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Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

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Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#161

Post by contextfree »

Pxtl wrote: post #57
simias wrote: 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…

Yeah, even Windows 10 Tablet Mode is pretty poorly supported in windows apps, and that's just "fullscreen all the things" - it tends to fall over on dialog boxes and the like. Not surprised that more sophisticated alternate window-layout systems would also fail badly.

This was a motivation for the design of UWP apps (which use a different approach to window management, involving a dedicated system process that is responsible for drawing and managing all the window frames), as well as how they were originally presented differently from Win32 apps in a separate "area" back in the Windows 8 days.

It's extremely difficult to make any significant change to the paradigm of how Win32 apps are managed and presented and have it work consistently for arbitrary apps - for example they recently tried to add a feature to Windows that allowed arbitrary native apps to be switched and managed via a tab strip like web apps. Worked fine for UWP apps, but when they tried to extend it to arbitrary Win32 they got mired in edge cases and eventually dropped the feature.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#162

Post by xbkingx »

degenerate wrote: post #93
haunter wrote: post #83

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

That's a neat idea. So basically all windows must conform to grid lines. I wonder how well it resizes applications that don't want to resize.

It works almost too well. I've been using it for years and don't recall seeing a window it couldn't resize. I've seen it resize "unresizeable" windows in several programs that did not have scaling components, though. Consequently, you end up with the whole UI taking up a small part of the window.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#163

Post by Pxtl »

contextfree wrote: post #161
Pxtl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, even Windows 10 Tablet Mode is pretty poorly supported in windows apps, and that's just "fullscreen all the things" - it tends to fall over on dialog boxes and the like. Not surprised that more sophisticated alternate window-layout systems would also fail badly.

This was a motivation for the design of UWP apps (which use a different approach to window management, involving a dedicated system process that is responsible for drawing and managing all the window frames), as well as how they were originally presented differently from Win32 apps in a separate "area" back in the Windows 8 days. It's extremely difficult to make any significant change to the paradigm of how Win32 app…

Yeah, but I also remember when it was the explorer itself that was bad. I don't know if they've fixed it, but Windows Explorer failing to show copy status and things like that was really disappointing - that's not 3rd party, that's not even outside of the OS team.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#165

Post by jvanderbot »

rickbutton wrote: post #60

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…

Looks like the venerable i3 (https://i3wm.org/ ). The workhorse of workspacing for this guy.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#166

Post by bob1029 »

_hao wrote: post #115
bob1029 wrote: post #30

Will definitely check this out. I use a 43" 4K and the default corner/side snapping behavior is just not sufficient for managing windows. Having visual studio snapped to the right/left 50% of your screen all day is terrible for your neck, especially considering the default location of solution explorer in VS. I really just need a 'priority' zone or column right in the middle of the display that I can quickly snap oth…

Are you using the the Dell P4317Q by any chance? That's my monitor at home and it's the best purchase I've ever made tech wise. Are you aware that the monitor comes with an app to manage multiple windows and sections of the screen from Dell themselves called Dell Display Manager - https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/qna44541/what-...

LG43UD79B - Fantastic display, I suspect it may be the same panel as the Dell unit.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#167

Post by vegardlarsen »

xbkingx wrote: post #156
haunter wrote: 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 Bo…

Author of MaxTo here. It is very much alive, but there is just me working on it so progress is sometimes slow.

There are some very cool things coming in the next release: - support for different triggers, that lets you run specific commands in response to windows events. Basically our recipes feature extended quite a bit. - WinSplit-like hotkeys for those who liked those. Configurable. - lots of these small quality of life improvements

We are getting closer to a public preview of this, but shoot me an e-mail for a private preview.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#168

Post by vegardlarsen »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #36

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.

Author of MaxTo here. Looks similar, but we have something in the works for MaxTo that makes it much more powerful.

See my comment above for details, or shoot me an e-mail at the support address for a preview.

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#169

Post by vegardlarsen »

dleslie wrote: post #39

Funnily enough, I recently purchased MaxTo[0], which appears now to have a decent and free competitor. 0: https://maxto.net/

Thank you for you purchase. I'm the author of MaxTo.

I'm not too worried about the competition here; MaxTo's feature set is expanding and will remain quite a bit more powerful than FancyZones for the overseeable future. :)

Re: Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

#170

Post by cyansmoker »

rickbutton wrote: post #60

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…

Fun! I created a configuration that lays out tiles following the Fibonacci pattern:

https://gist.github.com/Fusion/8ad05ac05948b3397516aa836f0a1...

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