WindowShade
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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.
[edit] History
It debuted 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.
[edit] Other operating systems
Most 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. While Microsoft Windows does not expose such a feature by default, in some versions if a window is minimized while no taskbar is available, the said window will become a "shade" at the bottom of the screen. A "proper" shading implementation for Windows is provided by some third-party software vendors.
