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What Is the Difference Between Hiding an App and Minimizing It?

what is the main difference (if any) between hiding an application/program and minimising it to the dock ?
kind regards…..
Simon
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Simon

Comments: 4 Responses to “What Is the Difference Between Hiding an App and Minimizing It?”

    12 years ago

    Well, first, you can't minimize an application to the Dock -- you minimize windows. If you have one window open for an app, then it can seem like you are minimizing the whole app, though. But if you have two windows open, like two documents in Pages, then you can minimize one window, or the other, or both.
    So minimizing gives you a chance to hide one document while working on another in the same app.
    In fact, even if you only have one window, and you minimize that, you can still see the menu bar and perhaps other elements of an app. So you could minimize the window, and then choose File, New to start a new document, for instance.
    You also get to see minimized windows in the Dock, whereas you don't see the windows of hidden apps. If you have an app with minimized windows, and you hide that app, then those icons disappear from the Dock.
    So if you have a whole bunch of documents open, you can minimize one or more to focus on the remaining one(s) and then pick and choose between the icons in the Dock to switch to others.
    So it really is the difference of hiding the entire app and hiding a single window while keeping them handy in the Dock.

      Simon
      12 years ago

      Thankyou for clarification :)

    Torbjørn Johansen
    12 years ago

    Hi,
    One good thing is that Exposé, in Mission Control, is showing all minimized windows for the application in focus, under a thin line on the lower part of the background, over the dock. That's a feature I like.

    Regards,
    Torbjoern

      Simon
      12 years ago

      Usually when I think of window, I always think of browser window. But now i see that window refers to any open program which has the "traffic light" maximise, minimise and close buttons at the top left.

      I don't think i have mission control because i think its a feature of lion (i'm on snow leopard). Although planning to upgrade to mountain lion when it comes out.

      I guess you are from Norway :)

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