17 Responses for "Apple-Tab-Suck"

1. Ryan Block August 1st, 2006 at 8:21 am 1

   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.

2. Kato August 1st, 2006 at 8:58 am 2

   Upgrade to XP.

   ;P

   Sorry, I had to.

3. Malabooboo (Tim) August 1st, 2006 at 9:52 am 3

   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.

4. Mr. Jonny Pantz August 1st, 2006 at 12:46 pm 4

   Give Witch a try. Not only will it take care of that problem, but it also shows you all the Firefox windows, or all the Safari windows you have open, as opposed to Apple+Tab which just shows you Safari or Firefox.

5. Michael B. August 1st, 2006 at 1:15 pm 5

   I “switched” from windows less than two years ago. I loved and frequently used shortcuts on windows, but have yet to really use them for common tasks on the Mac. I think that maybe shortcuts are the one thing that Microsoft does better.

6. Udayan August 1st, 2006 at 1:45 pm 6

   I agree, Apple + Tabbing should bring up open windows, the solution I have found is Exposé or Doodim - for working with just one program.

7. John B. August 1st, 2006 at 2:24 pm 7

   I rarely need to minimize *or* hide, since I use Expose so much.

   Also, to Michael B.: I bet 10-1 odds that Macs do shortcuts better. Just because you don’t use them doesn’t make them inferior.

8. cy August 1st, 2006 at 2:44 pm 8

   Witch by Peter Maurer might help; it’s available at http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=witch

9. Brian Franklin August 1st, 2006 at 3:10 pm 9

   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.
   -
   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.
   -
   Grrrrr….

10. Digital Bill August 1st, 2006 at 3:25 pm 10

    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

11. Ethan Poole August 1st, 2006 at 7:05 pm 11

    Darn’ it. Someone beat me to posting Witch.

12. Brian Franklin August 1st, 2006 at 7:13 pm 12

    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…
    -
    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. Dave August 4th, 2006 at 1:44 am 13

    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.

14. eric f. August 4th, 2006 at 6:27 am 14

    Well, I suppose I must be the lone dissenter. Whether I am tabbing through documents within one app or tabbing through apps themselves, I put documents in the dock for a reason…to keep them out of the way. I don’t want them popping up without my permission.

15. victor August 12th, 2006 at 7:42 am 15

    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…

16. jesse August 23rd, 2006 at 3:10 pm 16

    Why would you minimize a window in the first place?

    Why not use Expose to move around the multiple windows you have open quickly and easily (hint: screen corners)?

    Why not use CMD-H to hide the app if you want to clear up your screen, and then have it appear again when you select it using CMD-Tab?

17. Veronica August 23rd, 2006 at 4:26 pm 17

    Hey Jesse!
    Because I want to. Now STFU! Where’s my present?