Make Command-W & Command-Q behavior consistent between OS X/Windows in Coherence mode

Discussion in 'Feature Suggestions' started by Jeff Hopper, Nov 21, 2011.

  1. Jeff Hopper

    Jeff Hopper Bit poster

    Messages:
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    As everyone knows, in OS X, pressing Command-W closes the current window, leaving the app running, and pressing Command-Q quits the app. In any mode other than Coherence, Parallels (v.7) keeps this behavior for Windows apps as well, which is great—you can consistently use Command-W to close a document/tab, but leave the app running. But in Coherence mode, if you have a Windows app open that has multiple documents/tabs, pressing either Command-Q or Command-W exits the entire Windows app, which is not so great. I can't tell you how many times a day I press Command-W out of habit to close a document, only to see the entire Windows app shut down and then have to restart it (and you know how long it takes some Windows apps to start)—what a time-waster!

    This happens even if you create custom key mapping shortcuts for Command-Q to Alt-F4 and Command-W to Ctrl-F4, and even if you turn off "Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts", which is even worse for integration between Windows/OS X apps because all OS X shortcuts are ignored—something that Parallels support suggested as a solution to me. (They also told me this inconsistent behavior is not a bug, refusing to log it as such, but they were not able to give me a reason for the deliberate inconsistent behavior—I certainly can't think of a good reason to introduce such an inconsistency.)

    To further illustrate this behavior, here are some more technical details that I've observed: It seems that only in Coherence mode, Parallels treats an entire Windows app instance as a whole when it comes to closing/quitting using the Command-W and Command-Q shortcuts because if you have multiple instances of a Windows app running (the same .exe running as separate Windows processes), Command-W exits the currently active instance (closing all of its documents/tabs), but leaves the other instance running; likewise, Command-Q quits all running instances of the same Windows app.

    PLEASE be consistent with both OS X behavior and Parallels' own behavior when in non-Coherence modes and allow users to use Command-W consistently! This seems especially import in Coherence mode which is intended to truly enable seamless, side-by-side OS X-Windows functionality.
     

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