Unthinking Fullscreen Mode

Apple’s fullscreen windows are driving me nuts! We were co-existing until I “lost” a very important terminal session. Turns out I didn’t lose it, but it was in fullscreen mode. This omitted the window from cycling via Command+~, as well as being absent from the app-specific Expose (though it was present in Mission Control – something I seldom use.)

I hope they change this behavior soon. Here are some observed pain points:

• The two second animation when switching from your desktop to Fullscreen applications via Control+left|right arrow is not only unnecessary, but frustrating. This could be much faster, and without the easing decelerating at the end of the animation. Same holds true for Command+Tab (though the animation is mercifully quicker)
• The hotkey for taking an application into Fullscreen mode should be dictated by the window manager, not left up to the developers. Why not F11? Currently its Control+Command+F in Google Chrome, Command+Enter in iTerm, etc.
• Why are these windows omitted from the task switcher? These programs are still running, so they should be reachable by the switcher. Is there another switcher hotkey to toggle between windows of the same application? Command+~ doesn’t work if the other window is in fullscreen mode.
• Command+Tabbing between applications is problematic if you have multiple windows open of the same application when one is in fullscreen mode. From my fullscreen window, I switch to another application, then switching back defaults to the non-fullscreen window instance on the desktop instead of toggling back to where I was.
• Why are they moved into their own workspace? Just remove the window chrome and leave it where it is. I was working in a fullscreen window, and I needed to use the calculator program. This created absolute insanity switching between applications due to the unnecessary animation each time. I ended up having to take the application out of fullscreen mode just to use the calculator in an efficient manner.
• Why is there no transparency available to fullscreen applications? I like a transparency to my black backgrounded terminal. No such luck if you also use fullscreen mode.

So here is my suggestion: Get rid of the butt ugly arrows for fullscreen in the window chrome, and make that useless green button in the upper left hand (you know the one that sometimes makes windows resize _smaller_) and make that the fullscreen button. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

In the interm, I’ve almost abandoned Apple’s fullscreen mode in favor of Cinch for positioning fullscreen windows. It works like the Windows 7 window manager (and Ubuntu) and allows applications to fullscreen by dragging the chrome to the top of the window.