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Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

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Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#151
post #66
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alternatively you can use tridactyl to click on links with hint keys.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to use the mouse for window management not just on the applications. Now, i haven't used i3, but from a tiling window manager i'd expect at minimum that i can drag-drop windows with the mouse between "zones" and resize the zone boundaries interactively with the mouse. For extra stuff i'd like using the wheel up/down on a title bar to minimize/restore a zone, drag-dropping a window over another window to…

i3 has mouse support, you can resize windows (by default i believe it is mod + right mouse button), and i am fairly certain drag and drop will make it into the next release, if you want to use it there's already a PR on github to test it out.

Interesting to hear, thank you for the information.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#153
post #109
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am millennial. Fully aware of the PowerToys heritage. I used to run the win95 explorer.exe on Windows 98 back in the day along with a bunch of PowerToys tweaks. Millennial were born 1981-1996 ;) There's no <19 year old millennial's left, I'm afraid.

I confused millennia with generation x... You're right if course! I can never keep these terms straight

No, it's not. Too late to delete however...

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#154
post #104

I wrote (and use) Mosaico. Download it at http://www.soulidstudio.com Any feedback welcome!

That looks like a cool project. If you don't mind me asking, is it just a side project, and if so, how much money can you make off of an app like his? (Obviously not trying to compete in your space, just want to know if selling apps you've written is a worthwhile business.)

Thank you! It's been a full time project for a while. Now it's a side project. I'm satisfied with the revenues, but I'm not rich by any stretch. For me it's mostly about creating something that solves a problem and stick to it long enough.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#155
post #122
post #104

I wrote (and use) Mosaico. Download it at http://www.soulidstudio.com Any feedback welcome!

This looks great. Something I have been looking for since upgrading to a 49-inch Ultra-wide, where I now prefer to keep my application windows floating around the center on this giant monitor. Do you still actively develop it? The digital signature in your .exe says 2017 and your website footer says 2015.

Thank you! Yes, I'm currently working on a 2.0 version, which is a big refactoring code-wise and takes a lot of time. That's why regular updates are missing unfortunately :/

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#156
post #83

I think it's not updated anymore but I used WindowGrind on 10. https://bitbucket.org/joshua_wilding/windowgrid-binaries/src...

Came here to mention WindowGrid and WinNumpad Position.

WindowGrid: Drag window with left+right mouse buttons brings up a customizable grid. Release RMB to set first corner, and LMB to set opposite corner.

WinNumpad Position: Win key+Numpad key to snap window into corresponding position (eg- 7 for top left corner). Hit number multiple times to cycle through sizes. https://pbrs.weebly.com/win-numpad-positioner.html

Both are basically abandoned, but they work well along side the built in Aero Snap features.

Other old alternatives that have various levels of functionality (and clearly inspired many of the tools posted in this thread):

GridMove (free): Used to be my go to, but hdpi scaling and the Modern UI window elements borked it. Based on AutoHotKey, but surprisingly responsive, extremely customizable (though not very user friendly). Would love to see this make a comeback. http://www.dcmembers.com/jgpaiva/ https://github.com/jgpaiva/GridMove

MaxTo (paid): User friendly and pretty, but less useful since Aero Snap. Rarely updated, but alive. Nice if all you want is a slightly more control over the built in Aero Snap. https://maxto.net/

AquaSnap (paid): Very similar to MaxTo, but more refined. Free personal version is limited to single display functions. Updated rarely, but alive. https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap

Windock (free): Crashes for me but works for some. https://www.ivanyu.ca/#/windock/

Freesnap (free): Not maintained, but used to be great. Haven't tried it in a while, but thought it deserved mentioning. https://mike-ward.net/freesnap/

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#157
post #20

I got REALLY excited when I read this title until I read the documentation and now I probably won't even bother testing it. If anyone is looking for an i3-like tiling window manager (a Linux tiling wm) Fanzy Zones isn't it. This one requires pre-setting a bunch of layouts up front, unlike i3 where you can just seamlessly open and move windows that auto-split as you go with zero window configuration up front. IMO the…

So, there are a great many tiling window managers out there. i3 is just one fish in the sea. Here's a starting point at a list just for X11: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/window_manager#Tiling_w... The usual classification is static vs. dynamic: static managers maintain a certain fixed layout of slots which they then fill windows into, while dynamic ones adjust the number, layout and size of those slots on the…

It's especially clickbait because most people who exclusively use Windows aren't aware of any tiled window managers so they are going to assume this is the only way to do it and draw a conclusion about tiled window managers based on Fancy Zones specifically.

Heck the 6 minute Youtube tutorial in the README is just 6 minutes of trying to explain the convoluted configuration to set up and use layouts. There's not even 1 second of video showing 2 tiled windows together when the project is supposed to be the official Microsoft tiled window manager.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#158

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's your use cases for workspacer? How do you use it yourself?

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#159
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’…

i've been using spectacle for many years pretty happily. maybe too basic for some but works great for my needs

https://www.spectacleapp.com/

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#160
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’…

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