GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 304857
Wireframe moving off the top of the screen is misleading
Last modified: 2005-11-19 17:21:59 UTC
As a laptop user, I use the keyboard resize and move functions all the time when I want to slip my windows around (usually so I can see something in my browser while I'm typing somewhere else). Often, I hit my key-combo to move the window, then realize that in order to see what I need, I run into the top edge of the screen. When I move, the wireframe window (I'm in low-resources mode) goes right off the screen, but when I hit return, the window snaps to the corner. Bug #152898 suggests moving off the top of the screen -- I don't like this idea at all. What I'd prefer to see happen is to have my wireframe window smush up against the top of the screen, resizing in response to the constraint. The visual feedback would let the user know what was happening. For my use case, anyway, this would save me time, as I currently end up needing to do two things from the keyboard -- move it and then resize it. For non-resizable windows, I'd think that moving up should not work -- rather than allowing the wireframe to go off the screen and then not the window, the top edge should simply feel like a hard edge to the user, beyond which nothing can pass. Other information:
Thanks for taking the time to research some of the various alternatives and presenting some various cases. However, this sounds very counter-intuitive to me. You have two separate things you want to do (move & resize), and you're requesting that they be made part of one action so that you can do them quickly--but only when the move is to the top of the screen. If you want to move & resize to anywhere else on the screen, you have to use the current two separate methods (move first, then resize). That's inconsistent. Further, your request would have a side-effect that you didn't seem to mention--it would make a common action for other users slow. It would be nearly impossible to move a window to the top, without resizing it, quickly. Currently, you can just "throw your mouse" upwards; turning on this feature would mean that users would start moving their window to the top, notice that it suddenly got resized, start moving their mouse down to get it to its original size, overshoot about 50% of the time causing the window to move down a few pixels (or many from the top) followed by the user slowing way down to try to get the positioning just right (though they may give up when it's "close enough"). I believe a better option would be to make wireframes do what normal windows do--stop when they hit the top edge instead of pretending to go offscreen.
"Further, your request would have a side-effect that you didn't seem to mention--it would make a common action for other users slow. It would be nearly impossible to move a window to the top, without resizing it, quickly. " Ah -- my thought was entirely about keyboard mode, where there is no "throwing." With the mouse, there'd be no logical way to do the resize, since the mouse effectively stops at the edge of the screen. The resizing makes sense from the keyboard because using the arrows is fundamentally different from using the mouse -- there's nothing to keep from you continuing to his the "up" arrow when you get to the top of the screen. Of course, this really should be two bug reports-- 1. Wireframe animation should stop at the top (as you say). When using the keyboard, this means hitting the up-arrow would do nothing once you got to the top. 2. feature enhancement request: when using the arrow key, it would be nice to have hitting the up arrow smush the window rather when it gets to the top. 3. 2nd feature enhancement request: keyboard mode could really be enhanced more for those of us stuck with keyboards -- for example, it would be nice to have a keyboard equivalent to "throwing" the mouse to stick windows immediately to the edget of the screen -- perhaps adding a modifier to the arrows, for example, could throw the window the edge of the screen (Ctr-Left, Ctr-Right, Ctr-Up, etc)
[Cue Wizard of Oz music] Ding! Dong! The bug is dead! The wicked bug, The wicked bug, Ding! Dong! The wicked bug is dead...
Ooh, that was nice music! Hurray!