I use AltDrag on Windows (requires a quick tweak for HiDPI): https://stefansundin.github.io/altdrag/
And Easy Move + Resize on MacOS: https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize
That's awesome, I remember when I was a CS student in college I also fell in love with the alt+drag of windows on Linux and I wanted to bring the same on my Windows PC so I wrote this extremely hacky and very unstable tool: https://github.com/Morgawr/EmptyWM
It was one of my first "open source" projects and a great learning experience, I would never recommend anyone to use it because it was full of bugs (also I haven't touched it in like 10+ years) but I used it every day and it was such a great feeling just being able to improve my own life with tools I created myself. :)
> defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true
> reboot
Put me in the camp that hates window snap/tiling.
I have a certain workflow that needs this window there, and this one here ... don't snap to a location or go full screen.
This is such a great little nugget. Thanks.
Restricting tabs to the top edge of the window is stupid, because text is much wider than it is tall, so you can fit a lot more labeled tabs in a vertical column along the left or right edge of the window, than in a horizontal row along the top or bottom edge of the window. The tabs you get along the top edge of Chrome are useless when you have a lot of tabs opened, because all you can see are the icons, and none of the labels are visible.
That way the tabs are all visible even when the window isn't, and they afford a very easy way to see all the window titles at once, bring the window to the front, drag it around, and pop up pie menus to do things like push it to the back or front (down/up gestures), iconify it, make it full screen, and other window management commands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)
Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:Hy...
#/media/File:HyperTIESAuthoring.jpg){kind=link}
>HyperTIES browser and Gosling Emacs authoring tool with pie menus on the NeWS window system (1988)
>HyperTIES is an early hypermedia browser developed under the direction of Dr. Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. This screen snapshot shows the HyperTIES authoring tool (built with UniPress's Gosling Emacs text editor, written in MockLisp) and browser (built with the NeWS window system, written in PostScript, C and Forth). The tabbed windows and pie menu reusable components were developed by Don Hopkins, who also developed the NeWS Emacs (NeMACS) and HyperTIES user interfaces. (Sorry about the quality -- this is a scan of an old screen dump printed by a laser printer.)
Tabbed windows in combination with pie menus are the ingredients for a great window manager.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4
>NeWS Tab Window Demo (1990)
Demo of the Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0. Developed and demonstrated by Don Hopkins.
I would paste to gist.github.com but the corporate overlords won't let me
If you already have a script running at startup and all that, you can save this as a standalone file called e.g. winmove.ahk and add the following to your existing script:
#include C:\path\to\winmove.ahkThis next part is more of a funny absurd story than a complaint, but I once had a recurring bug where the browser UI was shifted down a hundred or so pixels from the top of the window, replaced by some flat "blank" color. But the interactions were still taking place in their expected areas. So in order to fix that, I had to hunt around with my mouse at the top of the window, look for UI elements to become highlighted in the middle of the window, and then move left or right until I was confident I was over the title bar (which I couldn't know for sure, since it itself doesn't highlight).
i thought that's what alt-drag was for? maybe microsoft didn't get that memo either...
Rearranging windows on MacOS and Windows now requires video game precision aiming. It is absurd.
What's more, every app places things in different parts of the title bar, so I have to search for "where to click" based on which app window is up. Absurd.
The move to controls in the title bar is absurd. It used to be Windows had standard chrome, title bar, then menu, toolbar, then content area. Now days it is the wild west what UI elements are where.
To get it on Windows search for AltDrag.
Remember your Bruce Tognazzini. Shortcuts are just that: shortcuts. They are NOT your primary interface. Everything should be visible and usable with just the mouse.
It's for this kind of nonsense that I have "alt-space -> s -> down -> right" burned into my fingertips followed by moving the mouse cursor to resize a window deterministically (along with "alt-space -> m -> any arrow" for move, doubly useful to "rescue" an off screen window)
> alt-space -> m -> any arrow
Are those keybindings default on a particular OS/DE/WM/WC or are they just your personal config?
