[timmerk]

IT BETTER BE, OR ELSE.....

[oVeRmInD911]

A one,

A two,

THREE.....


¡EXPOSÉ!

[mitchell_pgh]

You know it... Who needs window shading... Expose is 2x as powerful... and much cleaner...

Then again, it probably uses 9X the CPU/GPU (as with most OS X tasks).

[- - e r i k - -]

Exposé!

[version]

It's strange though, that in system prefs, there's an option to not alloww minimizing when double-clicking the title bar. I kinda wondered if they might be putting window shade back in.

[KidRed]

Originally posted by version:
It's strange though, that in system prefs, there's an option to not alloww minimizing when double-clicking the title bar. I kinda wondered if they might be putting window shade back in.

That means double clicking the title bar won't send it to the dock.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Exposé!

Ugh, for crying out loud...

Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé Exposé

[timmerk]

No, they have they own, seperate places - It just feels cleaner sometimes to have it windowshaded, and not a million windows open all at the same time, which then you would use Expose.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by timmerk:
No, they have they own, seperate places - It just feels cleaner sometimes to have it windowshaded, and not a million windows open all at the same time, which then you would use Expose.

"I want my window shade! I want my window shade!"

"You dropped it into your diaper"

[gorickey]

Unsanity is going to have a Panther version of WindowShade X in no time after Panther is finally released I have a feeling...

[timmerk]

Originally posted by gorickey:
Unsanity is going to have a Panther version of WindowShade X in no time after Panther is finally released I have a feeling...

Oh yah, I forget to mention this in my original post - I don't want to use any Unsanity hacks in 10.3. I am using WindowShade,Lables, and fruitmenu right now in 10.2 and the APE part slows down my system like no other. My moms 450 mhz cube beats my 1 ghz albook at startup and is just as fast in most other things, including os x stuff.

Without APE, things get much faster.

[phillryu]

The only thing APE affects is application launching speed.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by phillryu:
The only thing APE affects is application launching speed.

Agreed. If it affects systemwide speed then it's either his hard drive needing some defragging or there's something wrong with his OS.

[mikemako]

APE also significantly increases the time it takes once I log out to get to the login screen. It was "Xounds" specifically that was most responsible for this.

[KidRed]

As much as I love windowshades, I've gotten used to moving the window to the side or slightly downward. Expose is not windowshading as ALL windows go by by or get smaller. Nothing Expose does allows one to quickly view the window behind the forward most active window like window shade did.

Apple has won, I've moved on and dealt with life minus windowshades.

[barbarian]

dude,you act as if unsanity's windowshade doesn't exist... just pay the few bucks for windowshade... cheap and it works great + you can have minimized windows in the mix. I would have a hard time dealing without windowshade (Expose is great, but it without windowshade you have a very cluttered desktop) and the shareware fee is trivial.

[timmerk]

Originally posted by barbarian:
dude,you act as if unsanity's windowshade doesn't exist... just pay the few bucks for windowshade... cheap and it works great + you can have minimized windows in the mix. I would have a hard time dealing without windowshade (Expose is great, but it without windowshade you have a very cluttered desktop) and the shareware fee is trivial.

If you are talking to me in your comment, i have it, im a paying customer.

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by KidRed:
As much as I love windowshades, I've gotten used to moving the window to the side or slightly downward. Expose is not windowshading as ALL windows go by by or get smaller. Nothing Expose does allows one to quickly view the window behind the forward most active window like window shade did.

Apple has won, I've moved on and dealt with life minus windowshades.

Um, exposé automatically displays all windows, including the one behind the current the window (and quickly). I have exposé set to a 4th mouse button, right below the scroll wheel. It's a logitech and the button has a picture of a few overlapping windows on it.



It's actually easier to just click that button and expose everything than to locate the window's titlebar and double-click. trust me, exposé is everything you want and more.

[timmerk]

I've used expose, and I love it. But it doesnt replace the need for window shade.

[nobitacu]

Exposé! all the way!!! who in the world needs window shade when you have Exposé! oh yea... I forgot... the people that are still stuck in the dark ages with Windows...

Ming

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by timmerk:
I've used expose, and I love it. But it doesnt replace the need for window shade.

what did windowshade provide that exposé doesn't?

[Moonray]

Originally posted by Stradlater:
what did windowshade provide that exposé doesn't?

It can simply put a single window out of the way (you probably knew that). And keep in mind that other people might have other needs than you.

-

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by KidRed:
As much as I love windowshades, I've gotten used to moving the window to the side or slightly downward. Expose is not windowshading as ALL windows go by by or get smaller. Nothing Expose does allows one to quickly view the window behind the forward most active window like window shade did.

