posts with the tag: osx lion

Posted by: bob on Monday September 19th 2011 no comments
Tags: chrome, fullscreen, osx lion

When OSX Lion came out, most apps had the ability to fullscreen by clicking on the fullscreen icon on the top right of the window titlebar. Chrome had this, and then a day later it was updated to remove it. There was speculation that it did not “work right” even though when I used it, it worked just fine.

I then engaged in some IRC flame wars about what “full screen” really means. Most people seem to think Fullscreen means while the entire screen is used by the application, they should still see the address and tab bar of the browser. To me this is NOT fullscreen, this is just really big. Full screen to me means that all UI is hidden except for the main work area. In this case, the work area is the HTML viewport, so I believe the tabs and address bar should be hidden while in fullscreen, yet easily accessible somehow like touching the top of the screen with the mouse cursor.

Google Chrome 14 has finally updated with full support for OSX Lion, and I am quite impressed with their solution. Considering how bad things like the bookmark manager is in Chrome I assumed they would pick one method of fullscreen and that would be it.

Continue reading about Chrome’s OSX Lion Fullscreen (with screenshots)

Posted by: bob on Friday July 29th 2011 2 comments
Tags: bugs, osx lion, usability

Here is a list of all the bugs and problems I have personally encountered in Mac OS X Lion. As I hit more, I will update this post. At the very end after being harsh I will list praises I have for Lion.

[update] August 1, 2011

Bugs

  • [new] Roughtly 50% of the time dragging from the sidebar of Preview does nothing. Generally I drag images from the side bar to a folder on my desktop to create a copy in that folder. Also, see the Usability section.
  • Losing Launchpad icons in the void between Launchpad and Reality. Once there (they bug out when trying to rearrange them sometimes) they are unresponsive and require a full logout.
  • Image Capture utility the checkbox “Delete after import” no longer deletes after import. I use this on my iPhone all the time.
  • Desktop Hot Corners, overly sensitive when I am working so I constantly shut off my monitor which I have set to the lower right corner. However by the time I want to go to bed the corners quit working completely until I go into the settings and turn them off and back on.
  • When Resume is disabled, the checkbox on the shut down / logout screen is still checked by default. It should not be.

Usability Problems

  • [new] Preview forces the sidebar on the left. Mac Desktop sorts Icons from the right side of the screen. This means dragging icons from the Preview sidebar to an Icon on the Desktop means I have to drag across more than 60% of the desktop width. My Macbook is widescreen. Sidebar side needs to be an option. Part of me thinks it used to be one…
  • Natural scrolling needs to allow setting each axis separately. I want natural scrolling when I swipe left and right, but I want normal scrolling for up and down. Inverted up and down scrolling only makes sense to me when I am physically touching the actual screen such as on my phone. On my macbook touch pad, magic pad, or magic mouse, the distance disconnection ruins it.
  • Preview is directly integrated with Versions. Versions is dumb. Preview was the best quick tool ever in 10.6. How it was then is exactly how I want it back, same menu options (Save As… Save All… etc). When I am editing dirty photos I do not want multiple versions floating around in the OS X nether, am I making sense?
  • I cannot delete things from Launchpad unless the item is from the App Store
  • The Apps in the App store need to quit installing installers and install the real app. Seriously.
  • When Dashboard is shown as a space I have been unable to change the background from the ugly grey bubbles to something like an actual wallpaper.
  • Didn’t the bundled PHP used to include PECL? So I could do things like install modules easy?

Bold statements I wish to make

Versions sounds like a personal privacy nightmare as far as digital forensics… remember when our iPhones were logging our locations for eternity how big of a deal that was to people who have a phobia of being arrested?

Back on the topic of Preview. As now there is no save option or even a confirm dialog, preview just saves when you exit – what if I did not want to bother saving one of the 10 I opened? Oh just revert back to a previous version! OK like I said I do not want to keep a history of previous version of pictures that may be embarrassing. Also… where do all the versions go? I am already running low on disk space. Oh, just lock all the files! OK and you do not see how that can get annoying having to lock stuff all the time? Oh, just set the lock time to 1 day! OK and you think I want to wait 1 day just so I do not have to manually lock them?

Basically, Versions just needs a 100% kill switch option, perhaps it even does and it just has not been discovered. Spotlight had one, it could be killed and prevented completely through a few console commands.

Good things about Lion

  • Best new feature: when I have multiple files selected and I right click, now I have “make new folder and put these things in it”.
  • I like how my terminal tabs have spinners on them now while things are processing.
  • The new login screen is pretty nice.
  • My World of Warcraft is running a little smoother in Lion, as in slightly higher frame rate and less random drops in frame rate and stutters.
  • Spotlight seems snappier too.