Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Minimize windows in Haiku

I'm used to the Mac dock where you can minimize windows as desired and they'll sit quietly in the dock until you need them again.
Then just one click and they're back in their full glory.

In Haiku, windows don't have a minimize button, the yellow tab at the top right of each window has close and maximize buttons only.
However, by double clicking on the yellow tab, the window will immediately minimize. But, not to the dock mainly because I'm not using a dock but the LaunchBox arranged so that it looks like a dock.
In fact it minimizes to the tracker deskbar in the top left corner on my screen.
To maximize a minimized window, you can neither click the icon in the LaunchBox or in the tracker dropdown list.
Instead, you open Twitcher by holding down Ctrl-Tab when a small GUI window opens which allows you to cycle through all open apps. While still holding down the Ctrl key only, cycle through the apps by successively hitting the Tab key or the Left or Right arrow keys or the 1 key.
Release the Ctrl key when the required app is highlighted.

However, in truth, it's a little inconvenient to minimize windows with the mouse and then re-awaken them with the keyboard. Just a little too much inconsistency here. Should be either one or the other.
Luckily, in Haiku you can use the mouse the reopen a minimized window. Just click (left or right) the Tracker deskbar tab for the window you want to open. Then choose Show All and your window should reopen.
Unfortunately, that's two clicks rather than just one but still think it's better than moving to the keyboard and Twitcher.

Another very nice feature of Haiku.
As I repeatedly say, the only thing that's really stopping me from using this OS for all my day-to-day stuff is the absence of flash or HTML264 capability.

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