I’ve been observing my students as they work in our lab. We have a nice setup with 30 new wide screen iMacs. The machines have OS X and Windows XP. The screens are big: 24 inches wide. The screens are so big, if you have a document open using the full screen you literally have to turn your head from side to side to read it.
Most programs open full screen by default. It is not uncommon for a user to have two or three programs open at once; all the details of an assignment are in a browser while Word is used to complete the assignment. With each program filling the screen, the user must switch back and forth between different programs. Most of them do not use the Alt-Tab cool switch, so add the time it takes to use the mouse to click on those small buttons at the bottom of the screen. It especially annoying when Word is in full page view because the page only takes up the center of the screen. Literally half of the screen is unused dead space on each side of the document.
During yesterday’s activity in class there was one student who resized two program windows so that each took up half of the screen. One window was Word and the other was a browser. Both were perfect sizes for working. That student also was the first to finish the activity, finishing twenty minutes before the next student.
By the way, if you are working with multiple programs and you want to quickly maximize your screen usage without overlapping windows, try allSnap.