Automatic Creation and Maximization of Windows

Overview

The Human Interface Guidelines demand a highly arguable behaviour of any document-based application:

whenever the application is launched, it should create a new untitled document;
whenever the application is activated, it should ensure a window is shown, even if it means creation of a new document or maximization of a window previously minimized into Dock.

To me, this behaviour seems very non-ergonomic and contra-productive. It is just as probable one is launching the application (or activating it) so as to open a new document using the "Open..." command; there is absolutely no point to hurdle this by creating a new one, which has to be manually closed.

The maximization is even worse: if one wants to maximize a window from Dock, the most straightforward and truly sensible thing is to click its icon there–not the application icon! One clicks the application icon to bring the app forward, either to make a new document or to open an existing one, but hardly ever to maximize any of documents in Dock.

So as to work around this terrible user-experience howler, OCSmart Hacks allows to switch either of the "automatic tasks" off.

User Interface

The user interface is based on two three-state switches (unique for each application): one of them controls automatic document creation, the other controls automatic maximization. The switches are three-state, for they can have any of three values:

yes, meaning the application would normally create or maximize windows;
no, meaning the application would not do that;
unset, in which case the application would ask first time an untitled window would be created or a docked window maximized.

As quite natural, the default setting for all applications is unset*. If an application (which is document-based and which is not one-window-centric) first time tries to create an untitled window, a dialogue is shown for you to decide what the desired behaviour for the particular application is:

Select yes or no; the switch for the particular application will be set, and next time its value will be used without a need to open a dialogue. There is another, similar dialogue shown the first time the application would automatically maximize a window from Dock.

Note that each application has its own switches; therefore, you can set each application to behave differently, depending on your needs. Although one-window applications like System Preferences or Help Viewer should not even ask (presuming you would answer "Yes" anyway), if they happen to do, they work best if you allow them to create a document automatically (but you may want to disable the automatic maximization). On the other hand, with document-based applications like TextEdit it is quite probable you find disabling the automatic creation the most convenient alternative. Once set up, the switches can be changed from the "Window" tab of the OCSmart Hacks window.

* Actually, the Create Document Automatically switch is set to "no" by the Installer Application. See please the Power User Help page Automatic Creation and Maximization of Documents paragraph for an instruction how to reset it to "unset" if you prefer that.

Customization

To change the automatic creation/maximization setting, open the OCSmart Hacks window (selecting the "OCSmart Hacks..." item from the application menu), and choose its "Window" tab. The appropriate widgets are placed in the bottom area:

For each of them ("Create automatically untitled window" and "Maximize automatically docked window") you can set Yes or No. The radio buttons reflect always the current state; in case it is unset, none of them is highlighted, like it is with the maximization on the picture.

It is possible an application contains a dedicated code which decides whether to create/maximize a document. If so, OCSmart Hacks will not interfere, and let the application decide itself; in that case, the radio buttons are disabled. They are also disabled in case the application does not use the standard system document framework (and therefore its behaviour cannot be affected a standard way):

Hover the mouse cursor over the disabled button pair for a moment if you want to see the reason; a tooltip would occur explaining why it is not possible to change the behaviour. See please also the Power User Help page, whose Automatic Creation and Maximization of Documents paragraph explains how to override even the application's dedicated code, if need be (like it is, at least for me, with Safari).