Fully maximising windows

G

grannybuttons

Registered
Over the years I've used Windows (capital W), I've grown accustomed to maximising the particular window (small w) I'm working on, because I find other windows just distracting. Maybe I just suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder?

But one thing I'd really like my Mac to do is the ability to fully maximise the window I'm working on. The standard '+' button doesn't do this, and sometimes when I press it, it actually makes the window *smaller*!

A few programs seem to have the innate ability to truly maximise, so obviously the hack is there. Is there a way of doing it for all programs?

Thanks
Andrew
 
The green + button cycles between the last size you had the window at, and an "ideal size" to contain all the information in it. In theory. In iTunes, it switches between normal and mini view, and so on.

If you want to make a window bigger, just grab the resize corner and drag it out to full size. You'll get used to the Mac way of doing it quite quickly and will soon come to prefer it, as there are several downsides to a truly maximised window. For a start, you have to "Restore" a Windows window before you can push it aside to get to something else.
 
I vaguely remember in IE for Mac (possibly on OS9, though), that Cmd+Zoom zoomed the window to full screen, but I might have dreamt that.

I don't care for full-size maximising, personally, but I do like to keep windows visible to a minimum (by hiding some) or using ones that take up as much space as they can, and Exposé-ing to others.
 
I also don't care much for window maximizing either, I just make them the size I want manually then they stay that size. Then I let Exposé take care of the rest :D
 
If you hold down "option" and then click the green + button, the window will re-size to it's maximum size (which can mean different things for different applications). For example, in IE, holding down option and hitting the green button resizes the window to fill most of the screen. In Safari, it resizes the window to fit the contents of the window left-to-right, and fills the screen vertically.

In short, hold down option and click the green button and that should at least do something similar to what you're describing. What you're describing, though, is something that is inherently "Windows," and, well, this ain't Windows. Macintosh users typically don't want an entire window to "take over" the screen -- it goes against the "Macintosh way."
 
The Macintosh way here being that you should - at all times - be able to click at one of the screen sides to get to the Desktop. As an example. The more simple answer to the thread's original question, of course, is "No.".
 
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