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Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

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61–70 of 172 posts

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#61

so, i've tried this out. it seems like, unless i'm missing something, the zones can only be used on your primary display right now. that makes it useless for me. another commenter mentioned maxto so i tried it out as well. it looks like maxto is exactly what fancy zones will be once it's finished.

Currently the new zone editor only supports tbe primary monitor. You can switch to the old zone editor in settings in the interim, though

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#62
post #49
post #32

I tried using a custom "window manager" for Windows a while ago (back in the Vista days IIRC) and it didn't really work well. The main problem was that, as far as I could tell, the window manager couldn't really preempt the windows and force them to show up in a certain way. Instead it basically asked them "pretty please, could you show up at this location with these dimensions?". As a result frozen apps (such as gra…

I’ve encountered similar issues with macOS tiling window managers. At the end of the day, you’re bolting on behaviors that the original designers of the system didn’t intend you to, and there’s always going to be tension there. When I’m on Linux I love using xmonad/i3, but on other platforms I’ve learned to accept the defaults; otherwise you just end up using things that work most of the time, but not really, and it’…

Have you tried chunkwm[1] on Mac? It has it's issues but it has served me fine for the last few years.

[1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/chunkwm

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#63
post #10

This looks neat. This is a kind of window manager I have wanted for quite a while on OSX

I've been using spectacle[0] for a while and happy with it [0]: https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle

Seconded - this is the first thing I install on any new Mac I get my hands on.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#65
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the mouse... thats the entire point of i3, i.e. to make it all keyboard-driven. It's sort of like saying "the problem with cars is that they don't make effective use of the horse". i3 doesn't do anything to prevent you using the mouse for whatever application you like.

I understand that's a design goal of i3. I wasn't specifically talking about i3 though, in fact it seems like every tiling window manager has that philosophy and I think it is a mistake. Enabling effective use of the mouse doesn't negate the ability to use the keyboard effectively too -- they serve different use cases.

My mouse is actually critical to how I use i3 - I've got a lenovo thinkpad usb keyboard, with the left, middle, and right mouse buttons below the spacebar and the red nub for the pointer. I use focus-follow-mouse and when I need to change my active window I just flick the mouse over to where it needs to be - it's super fast. It also works really well with laptop trackpads and an actual mouse.

I know other window managers allow you to use focus-follow-mouse, but I haven't found any that make it nearly as effective as i3.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#66
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the mouse... thats the entire point of i3, i.e. to make it all keyboard-driven. It's sort of like saying "the problem with cars is that they don't make effective use of the horse". i3 doesn't do anything to prevent you using the mouse for whatever application you like.

I understand that's a design goal of i3. I wasn't specifically talking about i3 though, in fact it seems like every tiling window manager has that philosophy and I think it is a mistake. Enabling effective use of the mouse doesn't negate the ability to use the keyboard effectively too -- they serve different use cases.

Would you mind elaborating on what use case you think a mouse could come in handy for when you would be using a tiling WM? I recently switched over to one and the only time I've used my mouse was when I had to click on something in Firefox.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#67

This seems like a good time to plug my tiling window manager for Windows, workspacer. https://www.workspacer.org/ I use xmonad on my linux machines, and wanted something similar for Window, so workspacer trys to replicate that style of window manager (configurable via writing C#, dynamic layouts, etc). I've been using it every day for about a year, but its still pretty early, there are some applications for which it…

What is different about some applications?

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#68
post #32

I tried using a custom "window manager" for Windows a while ago (back in the Vista days IIRC) and it didn't really work well. The main problem was that, as far as I could tell, the window manager couldn't really preempt the windows and force them to show up in a certain way. Instead it basically asked them "pretty please, could you show up at this location with these dimensions?". As a result frozen apps (such as gra…

Windows doesn’t really have a window manager like the concept from X11. Basically the apps get messages and by using the standard libraries to handle a selection of messages, you get the behavior you’d expect of a Windows app, like the maximizing and minimizing, resizing and the Windows 10 specific zooming behavior. But there is little coordination and no separate process that draws window frames or something like that.

Also normal apps can’t send messages to elevated apps because there are ways to take over apps by sending the messages that you can’t really defend against.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#69
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve encountered similar issues with macOS tiling window managers. At the end of the day, you’re bolting on behaviors that the original designers of the system didn’t intend you to, and there’s always going to be tension there. When I’m on Linux I love using xmonad/i3, but on other platforms I’ve learned to accept the defaults; otherwise you just end up using things that work most of the time, but not really, and it’…

Have you tried chunkwm[1] on Mac? It has it's issues but it has served me fine for the last few years. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/chunkwm

There's also AppGrid[2] for Mac, which I've been using for years and still use to this day. It's simple but flexible.

[2] https://github.com/mjolnirapp/appgrid

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#70
post #67

This seems like a good time to plug my tiling window manager for Windows, workspacer. https://www.workspacer.org/ I use xmonad on my linux machines, and wanted something similar for Window, so workspacer trys to replicate that style of window manager (configurable via writing C#, dynamic layouts, etc). I've been using it every day for about a year, but its still pretty early, there are some applications for which it…

What is different about some applications?

Some applications like to reset their own position occasionally, or don't take kindly to being resized from an outside process. WinSCP is an example where workspacer tries to resize/position the window, and WinSCP itself listens for the move event, and moves itself. workspacer gets that second move event, and cycles back and forth forever.

For the few cases where it doesn't work right now, I have ignore routes setup in my config file (so workspacer will just ignore any matching window). I should probably make a list of the few common apps that are weird.

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