Mac OSX Lion Tech Tip: Fullscreen Support for Browsers and Cocoa Apps is Available!

Bill Malchisky  July 22 2011 10:21:02 PM

Currently, Lion's Fullscreen support is limited to Safari, iLife apps (e.g. GarageBand), and some of the standard Apple provided OSX tool at the moment. I prefer to have apps that do not take-up the full screen unless I specifically request it, as with document editing programs. That has been one of the benefits of the Mac environment and in one way what distinguished itself from Windows. What is the benefit of Safari full screen on a 27" monitor? Most Windows machines do not come with such a monitor by default, so iMacs have a clear advantage here. The difference with simply maximizing a window and getting Fullscreen support is that the application is designed to use all of the space on your monitor--in theory.

Having stated that, Apple is moving in this direction. At the current time, Chrome and Firefox are not enabled for Fullscreen mode. Additionally, Cocoa apps are not able to do so...  till now!

Enter Maximizer. This is a SIMBL plugin providing Fullscreen support with Cocoa apps that are not currently supporting Fullscreen. Plus Chrome and Firefox support. Carbon apps are excluded currently. The application is in beta, so read the caveats on the page. Be mindful of the support email link on the page, as the developer wants to make it better. So if you see any anomalies, or worse, do send a note with the simple requested support info.

One great aspect of being in the tech space, individual developers creating solutions to fill a void in the marketplace...and much faster than larger enterprises ever could. Great to see such ingenuity.

Two quick notes:
1) If you are curious about Apple's hits and misses with Fullscreen support in Lion, here is a good article;
2) Recall from yesterday's post that Fullscreen does not allow for proper real estate management in a dual-head configuration, leaving the other display with a linen background; presuming Apple will address this in a future release.

• Comments [0]