Larger Window Resize target area for Mouse Dragging?

Support & Help Requests
1

Good day,

I don't knwo if this is a Ubuntu Mate issue, or a Gnome issue really, so if it's not something you can fix, I'm happy to post my request where it can be addressed properly.

I love Mate. It runs great on my hardware, but I find it extremely difficult compared to other OSes (Windows, Mac) when it comes to dragging a window edge or corner to resize. The target area to drag seems to be 1 pixel wide, and getting my mouse on that spot, then clicking without moving it is painful on good days.

Is there any way to make these areas a little bit larger?

Thanks, and keep up the great work!

1 Like
2

I know this should be easier but...

You should change some values in the theme you are using.

Change the following parameters in the appropriate Metacity XML file.

Clearlooks-Phenix's theme is located in /usr/share/themes/Clearlooks-Phenix/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml for instance.

The following parameters control the width of the borders and consequently the width of the re-size area:

"<distance name="left_width" value="1"/>"
"<distance name="right_width" value="1"/>"
"<distance name="bottom_height" value="1"/>"

By default they are set to "1", but I found that changing them to "4" doesn't change the appearance very drastically, but makes it very much easier to re-size using the mouse.

I changed mine to "6". Human (my selected border) located in /usr/share/themes/Human/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

See also - https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=439329

Good luck @Brian_McGonagill .

Edit: I messed up on the formatting, now fixed.

2 Likes
3

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure this has been fixed by the MATE devs, maybe even in 1.22 just hasn't been in a UM release yet

4

Thanks, would be great if it’s fixed. I”m currently running 18.04, and probably won’t move til 20.04 is out, so I’ll see what I can do with the XML for now.

5

Hello,
I use 18.04 and have no problems with pointing window edge with my mouse. At the same time pointing to anything with touchpad can be difficult enough.
Probably, you could change your pointing device resolution, speed, etc. to feel it more comfortable...

6

This is correct. It was fixed and included in the latest 1.22 release. Unfortunately there are no plans to include it in 1.20, the changes are just too massive to backport it safely.

7

Incidentally, that "4" you went with? That's what the border width was in Lucid, back before people started "improving" the theme... :slight_smile:

8

I fired up a live version of U-M 19.10 earlier today and was gratified to find that I could drag a window edge by clicking on the "shadow effect" that Marco provides by default and quite easily resize any window without having to edit a theme. So vkareh was correct in that this issue has received attention.

Edit: So from a userville perspective, the ability to easily drag a window edge has resulted in me adopting UM 19.10 beta as my daily driver. Sometimes it's the little things that count.