy in bulk and
deliver to Best Buy that week. When people talk about Windows, they're talking
about 5-year-old beater Inspirons or 16-character HP one-of-three-hundred-
identical-laptops-with-different-model-numbers-of-the-week, not EliteBooks,
and almost certainly not ThinkPads. When people talk about Macs, they're
talking about the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, or _maybe_ Mac Mini.

As far as software, as someone who supports Windows 7 on a daily basis: I have
never spent more than 5 minutes on network printing with Macs. I have rarely
spent less than three hours on network printing with Windows. Let's talk about
the fact that it's 2012 and when I right-click a printer, I get to choose
"printing preferences," "printer properties," and "properties." It may seem
silly, but this stuff _matters_. You shouldn't have to hire the neighbor kid
just to use your printer.

Additionally, manufacturers override Microsoft's decent (if clunky) WiFi
interface and force you to use poorly designed taskbar-based apps, to the
point where smart but non-tech-savvy people can't figure out how to connect to
the Internet at a coffee shop. It's often impossible to avoid the concept of
"location profiles," "networks" (Home? Business? Work? What the hell gives you
the right to open a dialog over my work just because I plugged in an ethernet
cable?). On my Mac I go to the Airport dropdown next to the volume control,
pick from the available SSIDs, and it's done. Ethernet silently gets DHCP and
connects. Details are there if I want them in ipconfig and System Preferences,
but I hardly ever do. There certainly isn't crap in my taskbar running stupid
3fps animations and demanding my attention every few minutes. I have never
been startled by the audio "Virus database has been updated" coming out of
nowhere on a Mac, but this was a daily occurrence for Avast users.

How about "Windows is checking for a solution to the problem"? How about UAC
dialogs that silently open _behind_ my current window, so my Install Wizard
appears to hang when it's actually just waiting for me to click ok?

Full screen is not basically like Maximize; Maximize is basically like
Maximize. Full screen hides the chrome. I would compare it to F11 in Firefox.
You don't have to use it; I do appreciate having Spotify and Mail full screen
on alterate Spaces, so I can three-finger swipe to quickly read an email or
change the song and then three-finger swipe back without altering my primary
workpace, but I almost never fullscreen Chrome.

There are things I don't like. I hate that OSX reopens all my windows after I
log back in; I don't use Xcode but I understand it's pretty buggy. Still,
reports of Lion's transformation to iOS are vastly overblown.

~~~
jpxxx
[opinioneering]

Applause! You brought a tear to my eye. After living a luxuriant Apple-only
lifestyle I've had to start supporting PCs again. Re-entering the Junkspace
that is Windows has been punishing.

UI completely untouched since 1995. Thickets of new dialog boxes. Incredibly
thick layers of shovelware. Grotesque artwork. Limitations that come out of
nowhere that require Windows Pro Premium Whatever. IE toolbar/BHO hell. The
printer thing alone, sweet Jesus. I literally gave up trying to share a single
USB printer to two other workstations over the LAN. It's so unnecessarily
difficult it's unreal.

The Mac-o-verse has the same volume of pain, punishment, and failure as the
Windows platform, but it usually tends to cluster on the outside of the
possibility space. Their failings aren't sitting there in plain view waiting
for you to stub your toe.

~~~
voltagex_
For your printer problems, funnily enough installing Bonjour for Windows on
both machines can help quite a lot.

~~~
jpxxx
I've done that quite a bit, but only to make printer discovery on the network
actually happen. Are you saying you can use it to share out printers as well?

~~~
voltagex_
Ah, sorry. I had sharing and discovery confused. I thought Bonjour allowed
(easier) installation of shared printers though.

------
dguaraglia
Wow, apparently some people are so blinded by fanboyism (I know one such
person myself) that they can't accept something created by Apple might have an
issue. Some of the answers can be summed up as "hey, before you couldn't do X
before, so stop moaning and keep doing what you did before if you don't like
how X works!".

