Do you close, minimize, or hide?

love expose`, and have two hot corners set up for it, as well as function keys, if i am keyboarding and don't feel like going to the mousepad. great for quickly hiding apps from prying eyes. now if i could only get rid of the wintel machines in my office...

Timtom - in Photoshop CMD-H (or CTRL-H) hides your selection but doesn't deselect it. Very handy if you want to get a look at the picture as it is. People, correct me if I'm wrong. Calih

Timtom - in Photoshop CMD-H (or CTRL-H) hides your selection but doesn't deselect it. Very handy if you want to get a look at the picture as it is. People, correct me if I'm wrong. Calih

To add to #20's comments, I used to use LiteSwitch until Apple basically yanked the rug out from under them, but didn't add ALL of the cool functionality to the built-in version, then they stopped supporting it and it contained a bug which made logging out stall forever. Boo hiss, bad news all around. But at least everybody gets the feature for free. Re: #17: Yes! WindowShade!!! Remember? How you USED to be able to do that by clicking that |=| button in the far right on OS 9? No, really. Check it out all over again at http://unsanity.com/haxies/wsx/ and see what you think. However, to be honest, it depends on what I want to do, and whether I already have my hand on a trackpad/mouse or whether both are on the keyboard. Otherwise, I'll use any combination of cmd-H, opt-desktop-click, opt-cmd-H, expose's 'reveal desktop', etc. LaunchBar used to be a staple of my Mac diet until Version 4: $40!? Sorry, but... no dice, obdev. I replaced it with QuickSilver, which does more now anyway: I like the 'mini' custom interface, all the plugins, etc. Can't say I like tabbed windows in the sense that DragThing recreates OS 9's, I cannot STAND hot corners, unless they're to specifically disable / enable a screen saver if you're going to be AFK or something. I think the 'genie' minimize effect is cute about TWICE (then it gets changed to zoom), but on a big desktop with a hidden dock? Forget it, going over there and looking for your teensy window in the right half of the dock, after unhiding it, etc. I like cmd-tilde to rotate between the windows of a document, so I really hate that minimizing excludes them. Maybe it should've been a pref or something. I always used to use window managers like fvwm on Sun/HP workstations when I did more stuff in X11, but so far I just haven't felt the need to really go back there on the Mac. I think the difference is, on the Mac, the Apps, their icons and functionality, are a lot more individualistic and easier to identify by subtle context clues (toolbars, etc.) and the integration with all of these various app switching/hiding/information organizing systems lessened my need to lay things out geographically.

minimize. My wife drags windows off the screen, no matter how many times I show her how to use expose or minimize windows.

I always hide windows. I keep the Dock hidden at the top of the screen and use it as little as possible, so minimizing's a pain, and I just use Quicksilver and Command+Tab to switch between and hide programs. (I just found out a couple of weeks ago that you can hide open windows by hitting Command+Tab, tabbing or mousing over to the program you want to hide, and hitting H.)

I also wish that tabbed windows would make their way back to OS X. Sticky windows was a nice attempt at bringing that feature back but unfortunately it just doesn't work as well. I loved being able to drag and drop items into any one of my tabbed windows in OS 9.

I have a logitech MX 310 which has a button in the very middle of the mouse. I set Expose to use this button to shrink all windows, and then use command plus middle button to Expose show desktop. Since I almost always have my dock fidden when I am doing real work I still like "Show Desktop" http://www.everydaysoftware.net/showdesktop/index.html I also swapped the default image for Show Desktop with one of the World of Aqua icons to make it look a little nicer.

Leave 'em all open (except Mail and iCal, which I close) and let Expose expose 'em.

I'm a hider. Have been since the old days. The lower-left button on my four-button trackball is set to option-click. Occasionally I'll minimize, if I have too many windows open in an application. I sure do miss windowshades, though. Expos頩s a neat idea, but I hardly ever use it at all. Sometimes it's more of an annoyance than anything, like when I accidentally stray into one of the hot corners and have to pick the window I want from the dozens that I can't even remember opening. It's definitely not made for clutter-monkeys like me.