Newbie has dumb question

[iolair]

I'm new to the Mac, and don't know if this can be done - is there a way to make an application window open up in the same position, at the same size, every time you open it? Or do you have to change that everytime you open an app? Probably a very dumb question, but I don't know. I've looked in my Mac's help file, but can't find it. Am I overlooking the obvious?

 

[ObviousTroll]

iolair,

It depends on the application. Some applications remember the position their windows were in last time, some do not.

 

[iolair]

Is there a way to "force" it to happen?

 

[Foamcow]

It depends on the application.

<honk>*:O)</honk>

Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.

 

[ObviousTroll]

iolair,

Not as far as I know. You might look at something like VirtueDesktops (

http://virtuedesktops.info/index.php/downloads/)

- the developer stopped working on it when they announced that Leopard would have similar functionality built in; but it seems pretty solid from what I've seen. It sets up multiple virtual desktops and it remembers which applications appear on which desktop - you might be able to get it to do what you want.

 

[jpadie]

i have seen that many apps keep their window position in the plist files. you could write a script to edit these plist files on start-up.

 

[ObviousTroll]

i have seen that many apps keep their window position in the plist files.

Errrr... Yeah - that's what I was referring to.

you could write a script to edit these plist files on start-up.

No, because only those programs which already save their window positions in their preference files will have them. Adding extra settings to a preference file will not help, because the program will not load them.

 

[iolair]

Believe it or not, I found that some apps will let you save the position, some won't if you use the (Ugh) Windows trick of holding down the <shift> key while positioning your window. Don't know if that's a happy coincidence, or, if it is actually a feature of some applications.

Iolair MacWalter
Director of IT

 

[ObviousTroll]

Iolair,

That's interesting - I'll have to try that.