Resizing windows

[Kamil Páral]

Resizing windows to the sides is extremely hard. People have exactly 1 pixel to do that. Resizing windows up and down is a little better, but still nothing too pleasant.

New Wave 0.8, Ubuntu 9.04.

[Dilomo (ankere)]

Well it may be difficult but that is what metacity provides. Here is a way to fix that:
[1] http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?action=knowledgebase&content=87134&kbid=21

Another way to fix it is to use Emerald and the themes provided for it:
[2] http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/New+Wave+MLike?content=101834

PS
In the future I'll be working on simple config utility for New Wave that will allow [1] to be done automatically.

[Kamil Páral (kamil.paral)]

Well, if I understand it correctly, metacity doesn't allow to specify different behaviour without making the window borders thicker. That's bad, I like the thin borders. If it is this case then I understand there can't be done anything about it to improve it.

[Dilomo (ankere)]

You understood this exactly right :)

[fermulator (fermulator)]

I still consider this a bug. The default configuration of the theme should be to have a thicker border to allow for easier window resizing. I understand that this is the only way to make window resizing easier, and in the end is a shortcoming of metacity, however for an average user, it is probably very difficult to determine WHY it's so hard to resize windows, and HOW to fix it. Whereas it's more probable that only 'power users' would want to decrease their border size, and thus would have an easier time figuring out how to do it.

I've edited my metacity-theme-1.xml (found in /usr/share/themes/New Wave/metacity-1) as follows:
<distance name="left_width" value="5"/>
<distance name="right_width" value="5"/>

These values provide a (albeit) thicker border which is slightly less aesthetically pleasing, but at least resizing isn't terrible anymore.

In short, I believe that people would much prefer the easier resize pixel thickness, rather than a slick, thin, border.

TIP: There's some brainstorm going on for this issue here: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/18427/

[Kamil Páral (kamil.paral)]

As for me, I prefer the thin border. It is unfortunate that we have to choose between aesthetics and easy of use. But there are many themes oriented at easy of use (including Ubuntu's default one) so I don't see a problem of having this theme oriented in aesthetics. I like it.

[Dilomo (ankere)]

This theme is only about style and aesthetics so I won't change the border thickness to fix the problems of faulty window managers. As Kamil said there are other themes you could use if you find difficulties resizing but as you can see you can even customize it so that fits your needs.

[fermulator (fermulator)]

OK fair enough.

You've both made valid points. Bug #160311 is discussing the general problem with metacity. Hopefully we'll get some "invisible thickness" for resizing, or a "snap to" option from that.

I would consider this bug against "New Wave" closed as invalid or wontfix.

[Allan Caeg (allancaeg)]

You can resort to alt+F8 :)

[fermulator (fermulator)]

Oh indeed. There are lots of "workarounds" for such a problem, but bug #160311 is trying to digg to the root solution. It's a usability bug, and the goal is to achieve the expected usability without sacrificing aesthetics.