You're right...Expose doesn't allow one to quickly view the window the forward most active window like window shade did. Instead it allows one to quickly view all the windows and not hide the forward most active window.

Exposé 1
Windowshade 0

Seriously folks...Windowshade was just a way to put windows out of the way. Minimize-to-dock does this!

With the option of minimizing to the Dock, hiding an app, and Exposé...why the hell do you need windowshade?

Like Stradlater, I'm very curious to know what windowshade does that Exposé doesn't other than provide absolutely no visual feedback to what's going on inside the window and provide a smaller target to click when you need to un-minimize.

[Oneota]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:


Seriously folks...Windowshade was just a way to put windows out of the way. Minimize-to-dock does this!

With the option of minimizing to the Dock, hiding an app, and Exposé...why the hell do you need windowshade?

Let's say you just need to quickly glance at a window behind the frontmost one. With minimize-to-Dock, you minimize the front window, do your glancing, then must go down (or over) to the Dock, find your window, wait for it to unminimize.

With Windowshade, it's [double-click]glance[double-click].

MUCH faster.

But yeah, Exposé is cool (though it still suffers the same too-long-to-do-a-simple-thing problem).

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Oneota:
Let's say you just need to quickly glance at a window behind the frontmost one. With minimize-to-Dock, you minimize the front window, do your glancing, then must go down (or over) to the Dock, find your window, wait for it to unminimize.

With Windowshade, it's [double-click]glance[double-click].

MUCH faster.

But yeah, Exposé is cool (though it still suffers the same too-long-to-do-a-simple-thing problem).

If you're gonna bring your cursor to the titlebar to windowshade it...you might as well just click and move the window out of the way...just as fast.

Right now you're putting up 1 scenario up against the multiple scenario Exposé takes care of.

If I were to choose between solving multiple scenarios or that 1 scenario where a person would want to see the next window behind the active one, I choose solving multiple scenarios.

That one scenario can be solved multiple ways that don't need windowshade. Click and move window out of the way and then move back (without releasing the mouse button)...cmd-~ (tilde) then cmd-shift-~ back...minimize...

I personally find double-cliking the titlebar tedious work. Don't tell me any of the above scenario takes longer or is more difficult than what windowshade offers (except for the minimize option.)

[GORDYmac]

I have removed all Unsanity hacks from my system. APE, in particular, rendered several apps--including Finder and iTunes--unstable or unlaunchable. I do miss Window Shade and Minimize in Place, but it's not worth the headache.

[KidRed]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
You're right...Expose doesn't allow one to quickly view the window the forward most active window like window shade did. Instead it allows one to quickly view all the windows and not hide the forward most active window.

Exposé 1
Windowshade 0

Seriously folks...Windowshade was just a way to put windows out of the way. Minimize-to-dock does this!

With the option of minimizing to the Dock, hiding an app, and Exposé...why the hell do you need windowshade?

Like Stradlater, I'm very curious to know what windowshade does that Exposé doesn't other than provide absolutely no visual feedback to what's going on inside the window and provide a smaller target to click when you need to un-minimize.

I guess I should've explain my usage for windowshades versus Expose, and I know all about Expose The only reason I would use Windowshades is to quickly view something behind the front window. THe immediate example would be working on a website in photoshop and needing the text that the client emailed me. So I would windows the document window in PS in order to see (and read) the email in the background.

Expose would simply show me where the window is, not allow me to read anything. Expose is nice as I stated earlier, but it is no windowshades and does not portray and such similar behavior. It's now my behavior to simply move the document window out of the way to see the background window.

Oh for the Haxie recommendation- been there done that, I don't use haxies anymore.

[barbarian]

Well despite a few people who have had bad times with haxies, I have used windowshade since the day it was released on multiple machines and have only had a problem on one machine. This problem was fixed by simply uninstalling and re-installing. If windowshade is what you want, a haxie is the only way you are going to get it because Apple is not going to include this anytime soon. My bliss = windowshade 3.0 + expose... allows me to have an uncluttered desktop, but it also allows me to swap windows quickly when i have a bunch of them open.

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by Moonray:
It can simply put a single window out of the way (you probably knew that). And keep in mind that other people might have other needs than you.

-

What other needs? Why would one need to merely put a single window away when they can view that window that is behind the other with exposé? I just don't understand the logic here...

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by Oneota:
But yeah, Exposé is cool (though it still suffers the same too-long-to-do-a-simple-thing problem).

