Full screen or window?

Do you prefer the Dope opened full screen or within a smaller window? What about when you randomly search? Shop? Check email? Work? Other stuff?

I have a fairly large screen at home - don’t recall its size and too lazy to measure right now - and I surf with a window filling the center and my desktop with various shortcut icons on either side. When I open a spreadsheet (generally it’s just to tweak our budget) it’s usually windowed, altho one planning sheet is pretty large, and it needs to fill the screen.

I use Photoscape to edit photos - it also fills the screen, as does Jigsaw-a-day. I’ll also play my sudoku on a full screen because the program doesn’t seem to be optimized for smaller windows.

I prefer a window about the width of a sheet of paper - OK, maybe half again wider, but not so wide that I have to move my head back and forth to read. Plus if I have multiple windows open, it’s easier for me to switch from one to the other if they’re smaller and staggered. My spousal unit always maximizes windows, so it’s a good thing that he’s got his own computer. Else, I’d have to hurt him. :eek:
:smiley:

I was gonna make this a poll, but I expect answers will be too varied for me to get a remotely reasonable set of choices, so just say it loud and proud: How do you view?

Fun question! For the most part the only time I have a “full screen” for something is when I’m watching a movie (or some YouTube goodie that needs my full attention) and don’t want to have to keep wiggling the mouse to make the screen saver go away.

I don’t normally have two windows going at once, though. The icons at the bottom or in the list at the top of the screen are enough for to move from one to the other as interest shifts.

In general I only have four or five clickable choices going: Yahoo! (home page), email, SDMB, weather, and whatever is my currently active site. During football season, I’ll have at least two more just a click away, but at times like now, I mostly just surf until something causes me to slow down and pay attention. These days, the political bullshit has become too noisy to do a lot of “time sharing.”

I mostly replied here to find out what others (including the OP) use as a strategy. I just got on the Windows 10 bandwagon and am trying to get up to speed on that. So seeing what options other Dopers use may add to my experimenting challenges. It will be amusing to see what all others are up to.

windowed, provided what I want to see all fits in a windowed view. I usually only full-screen video (at home) or CATIA/Teamcenter (at work.)

Full screen for everything. Little windows are hard to see with these old eyes.

Large window with about 3/4" at edges to see some desktop icons. I save and edit many cut-and-pasted graphics from various websites and I need my Irfanview and file management.

Full screen. And magnified.

When I mostly used a desktop Windows computer I generally used a windowed view. Since switching to a MacBook I have a browser permanently full screen and make advantage of the three-finger swipe to view other apps in separate virtual desktops. If I am following a tutorial on the web I often open a separate browser window with which I fill half or quarter of the screen, using the remainder for whatever app(s) I need to do the tutorial. For this I have BetterTouchTool which is flexible in how it lets you easily arrange windows.

I’m clinging to Windows 7 because when I tried to use my husbands Win10 machine, I hated it. I’m not against change, I just like what I have and see no need to change till they force me to, kicking and screaming all the way.

I don’t know that I have a strategy, but I don’t generally have a bunch of windows open. Normally, two would be my limit and then it’s when I’m copying and pasting from my camera to my album folder. I may have 2 or 3 tabs on my open window, rarely more than that.

And I have an analog clock and a calendar gadget open in the upper right corner of the screen, just because. :smiley:

At work, where I have 2 screens, the left one has the modeling/drafting that I’m working and the right has the data manager windows and one intrarwebz window in case I need to do research for whatever I’m doing.

I like a tidy desktop on the computer. My actual top of the desk is another story entirely!

Sounds like we’re cut out of similar cloth!

The clock and calendar things struck a nerve, but they’re gone now, mostly because the ones I had and liked are no longer available in the FREE goodies. That’s true of other doodads I had at one time or another.

And you’re so right about the otherwise clutter on this desk! Two computers and keyboards for one thing! I used a thumb drive to move most of the XP files to the newer machine – years ago now – but I just can’t work up the nerve to put the old PC in the graveyard with the C64 in the basement!

