[HN Gopher] Designing Aero Snap (2009)
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Designing Aero Snap (2009)
Author : fomine3
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-09-03 07:41 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| dm319 wrote:
| With ultrawide displays we need an update of this paradigm. Maybe
| we need to introduce the concept of areas on a display that
| partially take over the role of a physical screen.
|
| For starters I have just adjusted my MATE desktop to vertically
| maximise the window on double clicking the titlebar.
| nguyenkien wrote:
| "For starters I have just adjusted my MATE desktop to
| vertically maximise the window on double clicking the
| titlebar.For starters I have just adjusted my MATE desktop to
| vertically maximise the window on double clicking the
| titlebar."
|
| On Windows, you can double click at top/bottom edge of window
| to vertically maximize
| kroltan wrote:
| I use Windows, and there's a third-party application called
| WindowGrid which is pretty cool to use.
|
| It splits your screen space into a configurably dense grid (I
| use it at 16x9 cells, for example, so they're roughly square),
| and you can position windows on it using mouse gestures.
|
| Start dragging a window, move your mouse to where you want one
| of the corners to be, hold right click, and drag it where you
| want it to fit to.
|
| It's basically a manual tiling WM, but it's quite useful.
|
| Here's a tiny example of the usage:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ziWVGyjwdw
| captainmuon wrote:
| Check out the Windows 10 PowerToys
| https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
|
| With it you can hold Shift when moving a window, and the window
| will snap to a predefined grid. There are also other nice
| tools, like a Color picker when you press Win+C.
| adamrezich wrote:
| this changed my life with my three-monitor setup (1 portrait,
| 2 landscape) at work when I discovered it a few months ago! I
| can't imagine going back to life without it now, it's so
| useful.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| On Linux there are a whole bunch of tiling window managers that
| do this. i3 is probably the most famous one. I use Pop_OS shell
| on Manjaro to combine GNOME and tiled windows (with sadly very
| limited customizability on window positioning) which works
| quite well; it's tiling windows without the need to remember a
| billion system specific shortcuts.
|
| On Windows you now have FancyZones, part of the Windows power
| pack thing Microsoft provides on Github, which allows you to
| draw areas you can snap windows into. Windows 11 even has some
| common window layouts built right in.
|
| More traditional Linux desktops (like MATE) will probably try
| to avoid this paradigm, as they're more about sticking to what
| works than experimenting with new stuff. However, I think I see
| a trend where some sort of tiling is becoming part of more and
| more desktop environments.
| captainmuon wrote:
| The Windows UI team did a lot of great work around this time. I
| remember reading a post on the Windows Shell blog where they
| explained an ingenious they made to explorer. They added some
| margin on the left hand side of the detailed listview. Try it out
| and select a file, there is a blank space of about 15 pixels to
| the left of the row. This is so that you always have space to
| start a rubberband selection, even if the window is full with
| files. (You may also start it over the greyed out columns, but if
| you start on the name column, you start dragging the file
| instead.)
|
| I wonder if anybody archived the blog post somewhere? I cannot
| find it in archive.org unfortunately.
|
| I've never seen this feature implemented anywhere else (except in
| an unpublished Gtk app of mine where it was a pain to implement
| :-)).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This is a feature I often miss on many Linux file explorers. In
| Windows, there's always a way to right click on an empty area
| to get the context menu that allows you to create a new file.
| On my Linux file managers, you have to scroll to the bottom or
| zoom out if the amount of files lines up exactly with what
| could theoretically fit.
|
| It's the little bits of attention to detail that really made me
| appreciate the Windows 7 UI.
| captainmuon wrote:
| For future reference, here is the blog (called Shell:
| revealed):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20071015032920/http://shellrevea...
|
| There is a post about the inconsistent wizard titlebars in
| Vista and 7, for example. (There is a "back" button in the top
| left, but there is space above it. The reason is they didn't
| want to or couldn't do ownerdraw stuff on the titlebar, and
| then later stuck with it. The original plan was to have it look
| like in the Windows Vista/7 installer, where the back button is
| vertically centered in the titlebar).
