WindowShade was a control panel for the Mac OS that allowed a user to double-click a window's title bar to "roll up" the window like a windowshade. When the window was "rolled up", only the title bar of the window was visible; the part of the window that displayed the contents disappeared, allowing easier manipulation of the windows on the screen. The Title bars were minimized at the bottom of the Desktop. This had a functionality of the taskbar which was later introduced in Windows.
History
It debuted in in System 7.5, but disappeared in Mac OS 8, when the feature was implemented as a part of the Appearance Manager. A widget was added to the title bar to reproduce the functionality. The entire feature disappeared with the release of Mac OS X; since windows could be minimized to the Dock or moved aside with Exposé, Apple decided there was no more use for it. However, several third-party utilities, such as WindowShade X for Unsanity's Application Enhancer software, have brought the concept of the WindowShade back to the Mac OS. It has since reappeared as a commercial haxie and offers other features, like translucent windows and minimize-in-place. The WindowShade control panel itself stems from a third-party utility originally written for System 6.0.7 by Rob Johnston. Apple purchased the rights to this software from the developer for use in System 7.5.
Other operating systems
Many desktop environments or window managers for Unix-like operating systems have a similar feature allowing windows to be set to "roll up" when the user double-clicks the title bar of a window. These include Blackbox, GNOME, IceWM, KDE, and Xfce. MS Windows Shell, has no build feature like WindowShade, but was provided by 3rd party companies, like Edge Beyond and Actual Tools.
