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Comment by bicubic | Hacker News Reader

That one pixel is how all windows applications should work. I've been an Opera user for a long time and at some point that one pixel was the only thing stopping me from moving to chrome.

Here's the deal: when you have multiple monitors, the windows mechanic of click+dragging a full screen application's titlebar is the best way to shift applications from screen to screen. With Opera, I just throw my mouse to the top of the screen and drag. With Firefox and Chrome, I have to search out a tiny 20 pixel wide hitbox between the end of the tabs and the minimize button to start the drag action. Every single windows application I've used respects this mechanic, except for Chrome and Firefox. I actually brought this up with the Firefox UI team on reddit and they agreed that it's broken but evidently decided to keep it because people like OP now expect it.

I'm actually looking for a way to enable this on chrome/FF.

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This is why I always use alt+drag to move windows around on my Linux system. I can't really live without.

A few years ago I moved back to Windows for some time and missed that behaviour that much that I ended up writing a small program in C++ that hooks into the windows API and injects that behavior. Never felt better in my life using windows (it also does other stuff like allow alt+right-drag to resize and the option to remove all windows borders).

Here's the program in case anybody is interested but keep in mind it can have a few bugs and I stopped using/working on it because I don't use Windows anymore. Not sure how well (if anything) it works on Windows 8+.

https://github.com/Morgawr/EmptyWM

altdrag for windows is one of the first things I install, which only does that.

https://code.google.com/p/altdrag/

I also use true X mouse sometimes for the focus.

Thanks! I've been missing this functionality on Windows for so long, didn't realise there were addins to fix it.

AltDrag is fantastic. It's the first thing I install on any windows computer I'm on. As an added bonus it supports toggling "Always on Top" status of arbitrary windows.

It's also trivial to implement in AutoHotkey [1], which also adds the resize behavior, plus minimize/maximize/close. Don't use Windows without it.

[1] http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/scripts/EasyWindowDrag_(KDE)....

For completeness: AltDrag also supports resize, maximise, and always on top. I believe it has minimize as well, but I don't use that shortcut so I'm not sure.

I love this comment. Not because I agree, I would actually prefer it without it. But because it's the perfect example of how hard is to get everyone happy. Pixel? Fullscreen users are not happy. No pixel? Multi-screen users are not happy. Make it a setting? Than you have to make settings for all and it gets messy/complicated!

Ideally, this should be decided (or configured) by your window manager. But then, I also think that application tabs should be handled by the window manager somehow.

What's the more common action: selecting a tab, or moving a window to a different screen?

Why not have a way for the window to convey to the window manager that it (the window) is primarily just a holder of tabs (as most browsers, and increasingly more applications, seem to be), and let the WM decide based on the user's preference what the correct behavior and display is?

Is there still not a single window manager that understands tabs as a first class object? Why does Chrome (the browser) give me all sorts of fancy tab-related features, but no other program does? Even Windows nearly got this right back in the 3.1 days of MDI, and the entire world has regressed since then.

Because window manager is hard to extend and hard to customize . I can trivially change this and lots of other things in Firefox, but with windows WM i would have to wait 3 years to get any bug fixed or a new feature added.

Also calling chrome or Firefox window "just a holder of tabs" isn't fair, they are very special holders of very special tabs, and lots of work goes into them to make them work properly. Also there are other "holder of tabs" windows, e.g Sublime Text, which are mostly similar but have important differences. Trying to move all that complexity into WM simply won't work.

In an overall Windows user experience? Definitely moving windows between screens. Selecting tabs is a pretty niche and uncommon feature across the OS.

It's not about which action is more common, its about the fact that the titlebar drag gesture is universal cross windows 7/8 and is a key element of the user experience. There are exactly two apps I've used in the entire history of windows 7 that broke this interaction: Chrome and FF. The fault is on those browsers breaking expected behavior, not Opera for doing what windows users expect. The FF UX team admitted that they overlooked this but its understandable that they're keeping it as users have come to expect it.

Another thing lots of applications with custom title bars get wrong: double-clicking the top-left corner of the window (where the icon is, usually) should close the application. (Firefox is an offender here, too, though Chrome is not.)

Wow. I have closed Chrome by accident like that so many times. Always thought it was a really weird crash.

I had no idea this is a thing, which is.. surprising to say the least. That explains a lot of what I thought were crashes, but wow is that user hostile.

I'm really hesitant to say Firefox gets it "wrong" even if it is inconsistent.

Multiscreen usage is exceedingly rare, except among hn readers. Among that crowd having lots of tabs open is the norm. So, the subsegment of multiscreen users who don't use a lot of tabs is probably vanishingly small. Myself I'm a windows user a majority of the time and I strongly prefer chrome's behavior.

On Win, try [Win + Right/Left Arrow], or [Win + Shift + Right/Left Arrow]

In Firefox 29+, you can activate Menu bar which is ~20px high if you want that draggable handle: right-click on an empty space in the top row (not occupied by a tab), or a "+" button, and tick "Menu bar".

I'm also using [Win]+[Shift]+arrows for moving between multiple monitors like others suggested.

You can use the Windows key and the arrow keys to move windows around, maximise, minimise, etc...

In firefox you can easily add a small bit of css to change that .tabbrowser-tab {padding-top: 0px !important; margin-top: 1px !important;}

Everyone wants and expects different kind of browser, that's why extensible apps fully written with web tech are awesome/

In windows 7 (skipped Vista) I'm using [Win]+Arrow to move windows around. With multi-monitor setup it is impossible to attach a window to one side of junction with a mouse anyway.

If you're willing to try something even more odd, I'd recommend a window tiling program like Winsplit Revolution for automatic resizing and positioning of Windows in a much more finely controllable way that is allowed with Windows keyboard shortcuts by default.

I use 3 monitors and it helps me get around window management quirks entirely, while also making dealing with Windows much faster.

You should consider using another Window Manager. With Uniy, you could just drag the (prior) global menu, the panel at the top of the screen, and move the window like that. There are others that would force a normal titlebar there, so you could drag that.

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