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Topic: «Move & fit to grid , Easily drag and fit windows into user-definable grid » on forum: Feature Requests   Views: 5380
 
jeme
Registered user
 
 Posts: 2
Joined: 08/15/2010
Posted: 08/15/2010 08:41:27
 
 
 I've just started learning the functions and options of Actual Window Manager, and I admire all the ideas and concepts that you guys have put together. And maybe I just haven't found the right options yet, but I'm surprised that I couldn't find a function that, in my opinion, has been overdue on the market for years, all the more as I think it would make managing windows on big/multi-screen workplaces so much more intuitive without having to do a lot of setup*:

I'd like to create my own grid (or actually different grids for different purposes, see below) where I can quickly distribute and fit my windows into with just a few mouse drags or keyboard shortcuts. Ideally after creating and dragging grid lines in a graphical setup screen, I'd like to be able to drag and fit any open windows I want into the various fields of the grid:
  • While I click and drag the window title bar, I can press e.g. CTRL, and the grid is displayed in a dimmed way; then I drag the window to any of the fields and drop it somewhere in the field. The window automatically moves to the field and changes its size so that it covers the entire field, but does not go beyond (as it does with the current align function in AWM).

  • If I drop the window on a border of the grid or a border crossing, the window moves and changes its size so that it fills all fields adjacent to the point where I dropped it.

  • I can assign a shortcut to this "function group", e.g. WIN+G. However, since I have a lot of different options here and I wouldn't want to have to specify different shortcuts for each of them, I can assign a key or a name to each of the fields (by default, they get a single letter assigned fr om upper left to lower right). So, to move a window to a field, I press WIN+G, keep the WIN key pressed and specify the key of the fields to be used. To support this, the grid and the keys are displayed after pressing CTRL+G and stay visible until I release the WIN key.
    An example for this shortcut function: My grid has nine fields
    A B  C
    D E  F
    G H  I
    To move a window to the fields C+F, I press WIN+G+C+F.
It might be worth a closer consideration whether setting up more complex field arrays should be possible: e.g. while setting up the grid, I can delete or move individual lines between two cells similar as in Word (or I can "draw a table"). This way, for example, I could create a layout like this:
A    C
D    F
     I
wh ere A and former B form a "landscape" cell and D and former E, G and H form another big cell.
However, I'm not sure whether this wouldn't complicate things too much without a real advantage.[/*]

As mentioned before, it should be possible to create (and name) different grids for different purposes and, of course, to open the choice of them via shortcuts and the menu. E.g. WIN+CTRL+G might open a pop-up list of the available grids, that I can browse with the cursor keys or the mouse, and while I'm browsing, the currently selected grid is displayed in the background; pressing RETURN switches to the chosen grid then.

Once started thinking about this again, I'm getting more and more ideas to refine this concept (and you too, probably – for example: auto-distribute all open windows), but I guess, that's enough for now ;-)

Btw, I'd find it great if you opened your license model to a real per-user license (as many other utility programs in this area do); that means a single user may install and use it on as many machines as he or she works on. Since the software does not perform any automated processing, it is not possible that a single user can literally use it simultaneously on different machines, and it would allow your users to work consistently on all machines they have in use at reasonable costs. To avoid that it can be run by other users, if they log in on the same machine, you might make the license key a personal property which is loaded only, if the specific user logs in.
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* The per-application setup options in AWM to create a well-defined grid are great, but at least I usually do not need such a fixed per-application scenario, and the need to set this up takes too much time then.
 
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