Have you used Exposé or seen it in action? It's fast...just about as fast as double-clicking a titlebar and waiting for it to display what was behind it.

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by KidRed:
I guess I should've explain my usage for windowshades versus Expose, and I know all about Expose The only reason I would use Windowshades is to quickly view something behind the front window. THe immediate example would be working on a website in photoshop and needing the text that the client emailed me. So I would windows the document window in PS in order to see (and read) the email in the background.

Expose would simply show me where the window is, not allow me to read anything. Expose is nice as I stated earlier, but it is no windowshades and does not portray and such similar behavior. It's now my behavior to simply move the document window out of the way to see the background window.

Oh for the Haxie recommendation- been there done that, I don't use haxies anymore.

Ok, this is the first feasible defense, but at the same time, you can adjust. The small portion of time it takes expose to display all windows and zoom in on one doubtfully affects your productivity that much...at the same time, to quickly view one application, you can always click on the dock icon of that application, then click on the dock icon of the other, right? That's only two clicks, windowshade would be four

[Moonray]

Originally posted by Stradlater:
What other needs? Why would one need to merely put a single window away when they can view that window that is behind the other with exposé? I just don't understand the logic here...

If you don't understand or need it then just don't use it, is that simple enough?

-

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by Moonray:
If you don't understand or need it then just don't use it, is that simple enough?

-

If you can't answer the questions I posed, obviously exposé works as well or better than windowshade...apple's not going to reimplement an old feature when they have a new one that works better. thanks for the convincing argument, though, i am now thinking maybe windowshade is much better

[Moonray]

Originally posted by Stradlater:
If you can't answer the questions I posed, obviously exposé works as well or better than windowshade...apple's not going to reimplement an old feature when they have a new one that works better. thanks for the convincing argument, though, i am now thinking maybe windowshade is much better

Many people here have answered your questions. If you don't like windowshade it's fine with me, but that you keep nagging and obviously don't want to understand the explanations others gave here qualifies you as a troll. Good bye.

-

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by Moonray:
Many people here have answered your questions. If you don't like windowshade it's fine with me, but that you keep nagging and obviously don't want to understand the explanations others gave here qualifies you as a troll. Good bye.

-

And I've rebutted all, and only one explanation was acceptable as being accomplished by windowshade but not necessarily exposé...and that I gave an alternative to. If you want windowshade so badly (which there is very little point for with exposé), then use haxies and have fun. apple's not going to implement it.

Oh, and troll?

Good bye in deed.

Seriously, all I'm saying is be happy that you have exposé and stop whining over the loss of the OS 9 windowshade. Windowshade really isn't necessary with Exposé...

[Horsepoo!!!]

What I don't understand is that most people in this thread that use Windowshade seem to use it for one purpose; see the window that is right behind the active window.

How is double clicking easier or faster than dragging the window out of the way and then back while holding the mouse button down?

People who use it to tidy up the desktop now have many options...

Minimizing to the dock: Although I hate minimizing to the dock, it's much more tidy to minimize to the dock than have a bunch of titlebars everywhere on the screen.

Use Exposé: This allows you to leave the clutter on the screen, 'cuz it doesn't matter when you've got Exposé since it lets you quickly see all the open windows.

Use a combination of minimizing and Exposé.

Really...I'm not gonna start windowshading all my windows to get a good clear look of my desktop...I'm gonna use Exposé.

[barbarian]

>most people in this thread that use Windowshade seem to use it for one purpose; see the window that is right behind the active window.

I use windowshade because I like to have a clean desktop. Even with 2 1600x1024 monitors I often have too many apps and too many windows out. Generally I windowshade everything except for the one or 2 apps I am moving between at a particular moment. If I am workng on a website I often have to go from illustrator to dreamweaver to photoshop to entourage to flash mx... when all those windows are open it gets damn confusing. Windowshade keeps me organized and my desk clean. Also I can see at a glance what all my windows are.

Lately I've been using windowshade 3's minimize in place in addition to the classic shade. This lets me put things that I open and close all the time, but don't care about the window title (entourage) off to the side and out of the way.

Expose is super cool, but it doesn't cut down on clutter at all, still I prefer it to Windowshade on my portable with a small screen because with a small screen windowshade is just as cluttered. I don't think I'll need expose much on my dual, where I have screen space to burn, but you never know. After using it for only a week on the powerbook I found myself reaching for it on the big machine.

> How is double clicking easier or faster than dragging the window out of the way and then back while holding the mouse button down?

