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Apple-Tab-Suck
Ryan and I finally agreed on something regarding Macs: it’s so freaking annoying when you have a window minimized, and you’re tabbing through open applications with apple-tab, but when you get to the application that’s been minimized it doesn’t pull the window out of the dock and onto the screen. HELLO?! Does it not make sense that maybe I’d want to view the window? Is there no key combo or anything that will maximize a window from the dock, without having to click on it?
Please, prove me wrong.
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I had the same frustration. Something that helped me when I was making the transition from pc to mac was that a friend told me to not ever use minimize!
Instead, think of “Hide” as the Mac quivalent. Hitting cmd + H will hide the window, then alt-tabbing to that app will bring it back. My friend is a Mac FANATIC and he has no love for the minimize function. Sure, it looks nice minimized in the dock, but why not combine “minimize” and “hide” into one function–I agree with Ryan.
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#8 written by cy 5 years ago
Witch by Peter Maurer might help; it’s available at http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=witch
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I know of no way to do what you want, either. Even Cmd-~ doesn’t work when you are within the app with minimized windows.
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But as long as we are ranting, I would like to throw in 2 things that annoy me:
1) The stupid Help key on the Mac keyboard. It’s right where Insert normally would be. I don’t know how many times I’ve done a Shift-Delete to Cut, and then Shift-Help to Pas….oh no, help window. I don’t need Help so often that I need a friggin’ KEY for it.
2) Palette mini-windows that don’t close with Cmd-W. Or worse, a mixed behavior where some close with Cmd-W and then others that you have to close either by mouse or toggling with the same key you used to open them. For example, in Preview, there are the Colors and Image Correction tools. You can’t close Colors with Cmd-W — that will close your document window — but you can toggle it off again with Shift-Cmd-C. But then Image Correction can’t be toggled with Alt-Cmd-C and you /can/ use Cmd-W on it.
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Grrrrr…. -
Veronica,
I didn’t see it mentioned here, but you can use LightSwitch X from Proteron. It takes over the Apple-Tab functions, adds editable bezels, and includes the ability to send an Application-Launch event which has the effect of undocking or maximizing your application & document windows… Also has a slew of Launchbar-Like functions…Also, you might not know this, but command-~ lets you switch between document windows in the current application.
Good Luck,
=DB
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Well, after so many people have mentioned Witch, and I saw it on digg recently as part of the essential OSX tools, I decided to install it and try it. Pretty good. But my initial brief attempts at mapping it to use Cmd-Tab instead of Alt-Tab didn’t work. Maybe with some searching…
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Also, apparently Colors in Preview /can/ be closed with Cmd-W. You just have to be sure it has focus, which is a little tricky sometimes. Summary: Quirky UI ticks me off sometimes. -
#13 written by Dave 5 years ago
The only keyboard shortcut to minimised windows is using Ctrl-F3 and then the arrow keys to move along, but that’s a complete pain, i agree that it should be easier. I wish Witch was built into OS X, because i can see the simplicity of the way apple does it but i’d like the choice to sometimes do it the witch way, problem is, witch sometimes gets all laggy and slow on my iBook.
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This is truly silly, yes. Been hit many times with it. I forgot about Ctrl-F3, but Witch is kewl.
I just quit using the min, because Finder used to get borked so much on my old iBook. And if a document (or, more likely webpage) had been minimized, I’d often lose it, because it was in the Dock-of-Hell… SO, to reduce clutter I often Cmd-H to hide an app.
Then again, I use upwards of 5 browsers at any one time…
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Yeah, there’s no discernable difference between dock-minimized and “hidden” windows, except that you can’t touch your dock-minimized windows with alt tab. Please Mad Dog, I know you’re reading this, make it right.