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Bug 594879 - Make titlebar go away completely for maximized windows
Make titlebar go away completely for maximized windows
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: extensions
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
: 644079 647476 663904 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2009-09-11 13:09 UTC by Matěj Cepl
Modified: 2012-10-29 01:53 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Screenshot of the effect of a properly stylized metacity theme. (84.27 KB, image/png)
2009-09-21 06:15 UTC, Jon Nettleton
Details
Example Metacity theme (33.66 KB, text/xml)
2009-09-26 11:36 UTC, Greg K Nicholson
Details

Description Matěj Cepl 2009-09-11 13:09:26 UTC
mcepl: owen: ping ... a crazy question ... why do we need titlebar of application windows?
mclasen: kinda tough to move it otherwise...
owen: well, it still has various functions - moving it, closing it, etc. Some of the mockups have more minimal titlebars that blend into the menu
mcepl: mclasen: well, OK, correction ... why do we need titlebar of maximized application windows?
owen: mcepl: some people have been experimenting with getting rid of the titlebar in that case
owen: (jon nettleton, in particular - has a branch gnome shell with a bunch of changes)
owen: I'm not sure it makes sense unless you are very space constrained - you have to move a bunch of stuff around
mcepl: (well, I have high doubts of name of the current application anywhere ... I don't need to be told I use firefox, but that's another question)
mcepl: owen: I think it makes sense ... I don't want needless information on my screen
mclasen: mcepl: you break everybody who removed the close button 'because there's one in the titlebar already'
mcepl: mclasen: well, you can put it somewhere around the name of the current application in the whats-the-name-of-the-gnome-shell-taskbar ... ??
Comment 1 nm 2009-09-12 08:46:37 UTC
In one way this makes sense with having a fullscreen view of the window and have the buttons for the window in the panel. However in one way this would really confuse people.

One thing that could be good from my point of view is a keybinding that would tell the window to hide the title and then bring it back on request.

Removing it completely would cause loads of confusion.

Also this bug should maybe be considered enhancement.
Comment 2 Jon Nettleton 2009-09-21 05:44:12 UTC
Hey guys,

I have been playing around with this a bit more today and have found a pretty good way to manage this.  Instead of actually undecorating the window I am switching the window frame to border_only.  The real bonus of this method is that the theme can be stylized specifically for this case, border_focused_maximized and border_normal_maximized.  This allows the theme to do things like leave the window title but thin out the title bar, or omit the titlebar completely.  I really think this is by far the best option right now.

Jon
Comment 3 Jon Nettleton 2009-09-21 06:15:50 UTC
Created attachment 143567 [details]
Screenshot of the effect of a properly stylized metacity theme.

This will give you an idea of how things are starting to shape up with the customizations I was talking about.  This gives the metacity theme control of how far the menubar is from the Activities button, and how the appearance will integrate with gnome-shell.  Not too bad.
Comment 4 Matěj Cepl 2009-09-21 08:05:13 UTC
look awesome!
Comment 5 Greg K Nicholson 2009-09-26 11:36:02 UTC
Created attachment 144070 [details]
Example Metacity theme

There's no need for any code changes to mutter to implement this effect – themes can already choose to remove or reduce the titlebar for maximised windows.

So we could just patch individual themes to make use of this (Clearlooks, for a start); and give strong guidance to distros that they should do the same. Specifying this in Gnome 3's HIG would make it clear that this is now standard for Gnome 3.

See the attached example. Admittedly, the code required to achieve this effect is messy. And we still need replacement controls in the shell's panel.
Comment 6 Nageswara Rao M 2009-11-09 20:40:08 UTC
happy to see a thread going on this idea already.. yesterday i proposed this on gnome-shell-list :)
Comment 7 Matěj Cepl 2009-11-10 10:07:27 UTC
Just one of my colleagues shown me as an inspiration his fluxbox http://people.redhat.com/kzak/fluxbox/ ... not sure whether I would like to go to this length, but I like it as an inspiration.
Comment 8 Nickolas Lloyd 2009-11-21 00:26:16 UTC
what about the case where a user wants to unmaximize a window?  is there even a way to do that without the titlebar?
Comment 9 Dan Winship 2010-01-20 22:15:53 UTC
(bugzilla spam: populating the new "extensions" component with bugs discussing features that are not part of the core spec, but could be implemented externally once the extension system is done.)
Comment 10 Osvaldo Martin 2010-02-14 04:07:23 UTC
@ultrageek instead of grabbing the window by the titlebar you just press Alt and grab the window by clicking anywhere on the window. Is this an answer to your question (may be i misunderstood you).
Comment 11 Nick 2011-03-15 00:52:34 UTC
Can't GNOME-shell just do what Google Chrome does? 

Have a right-click setting that offers "Use System Title Bar and Borders." When engaged the title bar shows; when not engaged, it doesn't show. When it is not engaged, the window-controls (i.e., close, minimize, maximize) can simply merge down onto the Menubar or something. There is loads of free space there for the taking. The controls hardly take up any space at all anyways.

As is, I am sick of title bars. They waste too much space.
Comment 12 Karel Zak 2011-03-17 08:36:45 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> what about the case where a user wants to unmaximize a window?  is there even a
> way to do that without the titlebar?

Sure, I have keyboard, so the buttons in titlebar are unnecessary. It's normal that well designed desktop is possible to use without a mouse, right? ;-)
Comment 13 Nick 2011-03-17 12:40:00 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> what about the case where a user wants to unmaximize a window?  is there even a
> way to do that without the titlebar?