Like you said, I sometimes have two (maybe even three) windows going to move things around in a Copy/Paste exercise, or when I’m making one of those rare attempts to put all of one topic’s things together in one file. I have dozens of such fragments and it’s only rarely that the urge to consolidate them hits me.

On that score I just last month finished consolidating all my “Favorites” (bookmarks?) into an organized folder. As luck would have it, the new browser won’t “import” that fancified listing, so I was wise in retrospect to keep the Win 8.1 and IE11 going on the side. I may just keep both for the near future – which probably translates into “forever.”

Just curious, y’all: how often do you change your “wallpaper”? :smiley:

2 monitors
Icons & stuff on the smaller
windowed on both
need-like the quick launch bar handy & in view
No longer use wallpaper, seldom leave computer idle and new monitors do not burn in the time I leave something up.

Been doing full shut downs for 20 years and never harmed my computers …

My big rig at idle runs over 300 watts when doing nothing. I am too cheap to leave a not needed light bulb of 300 watts burning all night or weekend …

Because of the window being in the middle of the screen, I only see the wallpaper when I first turn the computer on. Lately, I’ve been using pics of my trip to Iceland 2 years ago, and when the spirit moves me, I’ll look in the photo and pick another. I may do that today, since you brought it up. :smiley:

Full screen for everything except (card) games & note pad.

At home, never - once the computer is booted I never see it again.
At work, where I’ve had a second (or third) monitor - every 5 mins between one of the hundred or so of my pics that I’ve loaded. I never bothered to take the time to get a count, but I think last year I shot somewhere north of 10m pics.

  • Since we’ve been thru this before, m in Roman numerals = 1000

I do full screen and really big text. My eyes get too tired to read small print and I’m reading things on a computer screen all day long. I have two monitors so I can multitask with this setup.

As for wallpaper on the computer - I always pick a flat color. My main computer is black, my secondary computer is dark purple and my remote desktop connection is dark blue. I rarely see the desktop wallpaper and I really don’t want to create any visual distractions that I don’t absolutely need.

22" monitor here. I keep my browser window about 2/3s that size horizontally on the upper right. WMP or VLC filling in the other 1/3 in the upper left. I usually have some video playing on WMP when I’m online surfing or whatever. I leave the bottom 2 inches under the browser empty so other windows I have open can stick out where I can click on them if I need to bring them on top.

Eh, it works for me.

Yep! This. I work on everything in full screen, except for those rare times when I have to transcribe data from one app to another, and there isn’t any batch-input option. Then, side-by-side.

I have friends who always have dozens of windows open, all overlain in a weird stack-of-carpets effect. Not my cuppa!

Everything but a handful of games is windowed. And those games are mostly ones that won’t even run windowed.

20-odd inch monitor, 4:3, 1980X1024.

I’m never doing only one thing at a time - surfing, playing a game, and chatting, usually - and being able to switch between the tasks easily is important.

I have two enormous monitors, so the only programs that I run full-screen are my CAD packages.

I have no idea how to explain my habits in a way they make sense. I use Mac OS X at home (dual monitor), and Windows 7 at work (also dual monitor), and my habits are different on each of them.

I should point out that “full screen” on Mac OS X is an awesome, superior experience in most regards, with the downside being that only that application can be full screen in its space, i.e., I can’t bring up a Finder (like Explorer) window up on top of it. Two monitors mitigates this issue for me, though.

Browser: Full screen on my Mac, in a window on Windows.
Office (Excel, Word, etc.): In a window on my Mac, full screen on Windows.
Text editors, consoles, Finder/Explorer windows: always in windows on both platforms.
Outlook/Mail: full screen on both.
IDE’s: Full screen on Windows. On Mac in a window for debugging, full screen for writing.

Full screen for almost everything, except the Dope. I open the forum in full screen, but open the thread I want to read in a window. When done I close the window and resume scanning the forum.