As I see it expose has a very different function than windowshade. Expose is basically a really cool app and window switcher whereas windowshade is a screen de-clutterer. De-clutter is not important to everyone, but most of the professional designers in this office are clean desktop type of people and don't want to see a huge jumble of windows on their screen.

Also sometimes it's important to see the window titles of documents. Sometimes when you have 10 or 11 windows you need open and their content is something generic, the title is the best way to tell them apart. For me windowshade is the best way to have all the windows open and accessable and still have a legible workspace.

[JKT]

Originally posted by barbarian:
>most people in this thread that use Windowshade seem to use it for one purpose; see the window that is right behind the active window.

<snip>

Also sometimes it's important to see the window titles of documents. Sometimes when you have 10 or 11 windows you need open and their content is something generic, the title is the best way to tell them apart. For me windowshade is the best way to have all the windows open and accessable and still have a legible workspace.

In my experience, the last thing that WindowShade does is leave you with a clean and accessible view of windows that you have open - titlebars obscure each other everywhere and make for a terribly inelegant GUI paradigm, and one that makes thing worse rather than better... then again, I'm only used to the feature on a 1024x768 screen.

In the absence of WindowShade, I fail to see what is wrong with using a combination of:

command-Tab/shift-Tab to quickly see an app behind,

command-~/command-` to quickly see a window behind,

hiding apps and/or minimising to the Dock to clear window clutter.

Considering the evident clamour from so many people for this feature to be re-introduced, I'm just wondering what Apple's rationale is for not including it... I can think of the following, but none seems compelling enough:

1. It is a plain ugly hack both in terms of visual feedback and usability (the "titlebar shuffle" to find the window you wanted that you had to go through before OS 9 and its "Window" menu was introduced makes me shudder )

2. It is potentially confusing to inexperienced users (e.g. "where did my window contents go?! I can't get them back") and encourages what I would call bad window practice - having windows placed in illogical fashion (e.g. using Photoshop after someone else and having the palettes scattered all over the shop is reminiscent of the results of a "titlebar shuffle").

3. It is simply ugly to look at - disembodied titlebars floating in the ether of your desktop...

[timmerk]

The other uses I have for it, is that I like to have diffrerent ways of organzing/managing my windows. To keep things that I won't work on right away out of the way and clean, I minimize to dock. To see the title of the window and open it quick again, I use windowshade. When I have a clutter of open windows that Im all using, then I use Expose. Expose takes longer to do then say, windowshade a window to see the current song or playtime in itunes.

Dont get me wrong, I love expose, but I also use windowshade.

[barbarian]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I think it very much depends on which type of work you do, how many applications you run and the size of your screen.

On a tiny 1024x768 screen I agree windowshade is messy.

But on larger screens it offers something invaluable... the ability to read the window title at a glance.

Most of the designers around here open up all the windows they will be working with, minimize them and then organize them on the screen. Then for the next several hours they simply shade and unshade windows as needed cutting and pasting and dragging between windows.

For us, minimizing to the dock takes too much time and the items are virtually indistinguishable in the dock. You have to either tab through all the windows or scrub the dock to get at the window you want. Your milage on this feature may vary.

Tabbing between active windows leaves you with an impossibly jumbled screen. Some people don't care about this, we do.

Expose which we've tried is useful especially on small screens, but it doesn't solve the jumble issue and dragging between windows takes an extra step. For the home user I think it is more than adequate and supercool to boot.

I would also dispute the fact that it windowshaded windows are ugly. I think 8 neatly organized shaded windows is much nicer than a jumble of 8 windows on top of each other or a dock full of illegible windowlets. But this is a matter of taste and taste varies.

Anyway I think that it all depends on how you work and the screen you are using. There is no absolute and no "right" way of doing it. I frankley don't care that apple doesn't offer the feature, because unsanity is doing a damn good job and seems to be constantly innovating. I simply don't understand people who say that Windowshade "must" be a system feature or those who argue that it is useless. For me and my team it is essential. In fact 2 of my designers wouldn't switch from OS 9 until it was available.

-------------------
My wish would be for all apps to implement tabs. Tabs ala safari have greatly reduced my screen clutter while providing what for me is the most important window identifier, the title. If I had these in word/dreamweaver/photoshop we might really start having clean desktops and manageable workspaces. Even better would be tabs that could be dragged to another window or dropped on the desktop to spawn a new window... But that's just the liquor taking....

[quandarry]

i like the exposé option of quickly moving all the windows off the desktop to get to a folder or some other doodad on your desktop...way cool and damn fast!

if you want windowshading just to see the window behind it...why not just click on an exposed part of the window behind to bring it forward...