Even in the bad old days of Microsoft MVPs you didn't get answers as hostile
as that. This is almost religious fervor. WTF?

~~~
epo
I don't see it as fanboyism so much as a reaction to irrational anti-Apple
complaints such as "this feature doesn't work therefore I'm not going to buy
any Apple product ever again".

Yes, it's a bug. No, it's not a show stopper, and yes there is a perfectly
reasonable work around. So the blind people are those who try to blow this up
into some kind of crime against humanity and who then call those telling them
to get a grip, "fanboys".

~~~
ojbyrne
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)?

~~~
X-Istence
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
Some Windows apps have supported this via F11 for a very long time (ten years
at least?).

~~~
X-Istence
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.

------
spenvo
I could care less about Apple's Fullscreen API -- what I hate is that apps are
_replacing_ their old Fullscreen behavior (like Chrome has) in favor of the
Apple standard. Which led me to make this comment on a Firefox 12 HN post a
few months ago: "... it will be a shame when they implement full screen if it
takes away the current layered option. Firefox is the last major OSX browser
to work in fullscreen while still allowing apps to be above or below it. With
Moom's hotkeyed window positions--it's extremely convenient to bring a text
editor to focus and still be able to scroll the web in the background.
Mozilla, please don't let this happen!" Apple's Fullscreen API just seems like
a lazy approach to delegating UI real-estate and the last thing power-users
would want.

------
wdewind
Honestly, I think the suggestion of hitting the green button to maximize is
completely fine.

Except that the green button DOES NOT MAXIMIZE. And never really has. Window
management in OSX has always been a complete joke, and it continues to be so.
Now pressing the green button in chrome resizes to small and "current" sizes,
not "full screen."

~~~
drivebyacct2
I love angry rants from people that think every window manager has to act like
Windows.

It's a zoom button, not maximize. If you simply Shift-Click you will get the
expected effect. There are half a dozen tools that will change the default
behavior if you require it.

~~~
Timothee
But I don't know what "zoom" means in the context of a window. And the
inconsistencies of my experiences with various apps didn't make it clear
either. (e.g. the infamous mini-player for iTunes)

As for Shift-Click I tried it with Chrome and I thought you had made my day.
However it didn't do anything different on Messages, nor Safari: it just
stretched the window vertically. In my short survey of currently open apps,
half were stretching vertically while the other was doing fullscreen. (be it
Shift-click or plain click) Only Chrome acts differently.

~~~
mkaltenecker
Zoom tries to remove the scroll bars. It makes the window big enough so that
the scroll bars disappear. If there are no scrollbars and the main content
just automatically resizes with the window (e.g. in Aperture) it is equivalent
to the maximize button.

The biggest problem with that is that developers make it work inconsistently.

~~~
steveh73
Browse around iTunes until you find a track that doesn't quite fit
horizontally. Click the "zoom" button, to make the window big enough. Oh wait,
it doesn't.

If by "developers" you mean "Apple" then yes. I never use the "zoom" button
because it exhibits apparently random behaviour.

~~~
jpxxx
Agreed. It's one of those "we'll figure this out later" things from the late
90's without any real programmatic constraints that led to a mishmash of
pointless and unexpected behavior.

I personally can't come up with a good reason not to just remove the green
ball entirely.

------
nestlequ1k
I can confirm it's still busted. After a year of Lion I've learned never to
bother with the full screen button (that's a feature for noobs anyways right?)

Though what really pisses me off about Mountain Lion multiple monitor is they
removed the "Detect Displays" menubar option. Just gone. So now I'm reduced to
unplugging and replugging my thunderbolt 27inch display when I connect it to
my laptop. F'ing asinine

