Since Apple released their latest version of Mac OSX, OS 10.7 Lion, we have had full-screen support introduced into many apps, but not everything. Lots of applications are still lagging behind and missing support for this basic feature. This is a small issue that Maximizer has set-out to resolve.
It’s pretty easy to set-up and takes just a few minutes, but does have a dependency which needs to be installed first. The dependency it has is on SIMBL. SIMBL stand for SIMple Bundle Loader and simply allows developers to build plugin for existing applications on OS X. In this case Maximizer is a plugin which will add the full-screen code to any application which does not already have it.
Download the latest release or SIMBL and follow the on-screen instruction from the installer. I know the latest release does not (at the time of writing) advertise Lion support, but from my experience it works fine.
Once done open a new finder window, press ⌘+⇧+G and then copy and paste the following into the box that appears on screen “/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins”. Once you have done this go back to your web browser and download the latest release of Maximizer. This will be a file titled “Maximizer.bundle”, and then copy it into the folder you just opened for SIMBL plugins (“/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins”).
Once done a quick re-boot will introduce full-screen application support to most of your software that doesn’t have native support.
Unfortunately this plugin doesn’t appear to work with any of the Adobe Creative Suite.
Do you use Maximizer or another SIMBL plugin? Which do you use, and do you find they help you become more productive? Comment below.
Written by Daniel Groves
I am a student/freelance website designer that lives near Bath and studies at the University of Plymouth during term time. I spend my time tweeting writing for AppFlow and building on my portfolio. When I'm not working on the web you'll find my out on my Mountain Bike or shooting photos with my Nikon D3000.