Preview window contents in Lion's Mission Control

 

Apple's Mission Control option in OS X Lion is useful for keeping track of windows and open applications, but its default view can be a bit limiting, especially if you have multiple applications and windows open.

For instance, if you open a few windows in Safari and TextEdit, then Mission Control will group both Safari's and TextEdit's windows and stack them on top of each other, making them difficult to see. If you then open a few other programs, the stacks of Safari and TextEdit windows in Mission Control will become even smaller, sometimes to the point where you cannot make sense of their contents.

While you can mouse over the windows in the stack and click them to bring them to the front, doing this is an impractical way to manage large collections of windows.

In Mission Control windows can get clustered into groups that make them hard to see.

(Credit: Screenshot by Topher Kessler)

This problem happens because Mission Control allocates equal screen space to all open applications, instead of giving the one with more windows the room it needs to display its items. This makes the management of applications convenient, but encroaches on the convenience of managing windows.

As a result of this limitation, people may resort to the less convenient option of switching to an a... [Read more]

Preview window contents in Lion's Mission Control
Topher Kessler
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:08:53 GMT