Do You Use Browser In Full Screen Mode For Browsing?

[BCD 1]

Please take the poll.

 

I really never had a thought about using the browser in full screen mode for regular browsing. I knew such a thing exists, but never gave it a chance for more than 2 minutes. Well, recently I had to work on a 15 inch monitor screen with 800 x 600 resolution. The browser, of course Firefox had almost 1/3rd area filled with toolbars. Anyway after removing most of them and getting into full screen mode removed all the clutter on that screen and gave a large area for the pages to breathe in.

 

The thing which made me post this is, I haven't seen anyone browsing in Full Screen mode. It would be interesting to let your thoughts out about this.

Do you like/are comfortable in browsing that way?

 

I use firefox and it covers the whole screen with the page. It even vanishes the tab bar. May be you would like the tab bar stay permanent, to achieve that right click a blank area on the address bar (try right clicking just above the address bar) and uncheck "Hide Tollbars".

 

For those who would like to hide the menu bar, I would suggest "Hide Menubar" addon. Very simple, press "Alt" key to temporarily display the menubar.

 

For me I would say, it is best when the only thing I am doing is browsing. Even though bigger screens already display most of the websites in their best visible mode, but the clutter free pages are pleasing to eyes.

 

So what about you?

Edited September 19, 2009 by Spencer (see edit history)

[grim reaper1666 0]

I do sometimes us my firefox browser in fullscreen but i have goten into the habbit of forgetting to put it into fullscreen next time i go on the browser. I must say i do like fullscreen browsing it generally makes it easier to do thing but sometimes it is easier to be in normal mode. I suppose what i am saying is that people will use their browser in fullscreen mode depending on what you want to do. For example some people like to play flash games and some of them look clearer when you put you browser into fullscreen while some do not. Another advantage with fullscreen mode is that you can watch movies on it in fullscreen mode for the video and it looks much better because you are getting rid of the annoying parts of the screen which distract you from the movie ont you think so. While for searching on google, and changing tabs normal mode is usually better because you need instant access to the bars and waiting the short amount of time for them to show is not needed.Another factor in if you have your browser in full screen or normal mode is infact as you mentioned the size of your screen this makes a considerable change in your view on full screen or normal mode browsing. Another thing which i would consider as a factor would be if i had piles and piles of usless toolbars which had no way to get rid of them.well that is my view i can not really think of anything else i can possibly change on this matter.

[mahesh2k 0]

No. I don't browse in fullscreen. There are plenty of reasons. Like i want to use some of the programs from system tray. Or access something from start menu etc. That makes me work uncomfortably with full screen. That's why i limit the size of browser. And i don't plan to use it in future. Why ? Simply, it is the matter of comfort. To be frank, i'm not comfortable with the full screen.

[wutske 0]

I don't do it either, mainly because fullscreen browsing is pretty annoying when multitasking. You miss instant messages, you can't quickly switch applications by clicking on them on the taskbar, you can't see the time, ...So no fullscreen for me . But I don't care, Opera doesn't waste too much pixels on useless stuff so I have plenty of room left for browsing.

[grim reaper1666 0]

I seemed to have stopped using my browser in fullscreen. also i keep shifted browsers i use firefox for somethings. while i use internet explorer for other stuff. and i have also started to use opera. i believe that i need to stop doing that and start to try and use one browser and i suppose there is the case of which one i should use but i will decide that eventually i will just use them all for now and then when i decide on the one i like i will choose that one simple as that i suppose. there are someother factors in the choice as well so that is going to need quite alot of time for me to figure out but once i do do i will choose the browse which i will use as a primary browser instead of hopping from one to another all of the time which is something that i have a habbit of doing much like me pumping up my bie tyres and having to have as mcuh air in them as possbile.

[Quatrux 4]

I also don't do browsing in Fullscreen, due to my screen resolution always was quite high and currently it's 1920x1200 so there is really no point to do it, because I want to multi-task and do others things too and not only browse, using fullscreen in many cases is inconvenient..As mentioned, I think that browsing using Fullscreen is really good on small devices, where the screens are really small, for example on laptops with 7-10 inches wide screens or something like that, when it makes life easier, on normal computers with quite high resolution it's quite alright.I remember using 800x600 in the past and also didn't really use Fullscreen..

[rvalkass 5]

Like Quatrux, I use a resolution of 1920x1200, so there is really no need to browse in fullscreen mode to save screen real estate. I also tend to do other things while browsing around on the web, and it is too much hassle to switch in and out of fullscreen mode just to check on my music, read my RSS feeds or whatever. I use KDE's virtual desktops to sort everything out and keep each desktop clean, but keep it easy to access different applications and tasks. However, on my older PCs and monitors, with their smaller resolutions, I would occasionally use fullscreen mode if I was reading long pages of text, just to save myself the scrolling

[Soviet Rathe 1]

My res is 1280x1024 and I'm usually multitasking when I'm browsing the web (using coding tools while having my website open on my browser )my browser res is like... 700x800 when it's not in fullscreen.and yeah about 250 px of that is toolbars

Edited November 4, 2009 by Soviet Rathe (see edit history)

[H.O.D 0]

To be honest, I never tried this out until you mentioned it, and it does seem to be really good! I think I'll experiment with this view for a while. Xisto's pages look really cool in the full-screen mode, but don't know about the rest of the sites. Thanks for the tip

[FelixMercer 0]

I usually just run Firefox in maximized mode and if I hear my instant messenger or other program I switch to it and have it over Firefox, then minimize it when I'm done. My screen resolution is always at 1280x1024. But when I'm not focusing on firefox I usually have it just a portion of the screen.

[iGuest 3]

Using full screen for retail stockroom kioskDo You Use Browser In Full Screen Mode For Browsing?

Hi,

 We use full screen for a touchscreen kiosk in the backstock area of the shoe department and other places, running an app that lets staff with hands full of boxes wave a barcode past a reader in a stand and see all the availability (not counting what is in customers' hands on the way to the registers -- which sometimes matters) by size, color, and store locations.  Full screen allows viewing the maximum of related merchandise without scrolling and allows getting all our locations across the page.

The browser is also used to look at vendor websites and such to answer customer questions or to facilitate placing a special order, so there's no telling what the configuration might be when the server side gets its chance to send a screen load.  We want to put the current window into full screen if not already.

 Latest FireFox in full screen seems to simply scroll the address and tab bars off the top, so if you mouse to the top edge of the screen, they roll back down.  Or in our case, use a simple touch gesture at the upper edge of the touchscreen.

 So we claim legitimate reasons to want to go into / out of fullscreen from JavaScript.  Alas, it's been spotty, tho I haven't tried it with the latest releases.

 We also use Windows appearance settings to enlarge the scroll bars and controls so they can be easily operated from a touchscreen.  That was a great discovery.

 -- old fart with boxes of cards and paper tape still in the basement ...

-reply by Paul Rowe