[SMacTech]

Exposé is the way you will go once you use it. It is very fast. That coupled with keyboard commands, to me it is much better than windowshade.
People are allowed to have their preferences and what works for one may not work for any of the others.
It doesn't look like Apple will provide it, so you will have to rely on a haxie.
Use what works for you.

[ZackS]

Ok, I just finished reading the whole thread and I can see the two camps. Let me see if I can explain to the Exposé camp why Windowshade is useful in many situations.

Ok, I'm typing a paper and I have an MPEG2 decode going around in the back on my 1024x768 monitor. I could do one of several things. I could go up to the title bar, move the window, check out the decoding, and then slide it back. I could minimize the window, check out the task, go down to the dock and bring it back. I could punch F9 and squint at the tiny exposé thumbnail of the stats and probably be unable to read them, click it to get a closer look, then switch back. All of these techniques would work fine, but they're distracting and slow. I'm sure Expose would chunk along with an MPEG2 decode going. Moving the window out of the way is a pain in the ass, and wrist if you need to do it a lot, and minimization is no better.

What I would prefer to do is simply doubleclick the WP document's tool bar, glance, then doubleclick again. It's not a hard concept and honestly, I wouldn't use it that much. But when I would like to use it, I want it to be there! Exposé is the answer to switching open windows, minimizing is the answer to organizing too many. Moving the window all the way offscreen is cumbersome. I would really like to see windowshade make an official return just for checking out the background

Even if windowshade has but one use, simply making it a checkbox that is off by default in the general prefs would be enough for me. How could you conceivably oppose that.

[lookmark]

Seems to me the easiest solution to your situation is just to switch over from the WP app to the MPEG2 decode app.

Novice users will click on the Dock icon; more sophisticated users will hit command-tab.

Command-tab is especially useful in Panther as it works like LiteSwitch now, cycling through all apps in load order. (Not just the first time, then Dock order, as Jaguar does currently.) So if you're checking the progress of your MPEG2 decode often, one press of command-tab will bring you there, and command-tab again will bring you back to WP.

Exposé (F9) seems like a pretty nifty way of checking on it as well, if you don't have a hundred windows open.

[ZackS]

The problem is when you switch to the app, it takes up 100% of the processor and I get about a 5 second delay while the system beachballs under the full load and then switches back. If I keep it in the background, use hovers at about 80%, plenty to allow word processing.

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by ZackS:
The problem is when you switch to the app, it takes up 100% of the processor and I get about a 5 second delay while the system beachballs under the full load and then switches back. If I keep it in the background, use hovers at about 80%, plenty to allow word processing.

This qualm seems minor enough...but if you're just checking the status of the encode, all you really need to see is the progress bar, which should be seen pretty easily with exposé.

[Horsepoo!!!]

I find this "all I want to do is check the background window" very far-fetched. There are way too many ways to prevent that situation to warrant putting back windowshade.

You can click on the Dock icon.

You can try to not completely cover the window you *know* you want to check. Seriously...if you know you have a window that needs to be checked (which seems to be the case for most of you...you know the window is right behind and needs checking) why not keep that window near the edges of the screen.

Exposé does a good job...like Strad said, if all you need is a glance, you can check the progress bar...why do you have to know exactly what percentage of the task has been done?

Frankly, I think some of you are pushing it with your scenarios.

If you really want windowshade for those very rare occasions where you absolutely had to bury the window behind a bigger window...or you absolutely can't use Exposé because you got to know what percentage with a precision of 2 decimals your task is at, or you can't click the Dock icon (if it's another app) or cmd-tab or cmd-tilde (if it's truly the next most forward window of the same app) then get WindowShade X.

I can't see Apple spending the time to add this feature in though.

[ZackS]

I just thought of a neat solution, using exposé. A fourth key that scatters all of the windows from just the front app! That would be awesome and fit my needs perfectly. The problem with Command-H is that it switches apps too.

[CJM]

i've been using expose for a while now and i love it but i can still see the usefullness of windowshade and especially minimize-in-place. Minimize to dock is useless.

The way i would like it to work is
double-click the title bar = windowshade
click the minimize buttom = minimize in place
expose = works like it does now
minimize to dock = removed. or give the option of either minimize in place or minimize to dock.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by ZackS:
I just thought of a neat solution, using exposé. A fourth key that scatters all of the windows from just the front app! That would be awesome and fit my needs perfectly. The problem with Command-H is that it switches apps too.

Won't work. People want to see the window right behind the one they're windowshading. If that window happens to belong to the same app, it'll get 'scattered' to the sides of the screen also.