Comment by wruza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wruza | Hacker News Reader

After reading this thread, things I [maybe] miss in desktop windows ui.

1. Different per-window dpi. Ctrl-scroll on a window title to zoom in/out at ~hw level. Apps shouldn’t care.

1a. Zoom in/out the entire desktop this way (ctrl-scroll on show desktop button).

2. OSX-like fit-size maximization instead of fullscreen.

2a. Alt-lbtn to move, alt-rbtn to resize, everywhere in a window.

3. Hotkey specific windows by alt-shift-digit, focus/raise by alt-digit.

4. Focus follows mouse, doesn’t raise.

4a. Make active windows fucking stand out again. And create a post-commit hook to autofire an idiot who tries to revert that.

5. Separate displays. I’d try have 2+ displays again if they were really separate and not continuous. Having a part of a window to stick out, misclicking into the edge, and windows popping up on a random display is just stupid. I want ~sort of~ two logins of the same user into one system. Switch by alt-esc.

6. Stick everything to everything and/or grid by 5mm to help my perfectionism.

A lot of these you can build yourself with Hammerspoon if you're on OSX. Some quick comments since I've dabbled a lot in this:

#2a Better just to have a grid that you can resize/move to using keyboard shortcuts; it's too much of a hassle otherwise. On Windows there's already split-screen support for this with Windows key + arrows for instance.

#3 I've built this in Hammerspoon and it's a lot less useful than you think. It's better to have fixed shortcuts for apps that one doesn't have to consciously think about.

#5 I have app shortcuts that does some smart things with cursor placement to make it easier switching between apps. I find this helps a lot with this. Most of the time I'm not dragging the cursor between displays at all due to this. Also helps a lot to have a shortcut for "move current focused app to x display".

I'm curious what you mean by "OSX-like fit-size maximization". do you mean what happens when you double click on the title bar and the window fills the vertical space, but not necessarily the horizontal space?

Yes, this feature.

> OSX-like fit-size maximization instead of fullscreen.

What I wouldn't give for apps to actually take advantage of this. Even most of Apple's own apps just treat the zoom button like an "expand window to size of desktop" button.

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