Resize window broken when titlebar is off-screen

[Jordan Erickson]

When I ALT+click/drag any window so the title bar is off-screen (above the top panel), and I try to resize the window by clicking/dragging the window's lower left or right corner, it displays the window menu containing "Minimize/Maximize/Move/Etc" instead of actually allowing me to resize the window.

Steps to reproduce:

1) ALT+click and drag any window so the top titlebar is above the top Gnome panel
2) Try to resize the window by clicking and dragging either the lower left or lower right corner.

Version Information:
Gnome 2.18.1
Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop (i386)

[xtknight (xt-knight)]

Confirmed. This is a bug on amd64 also.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug, that's not a bug but a feature to allow users to move their windows back on screen when the titlebar is not reachable, the right click action is not considered discoverable enough

[Jordan Erickson (lns)]

Sebastien, what can I do to make this a feature request to remove then? I personally cannot see how this is an intuitive "feature" at all - I am a seasoned Linux professional and this "feature" had me very confused when I wanted to do nothing but resize my window while the titlebar was off-screen. It is very much easy enough to ALT+click/drag to move a window back, and right-click, if a user really is that confused, could give them the context menu. I find it extremely counter-intuitive. Thank you for your consideration.

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

Upstream read this too, you know :) I'll talk to my fellow-developers and look in the changelog and try to figure out what to do. (I don't remember this going in, so I don't have any recollection of whether this is the result of a compromise reached after some great primordial battle of the First Age of Gnome, or whether it was just something someone thought would be useful.)

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

Sebastien was correct: it was a feature added in the constraints-experiments branch at revision 2275 on 14 November '05:

http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/metacity/branches/constraints_experiments/src/frames.c?annotate=2275

which made it into trunk along with everything else from that branch five days later:

http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/metacity?view=revision&revision=2306

(For reference, the code originally began "if (!meta_core_titlebar_is_onscreen" but was changed by me to "if (!titlebar_is_onscreen)" in June of this year.)

That latter checkin includes a huge comment giving the rationale for all these changes, but this one doesn't appear to be specifically explained. So I suggest we ask Elijah what he thinks about all this; I'll ping him.

[Jordan Erickson (lns)]

Thomas (and all), thank you very much! This is great. I was fumbling
around for days wondering why I'd get a context menu (along with the
actual 'move' mouse cursor). Weird behavior IMHO. There's got to be a
better way (like ALT+click/drag).. =)

- Jordan

Thomas Thurman wrote:
> Sebastien was correct: it was a feature added in the constraints-
> experiments branch at revision 2275 on 14 November '05:
>
> http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/metacity/branches/constraints_experiments/src/frames.c?annotate=2275
>
> which made it into trunk along with everything else from that branch
> five days later:
>
> http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/metacity?view=revision&revision=2306
>
> (For reference, the code originally began "if
> (!meta_core_titlebar_is_onscreen" but was changed by me to "if
> (!titlebar_is_onscreen)" in June of this year.)
>
> That latter checkin includes a huge comment giving the rationale for all
> these changes, but this one doesn't appear to be specifically explained.
> So I suggest we ask Elijah what he thinks about all this; I'll ping him.
>

--
Jordan Erickson
Owner, Logical Networking Solutions
http://www.logicalnetworking.net
707-636-5678

Latest LNS Blogs - http://blogs.logicalnetworking.net

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[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

New users often don't know about right click or modifiers on the keyboard. That might look easy for somebody using computers a lot but take some minutes to ask to some standard users to move a window where the title bar is no displayed, a non negligable number will likely not figure what to do there

[Martijn vdS (martijn)]

But the only way to get your title bar off-screen in the first place is by Alt+dragging the window.. which means it can't go off-screen if the user doesn't know right click or modifiers in the first place...

I think you've got your chicken and egg mixed up :)

[Jordan Erickson (lns)]

...In the upper-left corner of (most) any window, right-click and select
"Move". Move your mouse upward and watch the titlebar disappear.

To me, this bug is clearly that of confusion as the end-result to the
user. At the very least, if you can't resize the window when the
titlebar is offscreen, don't turn the mouse cursor into an arrow that
implies that you can, and instead display a menu when the user wants to
re-size to possibly get the titlebar back onscreen. That will confuse
anyone.

Martijn van de Streek wrote:
> But the only way to get your title bar off-screen in the first place is
> by Alt+dragging the window.. which means it can't go off-screen if the
> user doesn't know right click or modifiers in the first place...
>
> I think you've got your chicken and egg mixed up :)
>

--
Jordan Erickson
Owner, Logical Networking Solutions
http://www.logicalnetworking.net
707-636-5678

Latest LNS Blogs - http://blogs.logicalnetworking.net

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[Mark Schouten (mark-prevented)]

Jordan Erickson wrote:
> ...In the upper-left corner of (most) any window, right-click and select
> "Move". Move your mouse upward and watch the titlebar disappear.

I'm sorry, but you are mistaking.

When you select move, and go upwards, the window resizes and goes halfway down. You are unable to move the titlebar out of the screen without using tha alt button.

Also, I agree on the caused confusion.

So, can this be fixed?

[Jordan Erickson (lns)]

Not on my system (Ubuntu Gutsy i386 w/Compiz enabled)...

This was a matter of preference last time it came up in a bug report,
IIRC. I dunno if any Gnome/Ubuntu people are even willing to "fix" it
since, to some, it's not really a bug.

- Jordan

Mark Schouten wrote:
> Jordan Erickson wrote:
>> ...In the upper-left corner of (most) any window, right-click and select
>> "Move". Move your mouse upward and watch the titlebar disappear.
>
> I'm sorry, but you are mistaking.
>
> When you select move, and go upwards, the window resizes and goes
> halfway down. You are unable to move the titlebar out of the screen
> without using tha alt button.
>
> Also, I agree on the caused confusion.
>
> So, can this be fixed?
>

--
Jordan Erickson
Owner, Logical Networking Solutions
http://www.logicalnetworking.net
707-636-5678

Latest LNS Blogs - http://blogs.logicalnetworking.net

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