HOWTO: Open a Program in a Maximized Window

With some programs, we always may want to open them in maximized (full-screen), or even minimized (hidden), mode. Windows allows us to accomplish this via a setting in a program's shortcut.

Tech Tip
If you're like me, you may have a shortcut for a specific program on the Start Menu, on the Desktop, and also on the QuickLaunch bar. Each is a different shortcut and would have to be set individually

In the image on the left, we see the popup Context Menu that appeared when I right-clicked on the Firefox icon. From this menu, I selected Properties.

That opened the Mozilla Firefox Properties dialog box shown in the image below on the left. Notice that the Run options says "Normal Window". This means that Firefox will open in a window that is not full-screen (not maximized), if I double-click on the shortcut.

Tech Tip
Other ways I could open the shortcut are to left click on it once to select it, then press the Enter key. Or, I could tab to it, or even (assuming SOMETHING on the desktop is selected), press the M key until it cycles over to Mozilla Firefox — and press the Enter key to activate the shortcut.

Or, I could right-click on the shortcut and select Open, which would give the same result as double-clicking the shortcut.

In the right image below, first, I would click on the pulldown option indicator for the Run line. That will allow me to select Maximized instead of the default Normal Window.

Finally, we click Apply and then OK. Now, when we open the shortcut we just edited, the program will open in full-screen mode, that is, Maximized.

(click on the image for a larger version)

Does it always work? No.

I did some testing with Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3.0.2 and Opera 9.52.

First, I closed any web browsers that were open.

Then, I changed the Run "Normal Window" to Run "Maximized Window" option in the Properties of the program's shortcut.

When I opened Internet Explorer 7, it opened as a full-screen, maximized window. Then, I clicked the Maximize/Normal button in the window's title bar, so the IE7 window was not full-screen. Finally, I double-clicked the shortcut again — and the new IE7 window opened in Full-Screen/Maximized mode.

Next, I tried the same tests with Firefox 3.0.2. When I opened FF, it also opened as a full-screen, maximized window. I could shift to a normal window as expected. However, when I double-clicked the shortcut again, this time Firefox opened as a normal window, not a full-screen/maximized window. If I closed the non-maximized window, a double-click would open FF in full-screen. It appears that an open non-maximized window will override the shortcut's Run Maximized setting.

Finally, I tried the same tests with Opera 9.5.2. It acted just like IE7 did.

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HOWTO: Open a Program in a Maximized Window

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