an article explaining why GNOME should support SSD, but also arguing against the reasons often given for why they shouldn’t
If someone could repost this to r/GNOME I would appreciate it, since I don’t have a reddit account.
I think I am in the SSD camp. I absolutely hate the latest trend on MS Windows to fill the title bar with various widgets to the point where it can be hard to grab the window and move it. As with the current trend in US politics to stretch the rules well past any previous deformation, give a CSD an inch and it will eventually lead to ridiculously-adorned windows.
Am I the only one who drags windows by holding Super or nah?
I sometimes do that too, but as it’s not a thing on Windows (which I’m forced to use at work), it’s not my default habit.
My condolences. 💜
There is a third party tool called AltDrag that brings this exact thing to Windows. See if you can sneak it into your work machine somehow.
I just tried that now (didn’t know it was a thing) and it’s not a very satisfactory solution if I’m moving monitors. When I get it to where I want, I can’t just double-click to max it again like I can dragging the title bar. Can’t say I’ll use that.
🤷♂️ I used it all the time back around twenty years ago when I still was using a stacking window manager with floating windows. It’s all about practice I guess. For me it felt natural initially though.
Also holding down Super and dragging with right mouse button to resize is great.
The entire window is a much bigger click target than the title bar or the window borders (actually each quadrant would be the click target for resizing, but still a lot bigger). Fitts’s Law in action.
I don’t use it much now that I moved to tiling window manager many years ago, and now a scrolling window manager, because those are mostly controlled with use of keyboard shortcuts. But sometimes I still use this even now. 👍
Closest I’ve come to any of that black magic hotkey fuckery is I’ve learned to hold shift when I drag to get it to snap to my tiling setup in KDE. Oh and Alt-tab for window switching and Meta-Tab for Activities.
I’m pretty much ready for Sway as you can tell.
that black magic hotkey fuckery
😂 I take it you aren’t used to working with computers much except maybe for gaming? Or what kind of computer background do you have, if you’d like to share? 🙂
Former IT and current farmer. I just did everything in the terminal.
Cool. How long ago did you make the switch to farming?
This is the biggest issue with CSDs aside from the wasted space coming from oversized buttons. Every developer’s gonna put different, inconsistent things in that title bar.
The close window button is basically universal, but what if I want to minimize the application? What if I want to pin it to all workspaces, stack it on top of other windows, or roll it up? With CSDs there are no standards.
What now? GNOME doesn’t support server-side decorations? It’s been years since I last used GNOME, so I may be out of touch; but if this is true, what happens if you do run something on GNOME that simply doesn’t have any code that draws its own titlebars? Or am I misunderstanding how any of this works?
From the article:
Certain applications work poorly without SSD. These apps end up having either no titlebar or a weird one, and the user can’t move or resize them easily. Davinci Resolve is one notable example, but it’s not the only one.
In my mind the switch to CSD was made concurrently with the switch to mobile style burger menus and a corresponding excision of features to fit in the smaller menu area, so most apps that do it I just instinctively dislike. It’s part of what pushed me to KDE, though I still use GNOME at work
