I'm a bit stale on how window management was in pre-OS X days, so take this with a grain.

There are three buttons on every standard window RED, ORANGE, and GREEN.

RED = close window (but don't shut down the application).

ORANGE = minimize in dock.

GREEN = maximize.

GREEN is interesting because the definition of maximize appears to be application dependent. Meaning, Mail will maximize very differently than, say, Microsoft Entourage. I'm guessing there is some standard way to involve these buttons with the keyboard, but the lack of consistency with the GREEN makes it mostly useless to me.

I do vaguely remember the case you are talking about when you'd accidentally click on NO window and strange shit would show or be hidden. Either my keyboardness has hidden from this or it no longer exists in the OS X window management metaphor.