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Lion's Full Screen Feature

A

adammjenkins

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 15, 2009
31
0
West Virginia
Hello everyone,

Full Screen mode was probably one of my favorite new features announced today. I am not a developer of any kind, but I am just curious if anyone has any insight into how the differences in screen resolutions will affect full screening an application? I have the 27" iMac, and I am just wondering (and hoping) that apps will take advantage of the larger screen by adjusting itself accordingly? My eyes are horrible, and the resolution of the 27" has always been somewhat of a hurdle for me. I am thrilled at the possibilities of multi-touch in full screened applications, but to sum up my question: will apps be built to utilized different sized screens? At the moment, I am imagining the apps in the current App Store which are built for both the iPhone and the iPad. Am I on the right track?
 
Probably not. I assume the application will just scale as a normal app does with some special widgets only kicking in at certain resolutions. If they require developers to develop different versions of their software for different screen resolutions it will be a disaster. I don't see that happening.

Personally, I'm not crazy about full-screen applications in general. It's a reversion back to computing 15+ years ago. Of course there may be some special cases where it's nice to have the full screen but in general people's interest in multitasking is what led to the concept of windows.
 
It reminds me a lot of how the Amiga used to work if programs took advantage of using multiple screens, where one could slide down from the rest, and be in different resolutions.
 
I would assume that all the buttons/controls would remain the same size, and the larger screen would just be used to show more content at once.

another possibility is that if the screen is greater than the max resolution of the app, the rest of the screen is taken up with the "grey cloth background" found in iOS folders and iPad safari

this can be seen at one point in the keynote, when they are showing fullscreen (preview was the app I believe)
 
Rizon said:
Personally, I'm not crazy about full-screen applications in general. It's a reversion back to computing 15+ years ago. Of course there may be some special cases where it's nice to have the full screen but in general people's interest in multitasking is what led to the concept of windows.
Click to expand...
It is a strange idea, with screens of 2000+ pixel dimensions becoming more common and the ludicrousness, in many cases, of having a program taking up all of the screen at once. It's pretty common to hear about people enjoying having a browser beside a productivity app on one screen, or two adjacent documents.

That said, except in the case whereby it's necessary to view large content, I personally prefer smaller screens and prefer my apps to have their interface surround the screen (and content remaining in windows - think Photoshop's defaults prior to CS4), if not have the app itself in a full-screen mode. I'll usually size apps that have their interface integrated in the window (web browsers, 3D modeling programs) to fill the screen entirely. (Oddly enough, I find the common style of an OS X window with a toolbar, such as found in Office 2008 and Preview unpleasant - yet somehow I went many years enjoying ClarisWorks without even realizing it was another window-integrated UI!)

I'm going to cite Fitt's law here and point out that UI elements at the barrier edges of a display present functionally infinite "overshoot" size, and UI elements near a barrier edge of a screen have a shorter pointing distance because it's fast and brainless to pin your cursor to an edge by flicking your mouse in that direction. Still, it's sufficient to have a screen-encompassing interface with the content still displayed in movable, resizable windows.

Multitasking isn't a bother with that setup considering you can always command-tab or move a window to the side.
 
Rizon said:
Personally, I'm not crazy about full-screen applications in general. It's a reversion back to computing 15+ years ago. Of course there may be some special cases where it's nice to have the full screen but in general people's interest in multitasking is what led to the concept of windows.
Click to expand...

but now there are so many distractions, sometimes its nice to focus in on just what you need to get done.

you could close all your other apps, but for some people that might not be the best solution, not to mention that in some cases even the dock/desktop can be distracting.

theres nothing wrong with having the option, thats not the only way they work
 
dccorona said:
but now there are so many distractions, sometimes its nice to focus in on just what you need to get done.

you could close all your other apps, but for some people that might not be the best solution, not to mention that in some cases even the dock/desktop can be distracting.

theres nothing wrong with having the option, thats not the only way they work
Click to expand...