~~~
thehigherlife
This may fix your problem: <http://code.google.com/p/detectdisplays/>

~~~
nestlequ1k
Awesome, just what I needed. Thanks!

------
srik
This is not a bug. It is a very intentional feature, like the scroll bars,
they decide they had to go against the norm to implement it and they went aead
with it. The intended use case is to allow the app access to both the screens.
Imagine this in say a video editing environment where you could have the video
playing on the left and all the myriad number of controls on the right. The
problem is, to my knowledge, almost no app has taken to it yet, no one wants
to be the first, heck not even apples own apps feel the need to do it.

Conjecture-> The problem is unlike scroll bars you can't have a setting to
disable it, because that would mean the app had to retroactively allow itself
to run in a single window full screen mode which might be considered
unpredictable behavior, something they don't like. So to give them some
benefit of doubt I see where they're coming from.

------
dansanderson
I agree this behavior of full-screen mode is counterproductive on multi-
monitor set-ups, and it's a serious issue if Apple is encouraging app
developers to rely on this behavior instead of providing more useful window
layouts. It's a violation of metaphor: "full screen mode" is actually
"dedicated space mode," which isn't what multi-monitor users expect or want.

From personal experience, I suspect this feature is intended to make Spaces
more accessible to novice users on laptops without external monitors, a common
case. I never got the hang of Spaces originally, but once I started using
full-screen mode while portable, my laptop got immensely more useful. For me,
this was a gateway into the rest of Spaces, and now I maintain 3 desktop
spaces and 1 full-screen app, and switch between them and Mission Control with
trackpad gestures. Heck, I might even start using Dashboard, since it's
sitting right there. (Ok, probably not.) It's a gradual introduction to an
advanced feature.

Apple routinely cuts off its long tail as a streamlining measure, sometimes
for UX reasons, sometimes for engineering reasons. They shouldn't always get
away with it. At least in this case the intent seems reasonable, even if the
side effect isn't.

------
xentronium
I solved this problem very easily, by downgrading to Snow Leopard. Also that
got rid of kernel panics caused by a bug in Darwin virtual ttys.

The worst part of Lion's featured 'fullscreen mode' is that software, that
worked fine in fullscreen before, now uses Lion's fullscreen. This doesn't
happen on Snow Leopard.

~~~
zyb09
Don't you need Lion for the latest Xcode these days? If you're not doing
anything in Xcode you might as well boot Linux (or Windows :).

~~~
xentronium
Unfortunately for iOS developers, yes, you need Lion for latest XCode.

Compiler toolchain and other stuff is available via older xcode or gcc-osx-
installer project, though.

------
podperson
The other annoying aspect of this is that there are (hidden?) APIs for making
apps functional in fullscreen mode across multiple monitors. Aperture (for
sure) and Final Cut Pro X (I believe) both make use of multiple displays.

~~~
X-Istence
I've noticed that in Mail.app for example, if you show the connection doctor,
or status or even the address list (Window -> Address panel) while in full
screen you can happily drag those across to the secondary/empty screen and
they will stay there for the duration of the app being full screened.

I don't think a special API is required, just knowledge of the second screen
and then placing windows on that second or third screen.

------
te_chris
I finally upgraded to Lion a few weeks ago because a client I have (I'm a web
dev, mostly rails) had an app that was built on Xcode 4.3 that I needed to be
able to compile and test. I really miss snow leopard. my computer runs slower
now under lion and I'm dubious as to whether the UI improvements improved
anything.

------
maerek
Holy shit, Apple. It is 2012. Figure out how to do a decent window manager
that lets you maximize a window properly.

------
beedogs
Tim Cook is the Steve Ballmer of Apple. And I mean that in every negative way
possible. This kind of shit is a great example, but everything he's done since
he took over has been a tremendous disappointment.

Nobody was clamoring for the iOS experience on the desktop. It's horrible. Get
rid of it.

~~~
nicholassmith
You do understand that the decisions made in Lion probably weren't made by Tim
Cook? I'm frankly tired of hearing "OH APPLE IS BURNING, IT'S COOK'S FAULT".
If everything he's done has been a disappointment why are Apple making more
money than ever?

And apparently people were clamouring for it, just _you_ weren't.

------
RivieraKid
OS X is the least usable of the desktops I worked on for a longer period of
time (Gnome 2 and Windows XP). Mostly because of clunky and slow way of app
switching and poor window managment. Unfortunately, "modern" desktops like
Gnome 3, Unity or Metro are even worse.

------
teilo
Frankly, I don't find the full-screen issue that much of a problem. I use
BetterSnapTool to emulate the Windows 7 style drag window to edge
functionality. So going full-screen on a window now works exactly like Windows
7.

The bigger problem is how it is not possible to drag a window from a "space"
on one display, to a "space" in another display when viewing Mission Control.
There is no conceivable reason they don't allow this. It worked just fine in
Spaces. It has nothing to do with full screen mode. I just don't get it.

