Comment by X-Istence | Hacker News Reader

Comment by X-Istence | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I really don't use the maximise button ever, then again it is generally considered "broken" in Mac OS X anyway.

Now, a minimise button I do use, and my windows neatly get hidden away behind the icon they belong to (it's an option in OS X and I love it). Now, when I move my mouse to a corner of my desktop and activate exposé I get to see all of these windows as thumbnails.

Removing minimise is in my opinion definitely disruptive, sometimes it is nice to clear all the windows off the screen, using different workspaces is not always the right answer.

I assume that the overview they are talking about (and having read the linked email) looks and acts like Exposé does on the Mac, while nice, a lot of full screen applications and it becomes difficult to select the right window because the thumbnails get too small. The suggestion offered in the email looks a lot like what Mac OS X does.

I do hope that when Gnome 3.x is available in your standard Linux distributions that turning the minimise button back on is available.

> it is generally considered "broken" in Mac OS X anyway.

It was broken since... System 6, at least

> Now, a minimise button I do use

It's useful if you have stuff on the desktop (like I do). If the desktop is nothing but wallpaper space, then minimizing windows make little sense - just get your windows on the front (which is hard to do without a dock)

I like the drag to snap option. I only hope Gnome folks don't accidentally step on a patent land mine laid by those free-software lovers at Microsoft.

> It's useful if you have stuff on the desktop (like I do). If the desktop is nothing but wallpaper space, then minimizing windows make little sense - just get your windows on the front (which is hard to do without a dock)

At times (especially at work) I will have many different windows open at the same time. Exposé at that time will become very cluttered and it will be very hard to find the window I want, minimising removes that because now the windows I do want are bigger than the small minimised ones.

From looking at more screenshots from Gnome 3 it looks like their "activities" overview is a lot like Exposé.

I tend to have them maximized, which blocks the clutter, but, then, the maximize (or "let me focus on this") button never worked properly in Macs. This is somewhat addressed with the full-screen apps on Lion.

When I have to use more than one window, I use the "Always on top" option on the WM. Since it's usually a terminal, I can make it small and leave it near a corner or on another screen.

Having said that, Xcode seems fond on lots of windows. I don't think my approach would work.

As stated in the article, spreading windows across more virtual desktops prevents clutter. I've been using a tiling window manager for a few years now, so now that I've just gotten a new work MacBook, I don't minimize windows, ever (or use the dock, for that matter).

> I really don't use the maximise button ever, then again it is generally considered "broken" in Mac OS X anyway.

OS X doesn't have a maximize button. The purpose of the green button on OS X is to size the window based on the content, not on the screen size. For example, for a browser window it generally maximizes height and sets width to the minimum size that does not require a horizontal scroll bar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com