This is exactly how I am looking at Lion's full screen method. Window management has been my only real hurdle since switching to Mac. I can certainly see the need/desire to have multiple windows visible at one time, but there are other times when I'd like to eliminate distraction and focus on one thing at a time. iOS really shines in these cases because once I launch an app, it takes over and I can focus on that app only. I really love the way Lion seems like it will handle the full screen apps through mission control and the multi-touch gestures.

I am really just confused at how different sized screens will be handled, and I guess I am by default confused at how the apps will be built because I'm not a developer. It makes sense that larger screens might just be able to accommodate more material within view (more "screen real estate"), but due to my terrible eyes, it would be nice if a resolution independent element were built into full screening so that I could control the size of all of the context (not just text). I'm sure there will be some options, but the Back To The Mac event was pretty limited in what it showed, unfortunately.

Time will tell!
 
I have waited years for this feature! It is such a basic feature! Whether I use a small 12'' display or a 24'' one, I love having only one window and one thing to focus at a time.
That is mainly why I don't use OS X a lot, compared to Windows 7.
But what is great, once more, is that Apple didn't just put a full screen button, it's more than just that! You can switch from one application to another with just a touch. So, once more, they put a basic feature but they do it the right way.
Next summer, I'll get my copy of Mac OS X Lion and may leave Windows for good.
 
Aucun Express said:
But what is great, once more, is that Apple didn't just put a full screen button, it's more than just that! You can switch from one application to another with just a touch. So, once more, they put a basic feature but they do it the right way.
Click to expand...
In windows or on linux just do a alt+tab and you have it already. Just saying that it's not really that amazing.
 
Frosties said:
In windows or on linux just do a alt+tab and you have it already. Just saying that it's not really that amazing.
Click to expand...

command+tab on a mac

but its nice to have a gesture to do it, you know, so you look and feel all cool and hi-tech, kinda like tony stark, when you use your computer

here's to hoping that the fullscreen gets implemented well by devs, rather than the "keep the content the same size, and add more window around it when they go full screen" that you see on so many windows apps (because lets not forget, having a button that takes you straight to full screen has been on windows computers for ages)

its not a breakthrough by any means, but done correctly, it can be a fresh take on an old computing concept
 
I don't know how much I'll be using the full screen feature. I'll probably only use it when I only need to focus on one app for a while at a time. Might also be useful in xcode.
 
I think it's a great feature since macbooks (laptops per se) don't have a screen as big as a desktop monitor.

It is always nice to have a few extra pixels when you're working on a text, website, browsing, editing a photo/video...
 
Rizon said:
Probably not. I assume the application will just scale as a normal app does with some special widgets only kicking in at certain resolutions. If they require developers to develop different versions of their software for different screen resolutions it will be a disaster.
Click to expand...
They don't need to design for every resolution as much as they need to think in terms of the Windows Large Font settings (125% and 150%).

The operating system and the applications should be designed to scale to the large font settings, just the way that Windows and Windows developers design their applications to scale correctly.

In this fashion, users would be able to continue to use the brilliant native resolution without having to switch to foggy, cloudy lower resolutions in order to see things.

Currently, in an application that allows "Command +" functionality, we see good examples of how this would work. But if a users avails himself of this operability, he is still saddled with the tiny fonts that are outside the application.

Right now, for example, I am typing on a 1680x1050 MacBook Pro. What I'm typing and looking at in the Web window is great, but if I have to look up to the part of the screen that has the titles to the Safari tabs, I can barely focus on them.
 
A minor irony is that Steve Jobs would benefit from this "Large Fonts" Windows-like operability.

Have you ever noticed how often he is looking at a Retina Display with his glasses removed, or pushed up on top of his head?

My lord has the exact same issue that any older, avid Apple aficionado would have!
 
Is everyone missing the part where they also added (at least in Safari) the gesture to zoom in on anything? Anyone running Safari in Lion can simply double tap (with two fingers) on something to zoom in on it like you do with the iOS version of Safari. You can also use pinch to zoom in and out.

Check out the "Gestures & Animations" section on Apple's Lion website to see what I mean.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/

This basically means that (at least in Safari) people should have some pretty nice options for reading smaller text.
 
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