~~~
wesbos
I dont think you are understanding the problem here. Its not with maximizing
windows on your monitor, its with having apps go fullscreen while still having
access to your second monitor. Currently OSX makes the 2nd monitor linnen.

~~~
teilo
I understand the problem perfectly well. I've used Lion for a long while now.
Prior to 10.7 there WAS no fullscreen feature (no universal feature, that is.
Individual apps had their own implementations), and I hate how Apple
implemented it.

Regardless, my point is that a lot of people have been using the full-screen
feature as a substitute for full-maximize. I'll gladly sacrifice a quarter
inch of screen real-estate to be able to use my external display
simultaneously. I actually NEED that menu bar most of the time, anyway.

------
runjake
I (mostly [1]) get around this by using SizeUp and its "full screen" keyboard
shortcut to maximize my windows. I'm sure Divvy and other tiling window
manager software have an equivalent.

<http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/>

[1] I say "mostly" because it just maximizes the window and doesn't put the
app into Apple's Fullscreen API mode.

------
gavanwoolery
You know how I know every operating system is turning into sh_t? The install
sizes keep increasing...I could write an operating system with much of today's
functionality in probably under 100 mb. With the right system
architecture/standardization, I could probably write an operating system under
10 mb.

Time for a new operating system.

WHO IS WITH ME!? ;)

------
nchlswu
I've never found built in apple features to typically handle dual monitors too
great.

Sure, multi monitors is fine, but the Spaces and Mission Control UX never
scaled well when you added another monitor (IMO). Full screen behaviour just
adds to it. It seems to me that >1 monitors are not how Apple envisions their
computer configs.

------
Synaesthesia
The way I think they justify this (and I do), is that if you have multiple
monitors, then you generally have lots of screen real-estate, and thus won't
be using fullscreen mode anyway. I don't, because apps are too big on 24" -
fullscreen is best on a small notebook display.

I still think Apple should change it though.

~~~
jonhendry
There are some apps it makes sense with, like video, or music, or
drawing/painting, or 3D modeling. Or even two-page spreads in Preview.

~~~
tikhonj
Or, most importantly, Emacs! I don't know where I'd be without a full-screen
Emacs.

------
stcredzero
I don't use Fullscreen. I have 2 27" monitors hooked up through a Dual Head 2
Go. I use Divvy, which is set up so I can put an app on either 27" screen, or
on the left of right of either 27" screen. I find Mission Control to be an
adequate Exposé substitute.

I don't use spaces.

------
n-gauge
Disclaimer:I have 0 Apple products,

Does using a usb powered/driven screen have the same problem? (as they tend to
use their own driver IME). I know they are slower to update, but for
monitoring use should be fine.

------
zheng
I have no reason to upgrade to ML. I don't really use my Air all that much,
but if they fixed this I would upgrade in a second. Too bad.

~~~
vertr
ML is noticeably faster and smoother across the board. That's a great reason.

~~~
crag
Then ML should be free; "faster and smoother" sounds like bug fixes to me.

~~~
danbee
I'm pretty sure that "faster and smoother" isn't all you get.

------
chj
that is why i don't use fullscreen

------
CubicleNinjas
Fullscreen is meant to focus you on one app.

Spaces, aka. Mission Control, aka. "whateverthehellthey'recallingitthisweek",
is meant to multimonitor set-ups with a bunch of apps in preset places. Use
spaces/missioncontrol.

Personally, I don't get full-screen apps at all and wish this feature would
die a painful and horrible death. I'd love to see stats on its use, as I've
never seen anyone who actually knows what its cryptic icon represents.

~~~
mdonahoe
I use it almost exclusively on my 11" air. With limited screen space it is
very helpful. And swiping directionally between fullscreen apps is more
intuitive than cmd-tab.

But it is total garbage on a large screen, so I don't use it when docked.

~~~
CubicleNinjas
This is very helpful. I guess it is for smaller screen sizes. It makes sense
now. Thank you!

