#1619 Usability of full screen mode
With iTerm 0.10 (latest release), I entered today full screen mode by accident. Exiting from it was a nightmare - until I stopped looking for a way to do so within the interface, Googled for a solution and found this page [1]. Below I explain why this is a usability problem - the interface actively prevents a user from finding a solution, even if the user chose to enter full screen mode through the menu item. Check for instance the last comment from Dawn Endico in this page [1], and the
[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/funkatron/378662917/
When I enter full screen mode, either by accident or by the appropriate Menu bar command, the menu bar becomes inaccessible - moving the mouse to the top does not show it (as reported in [2]). If I right click on the shell, a popup menu appears without any command to exit from full screen mode. Clicking Info shows a window and makes the menu bar reappear, but there the "Enter Full Screen" command is greyed out. A usable UI would replace the command with "Exit Full Screen", or at least have the other command in the same menu. I find no "Exit Full Screen" command anywhere else. The only way to exit from this mode within the GUI is figuring out that Cmd-Enter, the shortcut for the disabled command "Enter Full Screen", is not disabled itself but can be used to exit from it. However, if a program shows that a menu item is disabled, it tells explicitly to the user "There's no point in clicking this menu item or pressing its shortcut", a message which prevents the user from recovering from the situation.
[2] https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2669261&group_id=67789&atid=518976
In case it matters, the platform was a OS X 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro.