Resizing borders too thin

Thoughts & Feedback
43

Haha! The GNOME and KDE teams are doing fine, they just have different missions and stakeholders :slight_smile:

Iā€™m fine without ranking, that would just put pressure. Mostly I just like lurking in this forum and helping out when I can, or joining conversations that concern me :slight_smile:

2 Likes
44

Fair enough. Thanks for replying and good work! :wink:

1 Like
45

yes this is a real problem every new user I have put on complain about this esp. older users without the fine motor skills

2cents pbā€¦

46

Both KDE and GNOME are pretty old, theyā€™ve been around for quite some time. Given enough time, MATE will also grow large and rich with more coders and contributorsā€¦:slight_smile:

ā€œA retrospective futureā€ means we will always value the past in our progress towards our future; and a bug or two is always a chance to reflect upon that and improve!:slight_smile:

1 Like
47

Is this an issue in only certain configurations? Iā€™m using compiz with the default MATE theme and the resize borders are definitely larger than a single pixel.

48

Compiz being the key here - it's the only one that works correctly in that regard.

1 Like
49

The issue is in Marco. Compiz works correctly

2 Likes
50

I just added $100 to the bounty.

3 Likes
51

Added 25 USD to the bounty.

Even if I can manage re-sizing windows by using their top-right corner, I think the request is a welcomed improvement.

Thank you :slight_smile:

Edit: This is the direct link to the ā€œbountyā€, if someone else is interested: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/29725291-increase-invisible-area-for-grabbing-window-border-for-resizing-by-mouse?utm_campaign=plugin&utm_content=tracker%2F841233&utm_medium=issues&utm_source=github

3 Likes
52

I find the ā€œALT KEYā€ + ā€œRIGHT MOUSE CLICKā€ fine.

But ohers may not.

Perhaps hovering over the border to make it slightly wider to grab may be a better solution.

1 Like
53

I miss resize grips. Well, I miss everything GTK2-related.

54

Where do you go to add a bounty? I thought you were joking earlier! This has been a bug forever, and I would love to see it fixed.

55

Bounty value is $140! I think you started something.

1 Like
56

Iā€™ve just installed MATE and in the first minute (literally) of use, I ran into this annoyance.

I know how open source works, but I canā€™t understand how this usability issue still exists after 20+ years of Linux desktop environment. Beats me.

And no, Alt+RMB doesnā€™t work on a touchpad, and the trackpoint on my Lenovo X1C 6th gen doesnā€™t work either[1].

And yes, along with the lack of well-integrated support for switching among windows with Super+0ā€¦9 number keys, this is driving me away from MATE.

Oh, and display tearing[2] on a top-of-the-line ~laptop out of the box? ā€œ~ā€ because Iā€™ve installed MATE from an Ubuntu Budgie live USB and the bundled Chromium is at v67 (why, Budgie?) but still, not really acceptable.

I like the idea of retro/slim/fast DEs, but I need the features above to be functional before I return to MATE.

[1] GitHub mate-desktop/mate-control-center/issues/401, because Discourse limits the number of links new users can post
[2]: YouTube video ID SkdgzwreUdI

57

Use Compiz and window resizing works fine, be sure to set default resize mode to outline though or resizing may get a little laggy.

No issues with tearing here using Nvidia hardware and I don't really need to switch Windows using the super and numeric keys, I'd never remember them all. Make use of multiple workspaces and all is fine. This may be something you can implement under Compiz, personally I've never tried it, but Compiz is quite powerful and fully featured.

Also, follow the instructions here to stop Compiz crashing when minimizing windows:

1 Like
58

I keep running into this problem with the default Mate theme. Yes, there are other ways of resizing windows, but those alternate methods don't work everywhere. On my workstation, where I have a high precision mouse, it's a minor annoyance, but I can normally grab the border in a try or two. On my laptop with the bad trackpad (laggy and imprecise), it's nigh impossible and frustrating.

I picked Mate because it has purportedly lower resource requirements, and I picked this laptop because it was cheap, but has a decent high resolution screen.

EDIT: I was going to add to the bounty, but it appears that the issue has been closed/fixed? I'm still seeing this problem today, and it appears others are too: https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/issues/533

59

The issue has been fixed, it will be available in the next release on Ubuntu MATE

1 Like
60

Please see Larger Window Resize target area for Mouse Dragging? where I describe the process that you can use to widen your theme's borders.

61

Thanks mdooley!

It is IMPOSSIBLY HARD to support eldery, disabled, and otherwise "nonstandard" people - especially ones using laptops - when accessibility issues like this just get met with aggressive "@#$% U NOOB!" responses, or "solutions" that are just functionally-defective in a different way, or absurdly byzantine for something that NEEDS to be trivially learnable by people who haven't grown up with computers.
I don't mind hacking the CSS into something usable and installing a "repaired" theme on the machines for them: that's a smaller time cost for even one case, let alone many.

Hopefully the GNOME crew are too busy being distracted by the latest Shiny Thing to do any more damage before 20.04 comes out :P, because 16.04 is getting uncomfortably close to EOL.

1 Like