Idea #2571: Make it easier to resize windows.

192

Written by Abatrour the 2 Mar 08 at 20:21. Category: Look and Feel.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

I find it hard to resize windows. The borders are not big enough to grab easily. I think it would be good if there was an extra invisible gap of a few pixels around the borders that you can grab on to so you don't have to visually make the borders thicker.

Tags: (none)

Attachments

Bug #160311 : Window Resize Difficult (Window Border Thickness)

Duplicates

Idea #3846: Make window reszing easier (125 votes)

Idea #2641: Larger window resizing handles (15 votes)

[Report a duplicate and merge its votes to this idea]

Comments

penguinboy08 wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 20:34

Why not just hold Alt-middleClick on the window?

miketech wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 20:41

Oh didn't know that :) Nice.

Dridiot wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 20:41

its still a problem. if the functionality is provided, but poorly, thats a problem.

i think another problem is it's WAY too hard to get the corner (which allows you to resize in both directions)

Estesark wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 03:19

I agree with this, I always find it rather annoying to resize windows, particularly from the corner, and I didn't know about Alt+Middle click. It's not a very intuitive thing to think about doing to resize a window, and I haven't come across it in the help wiki or anything, so it is not unreasonable to argue it is poorly implemented.

Auzy wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 04:32

I think an option should be made available, but not by default.

My Car PC for instance would benefit from it.

+1

Mårten Woxberg wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 16:20

Alt+Left click = Move windows around
Alt+Middle click = Resize

Abatrour wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 01:50

Still, you shouldn't have to use two hands to resize a window easily when you should be able to do it with the mouse alone. And not everyone has a middle click.. My notebook touchpad doesn't have one.

motumboe wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 13:58

I agree with you! +1

Dreamsorcerer wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 21:25

"And not everyone has a middle click.."

You can emulate a middle click, by clicking left+right at the same time, I believe this is enabled by default.

Abatrour wrote on the 5 Mar 08 at 03:13

The emulated middle click hardly ever works. But that's not the point. The point is it should be easier PERIOD. Not everyone wants to do it your way.

johno wrote on the 9 Mar 08 at 09:22

Emulated middle click works on both my laptops, and on this desktop - even though it does have 3 buttons. Having said that, it'd make more sense to use the right button instead, because it is generally easier.

The alt-drag and alt-f7 / alt-f8 methods of move/resize should be better documented though, because it isn't obvious to new users. Perhaps there could be tool-tips on the "handles" to remind about it.

It's interesting to see how other people do things though, because I'd never think to try to find the little corners or window borders to do resizing. Half the time they'd be off the screen or hiding behind other windows anyhow.

jcarey wrote on the 16 Mar 08 at 01:43

Great suggestion on the difficulty of resizing windows from the side or corner. Found this comment thread by googling "ubuntu hard to resize windows", glad I did, I've been tried the other resize options suggested here and can see that I'll be using them most of the time, problem solved for me. But I wish I would have know about them sooner. Thanks all.

Ansible wrote on the 12 May 08 at 04:57

Why not document the alt shortcuts into the window menu that is at the upper left of every window? So you could have

Minimize
Maximize
Move (alt+left mouse)
Resize (alt+mid mouse)

Like that.

Also, the resize menu item seems kind of useless when you are using the mouse - try it. You select Resize, then start moving the mouse around which resizes the window, and then... well clicking the mouse buttons does nothing. yeah I know you're supposed to hit Enter, but if you can use the resize menu to initiate mouse sizing, you should be able to stop the sizing with the mouse.

myxiplx wrote on the 23 Aug 08 at 10:10

I agree this needs work. Why have the corner minimise feature if it's next to impossible to use? It makes Ubuntu feel very clunky after coming from a windows environment.

The Alt+Middle click is a decent workaround now that I know about it, but that's very much a power user tool, not something the average person is going to want to use.

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