TUAW Tip: Rockin' multiple monitors with your Mac

Just as a point of reference for people wondering about the graphic performance:

I run a 12" g4 1.5ghz, and have it connected to a 23" apple display (currently the new one, but i used to have the old 23" HD cinema) and i run 3d games without a hitch, (WoW among others) i also use Maya, and other various graphics intensive programs, and i have no problems whatsoever. (i mean, sometimes i have to wait a while for maya to render :-) but WoW plays fine between 25 - 30 fps in most areas.

what resolution are you using ? i have mine hooked up to my 23' samsung hd tv and the image is a little choppy . i would greatly apreciate any tips you have

Regarding: Matt Cowger asks in comment 2. How do you get to the quicktime preferences you screen shot above? Neither my version on quicktime player nor quicktime prefpane hav such a section. Running 10.4.8 on a MacPro with dual monitors.

• You need QuickTime Pro, see comment 23 above, but even then:
• The Full Screen panel is in the QuickTime Player prefs, NOT in the QuickTime System Prefs, and
• In the Displays panel, Mirroring must be OFF before you open QuickTime Player:
- If QuickTime Player is closed when you turn Mirroring ON in the Displays panel, then the two displays will not appear at all in the QuickTime Player Full Screen prefs.
- If QuickTime Player is open when you turn Mirroring ON in the Displays panel, then the two monitors are displayed in the QuickTime Player Full Screen panel prefs, but overlay each other (instead of appearing side by side).

Despite using two monitors currently, and for many years off and on before, I never noticed or thought to look for a Full Screen pref in the QuickTime Player prefs (it really should also be available via the Display prefs) and therefore found this Tip helpful. Only 4 stars because of the ommissions noted above.

For those wanting more dock placement options, you can't place the dock on the edge of your screen bordering the adjacent display because it wouldn't behave well with users who hide the dock. Every time you move the cursor between screens, the dock would pop up. Plus, it would make it extremely hard to actually hit the dock when you needed to, since you would have to hit that 2 pixel line at the edge of you screen every time, and not overshoot and move to the adjacent screen.

If you fullscreen via CMD+SHIFT+F instead of just CMD+F then quicktime gives you the option. VLC bases its fullscreen based on which monitor the playlist part of the app is in. DVD Player bases it by which screen the player window is in.

Anyone know of a way to display a Keynote presentation on a secondary display and concurrently use the primary display for other tasks not related to keynote, like word processing and web browsing? I know presenter notes can be used on the primary display but I just want to work on other things with the preso plays in a kiosk-like mode.

OK, I have a 15.4" MacBook Pro with a GLOSSY screen. I really want another monitor that is GLOSSY AND WIDESCREEN (I hooked it up to a friend's 17" "square" lcd monitor and it looked kinda weird... i like the glossy display) but I also want one that is about the same size so that it looks natural switching from one display to the other. What would you recommend as a GLOSSY WIDESCREEN monitor that is 15.4"? (you can push it to 17" if you really want to, but i want it to stay pretty close to the 15.4" monitor of my MBP)

@valtheWU: As noted above, I use a 20" Dell (LMAO @ McDreamy BTW) @ 1600x1200 with my MacBook and have had no noticable graphics problems except for the aforementioned bit of jerkiness when using Exposé's "show all windows" function when I've got 20 or so windows open. But as a caveat, I have not tried any sort of gaming, especially not 3D-accelerated gaming. As a further caveat, I have it set up as a single-monitor setup with the MacBook closed and sitting below my desk on top of my PC.

And to whoever asked, yes, if you unplug the monitor to take your lappy on the road, then everything goes back to normal. And it goes immediately back to the changed settings when you plug the monitor back in.

@Mark2000: What are you talking about? I've got a MacBook (2.0GHz CD Superdrive) hooked up to a Dell 20" LCD @ 1200x1600 and have no problems. Ok, maybe Exposé is a bit less-than-perfectly-smooth when I've got 20+ windows open, but other than that, it works fine.

For those FrontRow questions:
In my setup, both FrontRow and DVD Player's full screen mode are reproducibly tied to the menu bar. Therefore by moving the menu bar I've moved FrontRow. That's not the perfect solution, since it can mess up some application windows, but it's the only one I've got so far...
Grab a copy of cscreen (e.g. here: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=83976), a little command line app. Then assign the following script to a keyboard shortcut of your choosing:
set cscreenPath to "/path/to/cscreen"
do shell script cscreenPath & " -s 2 -p; exit"