As far as efficiency goes, there is really no easy way in OS X Lion to quickly see all my windows (visible, hidden and minimized) and then quickly switch to the one I want.
Mission Control + Hot Corner is almost awesome, but not quite!
The fact that I can quickly flick my mouse into a corner and have Mission Control pop up is great! It makes switching between Desktops very very easy and efficient. It also makes switching between currently visible application windows on the current desktop very very easy as well. Unfortunately the fact that it shows only the visible windows (and not the hidden or minimized ones) for the current desktop, considerably reduces it’s usefulness.
Wouldn’t it be great if I could use Mission Control to quickly and easily switch to ANY application window (visble/hidden/minimized) on ANY desktop? Well you cannot do that as far as I can tell! So the only solution I can come up with, is to send Apple some feedback and hope somebody reads it and sympathizes with my plea! Here are the links where you can report the request:
https://bugreport.apple.com (this might require a developer account, but try it anyways)
And just copy and paste the following:
PROBLEM #1 with Mission Control:
Does not have option to show minimized or hidden apps as well.
It would be great if there was an option for all hidden and/or minimized applications to show up along the bottom of the mission control screen.
This bottom area could be re-sizeable so you can make the area bigger or smaller to determine the preview size of these hidden/minimized applications windows.
You could then quickly open mission control and choose any application on your current desktop within a second or two… very quick, very easy, very efficient.
The only alternative I have found is to move my mouse all the way to the dock icon, two-finger click, move to the application window I want to open in the list and click it… this process is very very time consuming and annoying.
I know you can also uncheck the Minimize Applications To Dock Icon but I use a tiny dock and that means I have to hover over each little application icon one at a time to figure out which one I want. Once again, very time consuming and annoying.
PROBLEM #2 with Mission Control:
There is no way to see application on another desktop without clicking on the other desktop and making it active/focus.
There needs to be an option so that when you mouse over a desktop window (without clicking) that it instantly brings up all the application windows for that desktop. This way I can quickly move my mouse from desktop window to desktop window and find the application I am looking for very quickly.
This would allow you to quickly locate an application window amongst all your desltops, which is very easy and efficient.
Currently I have to click on a desktop window which brings that desktop to the foreground/focus and then see if the application I wanted is in that desktop or not… if its not there, I have to go back to Mission Control and go from desktop to desktop until I find the application window I was looking for.
SUMMARY:
Need to add the following options to Mission Control to make it truly awesome:
Option #1-Show Hidden Windows on Mission Control
Option #2-Show Minimized Windows on Mission Control
Option #3-Mouse Over Desktop Window shows Instantly Shows Windows for that Deskop.
Thanks