Re: [Ayatana] workspaces and multimonitor

[Connor Carney <ccarney@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree that deliberately putting a window across multiple monitors and then switching workplaces is probably pretty rare, but it has to do *something*, and it's difficult to come up with something that isn't intrusive.  You see the same problem in the UDS demo video at the end, where the tester exits the expo view and suddenly there's a window split between four (!) monitors.

The problem with different-sized monitors is mainly an issue on laptops, because it's fairly common to have a low-resolution laptop attached to a higher-resolution desktop monitor or projector.  The best idea that I can come up with is to leave windows the same size, and simply scale their positions when you switch to a different size monitor (ex. the top left corner of Firefox is 25% down and 40% across the monitor).  That would have advantage that the title bar of a window would always be visible, and that switching a workspace to a smaller monitor and then back to a bigger one would leave you with your windows in the same place.

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Josh Strawbridge <holyknightjoshua@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

that's the way i understood it to.  those are some good points but why would anyone put a window across multiple monitors if they aren't planning on using those monitors for that window without a lot of interruptions? 

i personally wouldn't have a problem with having a monitor's worth of my window swap to an unused workspace as i'm likely going to be swapping back to the previous one shortly. i think it would be better than trying to swap to another workspace in order to temporarily do something else and still having the multi-monitor window cover everything but i can understand how swapping one monitor and breaking up a multi-monitor window it isn't really the most elegant of things to have happen.

the the best option that i could think of would be to visibly shrink the multi monitor window down to a single monitor unitl it comes back into focus or the user swaps that monitor back to the previous workspace and then have it convert back to it's normal size.

a shrink/grow animation similar to the orange box when you're full screening or half screening a window by dragging it to the top or one of the sides of the screen wouldn't be so bad.

i've got no ideas about possible solutions for the different sized monitor problems.  though i don't know of a setup using different sized monitors which doesn't have those problems.

my brother used to use different sized monitors. he's a windows user so he didn't have the option of workspaces but he had some of those kinds of problems as well when simply dragging a window from one monitor to the next.
heck, i even had some of those problems a while back when swapping between a 1920x1080p TV and then swapping it back to my old 1600x1200 monitor later on.  it would open hulu desktop in a resolution wider than i was using and wouldn't let me shrink it down enough to fit my monitor without editing the file that kept track of the huluDesktop window size.

i don't know that there is a good solution for that other than not using different sized monitors and that's not really even a solution to the problem... especially if you've already got different sized monitors.

--
Josh Strawbridge

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