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Maximized but without titlebar - what do you call this?

Started by February 04, 2012 12:28 AM
4 comments, last by Koobazaur 12 years, 9 months ago
In my game, I give users several possible options for displaying the window:

Fullscreen
Maximized
Windowed

...but I also offer a fourth option: Maximized but without the titlebar.

I've seen this window mode on a few pieces of software in the past, and I think it's a cool and useful option to add. The benefit is that the windows taskbar is still visible for easier multi-tasking, but the game's titlebar is hidden, making more real-estate for the game itself, and less GUI elements offering themselves as distractions from immersion.

So: "Maximized but without the titlebar", what is this mode called? Is there a commonly used term for it?
If there isn't a common term that you know of, what would you suggest it be called?
Starcraft 2 uses: "Windowed (Fullscreen)"
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I'd really love it to be a single word (or two words smashed together), just like "Maximized", "Fullscreen", "Windowed", purely for aesthetics reasons.

My thoughts:

Optimized
Desktop
Multitask
(with the understanding that the user already knows we're talking about windowing modes, since the word would be right inbetween "Fullscreen" and "Maximized")

"Set the window to multitask mode"
"Set the window to fullscreen mode"
"Set the window to maximized mode"
"Set the window to desktop mode"
"Set the window to optimized mode"
"Set the window to windowed mode"

My dad suggests: "Fullscreen sans Taskbar".
I suppose this can eventually be shorted to "Fullscreen Sans", or "Full sans" or "Sans Taskbar", or "Sans bar", or just "Sans".

Ofcourse the term alone, no matter how clever, can't explain to the user what it means. If I walked up to someone not computer-savy and said "Fullscreen mode" they wouldn't understand until after I explain it.

In my game's settings, I'll have four big buttons that display a large icon visually showing the differences, as well as have descriptive text underneath. So I'm not looking for a word to neglect or skip out on having to teach users a new term, rather, I'm looking for a new term to describe it (if one doesn't already exist), so that if the term enters common computer terminology, it wouldn't be a term we all regret. tongue.png [size=2]"Set your window to awesomized"

I'd like a single word I can now consistently use to refer to this mode in the future - one that can enter the common lexicon of software. Right now I'm really leaning toward "Desktop mode" or "Multitask mode", but want to hear other suggestions or criticisms of those I'm suggesting.

Or, ofcourse, if it already has a good name (probably in Linux window management terminology - the idea isn't anything new, it's just not too common in Windows applications), I'd just as soon use that.
Name it "Fullscreen sans Taskbar" temporarily, then change it to something else when you're about to release your game. I'm sure by that time this question won't be so hard.
I think it's full screen windowed mode in most other things. I'm not sure if it has a single name, but I know you can get valve games to do it with a command line option. Maybe 'Borderless'? A quick google put up that as a related word. Not sure if it's been officially used anywhere though.
Name it whatever you want, get your game to be uber popular, congratulations you just invented a new standard.
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