SillyDog701

[Antony]

Today, when I use Thunderbird in my PowerMac G4 (dual 1.42), I noticed that there's a hidden which does not show, but would only appear when I press F9. (the Exposé)

I am now in another computer, PowerBook, I noticed the same thing. Usually I don't have any Mozilla products installed in my PowerBook, but in order to check Netscape's secnews, I decided to install Mozilla 1.7 (for OS X of course). Again, with the Exposé again (F9), I noticed the hidden window again.


(Detail of the screenshot: Quit Safari, Quit Mozilla 1.7, and re-launch it. then pressed F9. Screenshot taken by Snapz Pro X (licensed copy). http://sillydog.org/ is the default home page of my Mozilla 1.7, and I haven't surfed to any other pages.)

From the above screenshot, the smaller window labelled "hidden" would only appear under Exposé. It is well hidden under normal usage. What is the hidden window for?

I checked Safari browser, no hidden windows at all. I will check if this exist in Firefox when I back to my PowerMac G4.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8

[Wellander]

Hi,
F9 opens the sidebar in Windows.
I do not think that Mozilla is spying.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.1) Gecko/20040707

[Antony]

Wellander,
F9 is the default key to reveal all the opened windows in your desktop. You need Mac OS X Panther for this feature. This is one of the coolest feature in Panther called Exposé.



Same results if I assign the All Windows (Exposé) to other keys or using the mouse.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8

[DJGM]

Hmmm, I've noticed that "hidden" window myself, when using the "Expose" feature of Mac OS X 10.3.x.

The thing is . . . I don't know what it is or what it's for either. Since it only happens with Mozilla
products on Mac OS X 10.3.x, if there weren't so many ignorant Mac bashers there, I would
have suggested raising this particular issue on the MozillaZine forums, to find out more.

Other than that, I dunno who else, or where else to ask about it . . .

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

[Antony]

I noticed that sometime ago, but never thought of bringing it up.

Since it only happens with Mozilla
products on Mac OS X 10.3.x, if there weren't so many ignorant Mac bashers there [MozillaZine], ...

I agree with you 125%.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8

[Antony]

The thing is . . . I don't know what it is or what it's for either. Since it only happens with Mozilla
products on Mac OS X 10.3.x,
[...]

Well, I start to doubt that. It could be well hidden in all platforms, thanks to Exposé in Mac OS X Panther , they can't hide no more.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8

[Joji]

Well, I start to doubt that. It could be well hidden in all platforms, ...

I don't think so, Antony. According to this article, it is Mac only.

I'm using OS X 10.3.1, and if I use Expose to show all windows, there is a "hidden" Mozilla window. What does it do?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ja-JP; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

[Antony]

Thank you very much, Joji.

Now, it is not spying, and the mysterious "hidden" window is for some reason. Still annoying.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/125.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8

[Antony]

Just a following up,

the Hidden window appears in Thunderbird, Mozilla (Application Suite), Firefox and Netscape 7.2 for Mac OS X.
It does not appear in Camino.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/125.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.9

[Al]

Just a following up,

the Hidden window appears in Thunderbird, Mozilla (Application Suite), Firefox and Netscape 7.2 for Mac OS X.
It does not appear in Camino.

That's strange, maybe it was built on Cooca, not Aqua

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

[Josh]

Just a following up,

the Hidden window appears in Thunderbird, Mozilla (Application Suite), Firefox and Netscape 7.2 for Mac OS X.
It does not appear in Camino.

That's strange, maybe it was built on Cooca, not Aqua

Al,

All of the current Mozilla offerings (minus Camino) are Carbon (a Tool-kit that allows programs to run on OS 9 & X) / Mach-O (Mozilla that has a UNIX backend, Mac frontend). Aqua is the name for the OS X UI.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2

[macsrwe]

I saw this issue answered elsewhere...

Apparently, Mozilla got tripped up by the fact that on Macs (unlike other OSes) closing the last window is NOT a directive to quit the application. So they had to invent a "last window" that the user could never close. Hence the hidden window. Exposé apparently defeats the clever mechanism they used to keep it hidden.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.5.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12

[Antony]

Thanks macsrwe,

The hidden window issue was fixed in [sdt=7416]Firefox 1.0 PR1[/sdt]. The close window has different behaviour to exit applications. It's not Exposé defeats the mechanism they use, but the fact that they did not follow Apple Human Interface Guidelines, and Apple Software Design Guidelines.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.5.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12