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070206051159/http://shellrevea...
| dantondwa wrote:
| Seeing the beautiful, uncluttered, elegant simplicity of those
| screenshots makes me quite nostalgic. The lack of bullshit and
| the aesthetic coherence of that UI is really something I miss.
| The last decade has been disastrous for Windows, experience-wise.
| Wish we could have the Windows 7 experience with the core and
| security improvements of Windows 10!
| marcodiego wrote:
| Although the screenshots are indeed uncluttered, they're
| definitely not simple. There are many clickable items,
| unnecessarily large windows with wasted empty space, icons that
| are hard to read unless you have experience with them redundant
| information, rarely used bars and text fields...
|
| Windows UI became just too busy starting with xp. The last
| sober windows UI was windows 2000.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| People joke about the year of linux on the desktop, but it
| remains the best place to create an environment you like. XFCE
| is a good starting point if you're an old school windows fan.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| What's a good X11 or Wayland environment if I want a
| lightweight low-latency environment with Super+Number app
| launching and Super+arrow or drag snapping/tiling? Xfce with
| Docklike is X11-based, and gets me everything except for
| window snapping/tiling (when I try configuring the keyboard
| shortcuts, it doesn't work).
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Openbox is super configurable, and I've definitely done
| similar things to what you just descrubed.
|
| Last time I tried swapping out xfwm with openbox it was
| pretty easy.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Seeing the beautiful, uncluttered, elegant simplicity of
| those screenshots makes me quite nostalgic
|
| You're nostalgic for a time that never existed. While I agree
| that Windows 7 was more coherent than Windows Vista and Windows
| XP, every single Windows release has had its associated
| "bullshit" (as you put it):
|
| * Windows 98: Advertising on the desktop (Active Channels)
|
| * Windows XP: "Fischer-Price" default UI skin and chunky, toy-
| like iconography.
|
| * Windows Vista: The whole OS release was maligned - and this
| site collected it all:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110515033457/http://www.aerota...
|
| * Windows 7: (Okay, I'll admit I can't immediately think of any
| major power-user criticism of Windows 7)
|
| * Windows 8: Start Screen, terrible store apps, the DWM cannot
| be disabled, etc.
|
| * Windows 10: Criticism of telemetry and data-collection, and
| how there's still some leftovers from Windows 3.11 or Windows
| 95 (I forget) lying around:
| twic wrote:
| > every single Windows release
|
| I don't see NT 4 on that list!
|
| NT 4, 2000, and 7 were all fairly low-bullshit, i think.
|
| You also haven't listed Me, which probably needs a whole
| comment to itself.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| When I first got Windows 7, I was annoyed by it placing
| libraries and homegroups in Windows Explorer's sidebar.
| Though Windows 10 is worse, with 3D Objects, the OS shilling
| OneDrive, Edge, mandatory Microsoft accounts, etc.
| dm319 wrote:
| I'd say 7 was one of the best Windows, but even that had a
| lot of UI inconsistency and clutter. Still, better than most.
| Not as cohesive as my MATE desktop.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Reading to the bottom, I notice that they talk about a cursor
| effect (light glow) when you've hit the snap trigger. I never
| noticed this on Windows 7, and it's definitely not in Windows 10
| - did it ever make it into production?
| dantondwa wrote:
| It is there on Windows 7 and even 10 (just tested it to be
| sure)! When you drag a window to the side, a sort of
| circle/drop effect appears around the cursor. I think this is
| what they are referring to, but I might be mistaken.
| ygra wrote:
| That's what's also shown in the screenshot, so I'm pretty
| sure that's what they're referring to and the feature has
| always been there, indeed.
