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Comment by hdra | Hacker News Reader

Would be perfect if it can stop being a chrome packaged app though. The window switching in OS X makes it really hard for me to get to it when I have a chrome window open at the same time.

I wish it could be wrapped in a native app or even just let it run in a chrome tab.

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What behavior are you looking for? I noticed that recently (maybe with a Chrome update?) that packaged apps run/show up as independent apps in the OS X task switcher.

Trying to improve Cmd + Tab behavior on all platforms. This is really a Chrome issue and am waiting for improvements in the platform.

Believe it or not, Postman was better (used to run inside a tab instead of its own window)

Edit: here it is, both the extension (tab) and the packaged app (window): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/postman?hl=en

Yes, I know about that POSTMAN used to run inside a tab, but it seems to have been abandoned for quite some time. I still have it installed, but it still telling to to 'upgrade' to the packaged app.

That Postman extension that you linked, I actually didn't know about this before, but that doesn't seems like something provided by the original developer. Any idea whats the story behind it? EDIT: Nevermind, just Googled the domain. Its the same developer.

The earlier app ran as a "legacy" Chrome app. Chrome has deprecated those style of apps and it's not accepting new submissions for legacy apps. I can only push updates now. The newer style Chrome apps run in a sandbox and have access to better APIs. This allows Postman to have features like collection runner, test scripts, OAuth 2 etc. Unfortunately, window management is a bit screwed up and am hoping support improves there from Chrome's side.

If you're looking for something with a lot of great features for in a web app that you can leave running in a tab check out our product: www.runscope.com It's great for recording http calls, editing and retrying and sharing. Plus we've got test suites and can import your Postaman collections to help get you started!

Slightly off topic but look into witch (http://manytricks.com/witch/) for better OSX window switching. I have alt+tab configured to switch between windows on the current desktop that aren't hidden.

Packaged apps can make requests without being subject to the normal XHR security rules (e.g. no Cross-Origin request problems), among other features like native TCP/UDP sockets.

Command + backtick will help in those cases. :)

Yes, but for me, most of the time it's more of a Cmd+Tab to Chrome from my iTerm or ST, and then Cmd+` several times to finally find it.

And when you do it hundreds of times, it gets seriously tedious.

How many monitors/desktops are you running? Have you thought about increasing it?

I have 6 desktops running on 2 physical monitors and keep windowed things easily accessible. Nothing more than two swipes away.

Yeah I know that feeling. Thankfully, virtual desktops + 3 monitors has fixed that for the most part, but that's not always usable in some circumstances. I only posted that, as I only found out about it a month ago myself

The other thing I've done (with Zed in particular) is put the icon for the packaged app into my dock, so I can get to it quickly from anywhere. Of course, this becomes unwieldy if you have a lot of them in there!

Zed is also packaged as a standalone app now.

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