Re: [Usability] Discoverable off-screen window dragging

[ritz <khadgaray gmail com>]

Hello

  a possible workaround is to use a large Virtual screen size in
xorg.conf. 


On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 17:23 -0600, Hans Petter Jansson wrote:
> I've been discussing accessibility/usability with visually impaired
> users lately, and one thing that came up, and that I believe to be
> low-hanging fruit, is the problem of windows being bigger than the
> screen in one or both dimensions.
> 
> This happens frequently for visually impaired users, since they
> generally have very large fonts.
> 
> I was told by one user that the way he worked around this was by going
> to the control panel, choosing a smaller font temporarily, moving the
> window, then setting the big font again. Of course, he was very happy to
> hear about the alt+drag shortcut.
> 
> Which made me wonder if there's a more discoverable way of moving
> windows around when they're too big/partially off-screen.
> 
> One idea that came up was automatically adding scrollbars to the
> windows, but I don't see how that could work reliably, and it would
> clutter the screen and be error-prone/hard to do technically.
> 
> A better idea might be something like the following logic in the window
> manager:
> 
> IF window is focused AND
>    pointer is pushing against the edge of the screen AND
>    window has area off that edge of the screen AND
>    user is not dragging
> THEN
>    move the window in the opposite direction of the edge being pushed
> 
> So e.g. if you have a focused window which is partially off the
> right-hand side of the screen, and you push your pointer against that
> side, bumping into the edge, the window will move to the left until you
> can see its right-edge frame. The rate of movement would be equal to the
> number of pixels the pointer "wants" to move off-screen at each
> increment. Only the focused window would be affected.
> 
> I think this would be a lot more discoverable and useful for everyone -
> not just visually impaired users - and it looks like all the required
> information is available to the window manager, so it shouldn't be
> terribly hard to implement.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
-- 
Ritesh Khadgaray
ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ
Desktop LinuX N Stuff
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