unity-design team mailing list archive

[Chow Loong Jin <hyperair@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:33:27 -0700
Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Here is yet another discussion on resizing windows, this time driven
> by status bars!
> 
> MacOS has a similar situation to us, with very narrow window borders.
> In its case, they don't even _try_ to offer resizing by the window
> edge. (The idea being, I suppose, that any control less than five
> pixels in any direction will be very difficult to reliably use).
> Rendering that resizing situation less of an issue, MacOS has the very
> unusual functionality for expanding windows, and pretty well every
> window has a client-owned resizing grip in the bottom right.
> 
> Gnome has a _similar_ solution in place. We don't have the cool
> maximize behaviour (and it would probably anger a great number of
> people if it was implemented), but any window that happens to have a
> status bar will probably have a resize grip as well. Unfortunately,
> this resize grip is not a widget you can just drop in easily; it's
> fused to the status bar widget. (Further demonstrating that the darn
> things have no objective and should stop being called status bars).
> 
> So, here is the problem: there's a plan to get rid of of status bars
> and replace them with ephemeral hint bars.
> 
> And now, I'll bring your attention back to everyone's favourite bug,
> lp:160311 (“Resizing windows by grabbing window borders is
> difficult”).
> https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/160311
> 
> The status bar work shouldn't make that bug worse, but in the current
> direction it will.
> 
> 
> 
> I discussed a possible solution for this somewhere, and nobody really
> gathered what I was babbling about. To fix that, I finally made a
> quick mockup today…
> 
> http://people.ubuntu.com/~dylanmccall/mockups/metacity-resize-control/mockup.html
> 
> That describes a visible resize control drawn by the window manager.
> It should fade in when the user moves the mouse near a window's bottom
> right corner. It should only appear for the window that is in the
> foreground. Clicking it would do the same thing as clicking and
> dragging the corner of a window's border, except there's a lot more to
> click and much more meaningful visual feedback.
> It does miss a critical detail, of course, but I, err, never saved the
> SVG. The resize control should go _behind_ the window, not in front of
> it. That way it sticks out from the window but doesn't interfere with
> anything in the client area. (As drawn there, it would become very
> difficult for some people to use scroll bars).
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sure there are some other clever solutions here! Maybe even some
> plans attached to the Windicators / Hint bars work :)
> So, I am curious to know: is there anything happening in this space?
> Should there be?


I personally prefer using Alt + Middle button to resize windows, and
find that it's much easier since there's a much larger click area than
just a pixel-thick border.

Another method of resizing is using the "Resize" option from the window
menu, which positions the cursor in the middle of the window. The
direction the window is resized in is then chosen from the direction
you first move your mouse in after clicking the "Resize" option.

Perhaps we could improve on one of these methods and make it more
obvious to users.

-- 
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin

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