Some odd-ball apps will replace it with their own menu, but few apps go to the effort to override the default shortcut it, even if they otherwise hide it.
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/806-4743/6jdq6q20i/inde...
Which windows still doesn't have, for some reason.
if you're looking specifically for "alt-spc n" to minimise I'm sure you can find a way to make that work - but why? to retain muscle memory between windows and gnome?
I'm pretty sure there's an option to emulate the windows key somewhere too
Instead you should be complaining about the trend of apps spacing everything out with excessive amounts of padding.
It's no wonder people are tempted to not use status bars, and shove as much as possible at the title. If applications could exploit the task bar, they would too.
(Anyway, you don't need an entire bar for system interaction. But applications aren't designed in a way that allows this.)
It's not even failing eyesight either; I'm still in my mid 30s and have great eyesight and dexterity. I've come to respect bigger interface elements because they are quicker to work with.
I don't have to peck for a title bar if it's there, big and empty in front of me. I don't have to hunt for a scroll bar that hides itself and reveals a 1px wide sliver if I hover over it just right, if the scroll bar is big and always visible. I don't have to aim my mouse like I'm playing a fucking sniper in a fucking FPS if the buttons are clearly texted, colored, bordered, and large.
Being able to /just fucking use the interface/ with broad motions is a fucking godsend. The trend of minimalism, hide-everything, gray-on-white interfaces gets in my way and wastes my time and nerves.
Unfortunately, the designers all seem to have 72" 8K professionally color-calibrated monitors and a $1000 mouse, and think if it works for them that's good enough.
I saw the start of this in the mid-2000s when the web trend was for grey-on-grey 8px fonts. I went to the designer and asked what the heck he was thinking and he showed me his screen; and yeah it was kinda legible there. Still bad design.
Nowadays the trends are flat UI where you don't even know what's clickable/actionable, hidden things that only appear when you mouseover them, and on touchscreens, secret functions that only trigger if you swipe in just the right way with just the right number of fingers in just the right pattern.
Design has just been getting progressively worse and worse ever since 2000/Windows XP.
Years ago I came across a project developing software for use by soldiers (maps, messaging, that sort of thing). The devs made really tiny icons for the various map symbols. One day an actual soldier came in with a ruggedised terminal and asked the devs to demo the software on it, using combat gloves. Needless to say it was unusable and there was a great gnashing of teeth.
The same project also gave rise to the best bit of user feedback I've ever seen. At an exercise where the software was being trialled, the commanding officer asked one of the soldiers what he thought of the software. He replied (in a northern English accent) "The fucking thing is fucking fucked, sir", and the trial was cancelled about ten minutes later.
If you have large high resolution screens, you won't miss the space, but you can't blame people for optimizing their own applications for the screens most people use.
Meanwhile nearly every article nowadays has a useless header image that takes up the entire screen, pushing the content out of view until scrolled down.
Give me nice and thick title bars and window borders, give me wide scroll bars, give me ginormous buttons with proper borders and textual descriptors. Minimalism is nonsense if critical contextual information is denied.
But if you want to put words on my mouth, go ahead.
I also have 15 layers of tabs in one of my Pale Moon windows, but that's beside the point.
Have you seen the new Microsoft calculator ? (i.e. calc.exe). It seems to be designed to be operated by spear throwers from 100 foots away.
Anyway, you don't need an entire bar for system interaction
Having to click on a tiny area to move a window, instead of a relatively wide rectangle, is a huge regression.
Winamp did exactly that, on Windows 95. The capability is there.
Try opening Microsoft Word, make the window narrow and drag the window. You have to hunt for a small bit of empty space in the title bar or you have to understand you could drag on the Title text, Search box and the Sign in Username, but not the Auto Save text, Upcoming Features icon, or the Ribbon Display Options icon.