The titlebar has nothing to do with unmaximizing the window. With Google Chrome, the window controls (i.e., close, minimize, maximize) are located on the Tab bar. Or the user can double-click the tab bar (instead of the titlebar) to maximize and unmaximize. In Gnome, the same behavior could be configured for whatever bar exists in the application's controls (menu bar, status bar, whatever). Applications have some form of control setup. Having a whole bar of mostly nothing (i.e., title bar) is not needed. I don't display the title bar in Chromium and haven't had any problems without it. I don't even notice it's gone in fact unless I specifically think about it. What I do notice though is the added vertical space I gain from not having it.
Comment 14 Nickolas Lloyd 2011-03-17 16:40:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > what about the case where a user wants to unmaximize a window?  is there even a
> > way to do that without the titlebar?
> 
> Sure, I have keyboard, so the buttons in titlebar are unnecessary. It's normal
> that well designed desktop is possible to use without a mouse, right? ;-)

That's true, but I think that a well designed desktop should also be possible to use with a mouse ;)

(In reply to comment #13)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > what about the case where a user wants to unmaximize a window?  is there even a
> > way to do that without the titlebar?
> 
> The titlebar has nothing to do with unmaximizing the window. With Google
> Chrome, the window controls (i.e., close, minimize, maximize) are located on
> the Tab bar. Or the user can double-click the tab bar (instead of the titlebar)
> to maximize and unmaximize.

Yes, that would be possible, but that would require each and every application to implement something which was previously the responsibility of the window manager.

> In Gnome, the same behavior could be configured for
> whatever bar exists in the application's controls (menu bar, status bar,
> whatever). Applications have some form of control setup. Having a whole bar of
> mostly nothing (i.e., title bar) is not needed. I don't display the title bar
> in Chromium and haven't had any problems without it. I don't even notice it's
> gone in fact unless I specifically think about it. What I do notice though is
> the added vertical space I gain from not having it.

I suppose that the unmaximize and close buttons could be added in GTK to the standard menu bar widget, but that would pretty much just be a kludge.  Again, chrome is a special case.  They're doing something that nobody has ever really done before.

There may be a better place for it than the title bar, but I don't think it's appropriate to put the responsibility on the application, especially since that will pretty much break the functionality of old (and current) programs.
Comment 15 Matěj Cepl 2011-03-17 19:25:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #14)
> That's true, but I think that a well designed desktop should also be possible
> to use with a mouse ;)

From personal communication with Karel I am sure he didn't mean to disallow using mouse for window management, or even not making it default. However, he is currently using keyboard-only Fluxbox as his window manager, so he (and me) would like to have keyboard-only management as a viable option.
Comment 16 Nickolas Lloyd 2011-03-17 22:50:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> From personal communication with Karel I am sure he didn't mean to disallow
> using mouse for window management, or even not making it default. However, he
> is currently using keyboard-only Fluxbox as his window manager, so he (and me)
> would like to have keyboard-only management as a viable option.

Well, ya, I certainly wouldn't advocate getting rid of keyboard shortcuts, but my point is just that if the titlebar is taken away, there should be a way to maximize/unmaximize using the mouse.
Comment 17 Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy 2011-05-14 11:21:56 UTC
*** Bug 644079 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 18 Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy 2011-05-14 11:22:16 UTC
*** Bug 647476 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 19 Lapo Calamandrei 2011-05-14 12:27:07 UTC
Istead of removing the titlebar we could hide the topbar in case of maximized windows. The topbar could be reduced to a 1px line, overing the pointer there could make the topbar slide down over the maximized window titlebar. It should work pretty well since the 1px line is at the top edge of the screen so it's easy to reach just trowing the pointer while it's easy to avoid to operate on the titlebar. The only problem may be with multihead setups with screens one on top of the other, but we can just disable the hiding in this case. I think the feature should be pretty usefull for netbooks especially and in case people fin dit counfusing it could be enabled only on small screen (automagically).
Comment 20 Julien Olivier 2011-10-07 08:13:15 UTC
In the top bar, there is an application menu already. Currently, this menu only has a "quit" entry. It could very well hold an "unmaximize window" entry, and maybe even merge the application menu when the app is maximized. This way, there is no need for a title bar and we can even get rid of the app menu bar when maximized.
Comment 21 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2011-11-12 10:39:08 UTC
*** Bug 663904 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 22 Vít Stanislav 2012-01-16 20:25:48 UTC
I can add some of my personal observations. 
I use 6px hight titlebar on maximized windows with no text in it. 0px actually looks ugly, because top panel has these curvy edges, which than cover edges of the window. 6px allows me to grab the window to unmaximize, too.
Pretty essential to this for me is, that I use StatusTitleBar extension [1] to see windowtitle on the panel.
I'd like this to be easily customizable, but doesn't seem to me like a default feature. 

[1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/59/status-title-bar/
Comment 23 Jean-François Fortin Tam 2012-09-09 19:00:58 UTC
Is this bug report still truly relevant? Nowadays GTK applications have a way to set this. Epiphany, gnome-documents, gnome-contacts, Nautilus, etc., all do it. It does not make much sense to blindingly enforce this onto every app.
Comment 24 Matthias Clasen 2012-10-29 01:53:00 UTC
No, I think this can be closed