various "modes" (was: Re: why does FF take up the entire desktop?)

[Mike Schwartz]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Joshua Zeidner <jjzeidner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>  Whenever I maximize Firefox in Ubuntu, it takes up my whole desktop.
>  Its really irritating because I have to press Alt-F9 to minimize it,
> as the window controls are gone (it super maximizes it, the header on
> the window is not visible nor is the other Gnome desktop controls).
> Any ideas on why this is happening?  This is the Gnome environment.
>
> thanks, jmz
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I would conjecture that, users got tired of having so many lines of
"toolbars" taking up space on their screen, that even with the window
maximized, only about half of the screen "real estate" (acreage)
(or, square inches) was available for the actual web page being viewed.

I know it can be annoying to NOT have access to those "toolbars",
because they are there for a reason.
...and I know that "most" of them, at least, can be turned on/off
"manually", using some kind of commands from a "View" pull-down menu.
(of course, that might not be very convenient...)

But it can also be annoying to be using up space for those "toolbars",
"at all times", while only using them, rarely.

IMHO the solution is to be able to toggle between some kind of
"full screen" mode, where all of those "toolbars" are gone, and
a very big percentage of the screen space is being used for
actual "web page" content,
and some other mode, where those "toolbars" are present,
and you can use them to do all kinds of cool things.

In fact, there probably is -- (OR, is "supposed to" be) -- some feature
in Mozilla FireFox, to do just that.  Maybe there is some glitch in
how it works, (?) *or* some gap in my (/ our?) knowledge of
the user interface. (?)

*Have you tried?:*
using the "ESC" key?
and/or the "F11" key?
(just an idea... or 2)
(or, -- are those for G. Chrome?  I forget...)

Just my 0.02,
HTH,
-- 
Mike Schwartz
Glendale  AZ
schwartz at acm.org
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