Holding Option when clicking the green maximize button will expand the window without entering full screen mode. You know you're doing it right if the glyph inside the button turns from two triangles to a plus sign.
When I do this with for instance a Finder window, it just "zooms" it. You can get the same effect if you go to the Window menu -> Zoom. "zoom"ing tells macos to make the window fit the content that's inside of it, however the app feels like doing that, even if you damn well just want the window to be as big as it can be.
BUT, option + double-clicking any window corner will actually make even a Finder window take up the whole visible space of the screen without being "maximized" (without creating a new screen / workspace).
(double-clicking any corner will make the window expand all the way towards the corner you've clicked; if you have a finder window in the middle of the screen and you double-click the NE corner, it'll get bigger in the N and E directions until it hits the menu bar + the right edge of the screen.
similarly, double-clicking any edge will make the window expand all the way to the border of the screen in the direction of the edge you clicked, and option + double-clicking an edge makes it grow both in that direction and the opposite.)
completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind.
> completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind.
I just found out that Apple has a pretty neat guide on all of this [1]. That you can find by googling or searching the builtin system help. I never looked at the system help before, but it looks like Apple did a good job documenting these features. Maybe I should start to RTFM for my OS...
I still agree on the discoverability part but I can't think of a way that would be better. It makes sense that there isn't a button for these commands, but if there isn't you need a manual or a tutorial and who is going to look at these? Maybe someone smarter has a better idea on how to solve this.
I browsed through the guide a bit, but it seems to be anything but comprehensive, rather it's quite similar to comment threads like this where there's a smattering of less-well-known hidden functionality among the more obvious stuff.
> I still agree on the discoverability part but I can't think of a way that would be better.
In Emacs, C-h m runs `describe-mode` which goes through the major mode of the current buffer and all the currently active minor modes, and puts their descriptions and all the mode-specific key/mouse bindings into a new Help buffer.
It would probably be incredible overkill, but I'd adore an overlay view in macos where each screen widget / distinct region had an outline or different shaded color overlaid on it, and when you hover each widget it shows you all the "keymaps" / event bindings for it. Give me all the knowledge; I use Emacs by choice for crying out loud.