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's possible the effect won't show up if you have special
| effects turned off in the windows performance settings
| ("adjust the appearance and performance of Windows")
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| AH I do! Forgot about that.
| yarcob wrote:
| Coming from macOS, I have to say that this feature is extremely
| neat. This feature alone makes working with multiple windows on a
| large display so much nicer on Windows than on Mac. On the Mac
| you have all those different modes -- full screen, side by side,
| resize -- and confusing ways to trigger the modes: click green
| button, alt click green button, drag to top of screen and wait,
| etc.
|
| The Aero Snap feature was something I immediately understood when
| I started using Windows, and I learned about it just from the
| feedback you get when you drag a window to the side. You can see
| that they tested it with real users.
|
| It feels like Apple didn't test their feature with real users at
| all. It's bad on the desktop, but it's even worse on iPad -- I
| only ever triggered the multi-tasking features accidentally and
| ended up confused what was going on.
| ralgozino wrote:
| There's rectangle app that does aero-snap and much more, and it
| is opensource: https://rectangleapp.com/ I been using it for a
| while and love it.
| nicoburns wrote:
| There's a $0.99 app for macOS called Magnet that implements
| aero snap like functionality. I'd highly recommend.
| yarcob wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. It seems the dev increased the price (it
| costs 8EUR now). I bought it nevertheless.
|
| Unfortunately, the app seems to work nowhere near as well as
| the Windows feature. Might be because of my multi-monitor
| setup, but it seems to do something different everytime I hit
| an edge, and trying to hit an edge between two displays is
| difficult.
| Pumafied wrote:
| I'm a pretty big fan of penc. It's has snap like
| functionality placed on gestures on the trackpad and is
| free https://deniz.co/penc/
| josters wrote:
| Long-time user of BetterTouchTool here, which implements
| this feature as well. If you just want the snap
| functionality they also offer this as a cheaper ($2.99),
| stand-alone version with BetterSnapTool[0].
|
| [0] https://folivora.ai/bettersnaptool
| razodactyl wrote:
| Additionally an app called Spectacle for keyboard accelerated
| window management.
|
| I found that once I got used to the keyboard shortcuts, my
| window management on macOS became second nature.
|
| https://www.spectacleapp.com/
| jibbers wrote:
| I think Rectangle is the spiritual successor to Spectacle.
|
| https://rectangleapp.com
| lancesells wrote:
| I would recommend it as well. Once you start getting used to
| the hotkeys it really speeds things up. They even have
| commands to send app windows to other monitors.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > In the scenarios below you'll notice sequences of interactions
| that are fully written out. Sequences like: select the window,
| click the caption button, and then resize the window.
|
| This is interesting. I wonder if the _caption button_ step is a
| leftover from previous design iterations, where you had to click
| a button on the title-bar to Snap a window...
| ginko wrote:
| Windows 7 was really when Microsoft took a bunch of features that
| had been in Linux display managers for ages (tiling, window
| snapping) and added them to their own OS.
| nguyenkien wrote:
| I don't think Microsoft copy Snap from Linux. I use Ubuntu
| 8.10, and it doesn't have snap, I do try KDE4 and it also not
| has anything like Snap
| ginko wrote:
| XFCE had it for ages
| nguyenkien wrote:
| What ages we talk about? Because Windows 7 also aged.
| ginko wrote:
| Like 2000 and earlier ages:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20000619002010/http://www.xfc
| e.o...
| nguyenkien wrote:
| The "Windows snapping" in early Xfce version mean to
| stick the windows together or with the screen edge
| (Doesn't resize the window). It doesn't work like the
| snap on Windows 7. The name is similar, but the function
| is different.
|
| This is a patch for Xfwm4 to make it work like Windows 7
| (2012)
| https://launchpad.net/~fossfreedom/+archive/ubuntu/xfwm4
| marcodiego wrote:
| Actually me and friends made fun of windows user when
| windows 7 was released. Most of those effects were things
| we had on compiz for a few years but with MUCH more power.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| I think Aero Snap was originally shown off first as a Windows 7
| feature when they announced it but was quickly duplicated by
| Linux DEs before it even launched.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Win7 taskbar was also excellent copy (or improvement) of OSX
| Dock.
| dataflow wrote:
| Meanwhile it only took 3 decades for Linux folks to realize
| it's not a crazy idea to want to open a handle to a process and
| wait for it to exit.
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