Make window resizing easier out of the box

Thoughts & Feedback
#10

Add my vote for wider borders as well.

I really don’t like having to learn new ways to do old things. I have this arcane opinion that the computer is here to serve me, not the other way around.

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread but this problem remains.

best,
hank

1 Like
#11

I agree, the sensitivity width needs to be wider than 1 pixel. One pixel is like no pixel, fortunately I don use a 4k display.
Anyone who has ever used a WIMP interface on any other platform will just give up on linux when confronted by this kind of quirkiness.
Paul

#12

I did find behaviour improved when switching to the compiz window manager. The underlying problem seems to be related to the Marco window manager (both software and compton GPU mode).
Since marco is a part of mate, this seems to be the right place to complain though
Paul

2 Likes
#13

Yes, there is indeed a difference. It appears that with Compiz the shadow around the window is included into the resize trigger area, whereas that is not the case with Marco.

1 Like
#14

You’re right, the shadow makes the border wider (I didn’t see it at first due to the dark background of my desktop). But does that mean that the problem is more low-level? I mean: shouldn’t it be a fixed width (only user/window decorator definable?), whereas now it is also compositor dependent.
It won’t be long before a graphic designer invents windows without borders or shadows at all. What happens then?.
In other words: do you know at what level this is implemented? This determines where it could be repaired
Paul

#15

Looks like it made the wish list.

#16

Compiz fixes this because it uses the gtk-window-decorator, which in turn uses metacity theming. This was fixed in metacity.

I’ll add my voice to the “this is a really annoying thing about Marco”, but whenever it has been brought up before, the response has always been, “well I don’t have a problem with it”.

#17

Two shortcuts I have memorized. All keyboard, no mouse needed.

Move window:

  1. Press Alt + F7
  2. Use arrow keys to move window about on the screen
  3. End with Enter (confirm) or Esc (cancel)

Resize window:

  1. Press Alt + F8
  2. Use arrow keys: one press to set the side you want to “stretch”, next presses to the same direction do the adjusting (can be short presses for “step-by-step” or one looooong press for speedy adjusting). You can change the side as many time as you want.
  3. End with Enter (confirm) or Esc (cancel)
5 Likes
#18

All very useful, but when you have to memorise keyboard shortcuts to use a mouse driven window manager, surely there is something wrong with the window manager?

I honestly don’t know what the point of marco is anymore? It’s just a waste of resources to maintain and develop themes for. Surely it should be dropped and metacity used instead?

#19

Hallo samuvuo

That’s exactly what I use. :slight_smile:

#20

Switching to Metacity (+Compton) does not solve the problem for me, though. I still only get a 1 pixel wide area to trigger resizing - the shadow is not included.

Edit: The only combination that does work is Metacity with software compositing, but I’d rather use a GPU compositor.

#21

So you have:

Metacity on it own - works
Compiz 0.9.* (GPU compositor) - works

#22

Not entirely: Metacity with no compositing does not work either.

#23

Well it is not drawing a shadow then of course.

To make the resize border area wider, without physically making the border wider is going to cause problems if you want to click on something in the window close to the border. Metacity does this in the titlebar which is the only sensible place it can do it.

edit: you’re right of course though, in that the resize area could fall slighlty outside the window regardless if there is a shadow or not.

#24

Yep it would be good if it’s wider than 1px.

#25

I can confirm that enabling Metacity compositor instead of Marco helps a lot in this regard (when using the “software compositor” option). I get maybe 6-7 pixels of “handle” to grab hold of for resizing in the “shadow area”.

So, is changing the compositor the preferred / onlyy approach to getting better ability of resizing windows?

Any news or insights on how the move to GTK3 changes this issue?

#26

Thank you. Making that wider did the trick, and I can’t really see a difference.

#27

Time to bump this topic again: 17.10 beta 2 is out, and when trying it out in a VM I could only get a decent resize area when selecting Compiz.
Both the Marco SW compositor and Marco+Compton still have the old issue.
I hope this can get some attention for the next LTS release.

#28

March 2021 and this still seems to be an issue with out of the box Ubuntu MATE. The keyboard shortcut is Alt Right-Button drag, if anyone is still reading this.

#29

Please see - Larger Window Resize target area for Mouse Dragging? where I remark on how easy it became to size windows with the advent of MATE version 19.10 and all newer versions.