[Macworld]

Post your comments for What exactly does the Finder's green button do? here

[SoundChangeSEA]

When teaching, I've always referred to it as the "optimize" button. (although not an official title) It generally changes the view of that window to the most usable state. Some windows get smaller, some get larger, some almost disappear.

[Sinas]

I questioned the usefullness of the green button before. A few months ago I discovered MOOM. And the green button makes more sense to me than ever.
try it! http://manytricks.com/moom/
greetings from Sinas in Amsterdam.

[Chris Breen]

SoundChangeSEA, on 25 June 2012 - 11:33 AM, said:

When teaching, I've always referred to it as the "optimize" button. (although not an official title) It generally changes the view of that window to the most usable state. Some windows get smaller, some get larger, some almost disappear.

I think it's the "generally" that throws some people. I'm not sure I see the benefit of zooming Mail's windows to full-screen, for example.

[jowie]

So to conclude, it doesn't really know what it is anymore. I like to think of it as the Random Button. The worst of them is, of course, iTunes.

[k88dad]

For anyone still confused, I'll give a good example. Open a PDF, and it will open in Preview as wide as necessary for the document in question--and no wider. Then, click the "zoom in" button in Preview (or use command +) to make the PDF larger. Some of the content may now be off the edge of the window. Click the green button, and the window will once again be just wide enough to show all of the content.

Here is a web page with a PDF that you can download (right click) to try the example...

http://logitech-en-a...niversal-remote

[rpoland]

Personally, I think the Green Button is a sick JOKE.

If you have a Finder window with more than 10 items in it, clicking the green button will shrink it to where all but the bottom two items ate showing.

Is there any logic there?

[bastion]

jowie, on 25 June 2012 - 12:01 PM, said:

So to conclude, it doesn't really know what it is anymore. I like to think of it as the Random Button. The worst of them is, of course, iTunes.

It has always known exactly what it was. You're just confused because *you* didn't.

As far as conformance to the defined behavior of the button, iTunes is not the worst. It's actually a creative but quite legitimate manifestation of the zoom concept. Realistically, any app that dumbly responds by maximizing when the content doesn't justify it is actually less conformant. The pre-Lion behavior of the stock Calculator app, though, was just wrong.

[bastion]

rpoland, on 25 June 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

Personally, I think the Green Button is a sick JOKE.

If you have a Finder window with more than 10 items in it, clicking the green button will shrink it to where all but the bottom two items ate showing.

Is there any logic there?

I do not see the behavior you describe on any machine to which I have access.

[gngrwzrd]

I prefer Breeze which lets you configure your own window placements and setup keyboard shortcuts with them. http://autumnapps.com/

[n4hhe]

I think the equivalent button was more useful back in the days of MacOS 6 and 7. Perhaps with the introduction of MacOS X 10.0.0 somebody decided to get too smart and as a result the button isn't as smart or useful as it once was.

In the good old days it was a pretty predictable resizer toggling between what the user had resized the window to be and what the application thought the natural window size should be.

[QCassidy352]

it should always expand to full screen. predictable behavior would be more useful than some "optimization" that nobody can define except by specific example.

[revco]

The green button is brain dead in Lion. It no longer expands Finder windows to show ALL that window's content. Last time we saw this behaviour was in 10.3. Nice.

[cashxx]

I'd rather have it maximize to full screen, I think I have used it once where it was useful in the 15 years I have used a mac. Want to maximize more often than what it does.