Mike
McBride
Jost
Schenck
2002-02-12
3.00.00
KDE
KControl
actions
window placement
window size

# Window Behavior

In the upper part of this control module you can see several panels: Focus, Actions, Moving and Advanced. In the Focus panel you can configure how windows gain or lose focus, &ie; become active or inactive. Using Actions you can configure how windows react to mouse clicks. Moving allows you to configure how windows move and place themselves when started. The Advanced options concern window placement, movement or resizing.

Please note that the configuration in this module will not take effect if you don't use &kde;'s native window manager, &kwin;. If you do use a different window manager, please refer to its documentation for how to customize window behavior.

## Focus

The focus, of the desktop refers to the window which the user is currently working on. The window with focus is often referred to as the active window.

### Focus Policy

There are four methods &kde; can use to determine the current focus:

Click to Focus

  With this option, you simply click on the window to make that window active.

  All the other options within this section have no effect when this option is chosen.

Focus follows mouse

  To change the focus of a window, simply place the mouse pointer over the window. If the mouse pointer is then moved to an area of the desktop without another window, the last window retains the focus.

  In other window managers, this is sometimes known as Sloppy focus follows mouse.

Focus under mouse

  The window under the mouse, has the focus. If, however, the mouse pointer is in an area of the desktop that has no windows, no window will be active.

Focus strictly under mouse

  Similar to Focus under mouse, but even more strict with its interpretation.

Once you have determined the focus policy, there are two more options which you can determine.

By placing a mark in front of Auto Raise, &kde; can bring a window to the front if the mouse is over that window for a specified period of time. This is very useful with the Focus follows Mouse option. You can determine the delay by using the slider bar/spin box comination.

Setting the delay too short, will cause a rapid fire changing of windows, which can be quite distracting. Most people will like a delay of 100-300 ms. This is responsive, but it will let you slide over the corners of a window on your way to your destination without bringing that window to the front.

If you do not use Auto Raise, make sure the Click Raise option has a mark in front of it. You will not be happy with both Auto Raise and Click Raise disabled.

### Keyboard

In the Keyboard frame you can configure the way switching between applications or desktops using &Alt;Tab or &Ctrl;Tab.

Switching applications using &Alt; Tab, &ie; holding down &Alt; while repeatedly pressing the Tab key, can take place in &kde; mode or in CDE mode: in &kde; mode you will see a box in the middle of the screen showing you the currently selected application while you are still holding down the &Alt; key. In CDE mode you don't get any visual feedback.

Finally there is an option where you can choose to Traverse windows on all desktops or not. With this enabled, switching windows with &Alt;Tab will show all windows, on all desktops, and take you to the appropriate desktop for the window you select. With it disabled, only windows on your current desktop are selectable with &Alt;Tab, and you must use &Ctrl;Tab to switch to other desktops yourself.

## Actions

In this panel you can configure what happens to windows when a mouse is clicked on them. This panel is divided into 4 sections.

### Titlebar Doubleclick

This section provides a single dropdown box. You can select either Shade, or Maximize.

Selecting Maximise, causes &kde; to maximise the window whenever you doubleclick on the titlebar. Shade, on the other hand, causes the window to be reduced to simply the titlebar. Double clicking on the titlebar again, restores the window to its normal size.

You can have windows automatically unshade when you simply place the mouse over their shaded titlebar. Just check the Enable Hover check box in the Advanced tab of this module. This is a great way to reclaim desktop space when you're cutting and pasting between a lot of windows, for example.

### Titlebar and Frame

This section, allows you to determine what happens when you single click on the titlebar or frame of a window. Notice that you can have different actions associated with the same click depending on whether the window is active or not.

For each combination of mousebuttons, modifiers, Active and Inactive, you can select the most appropriate choice. The actions are as follows:

Activate

  Make this window active.

Lower

  Will move this window to the bottom of the display. This will get the window out of the way.

Nothing

  Just like it says. Nothing happens.

Operations Menu

  Will bring up a small submenu, where you can choose window related commands (&ie; Maximize, Minimize, Close, &etc;).

Raise

  Will bring the window to the top of the display. All other windows which overlap with this one, will be hidden below it.

Toggle Raise and Lower

  This will raise windows which are not on top, and lower windows which are already on top.

### Inactive Inner Window

This part of the module, allows you to configure what happens when you click on an inactive window, with any of the three mouse buttons.

Your choices are as follows:

Activate, Raise and pass click

  This makes the clicked window active, raises it to the top of the display, and passes a mouse click to the application within the window.

Activate and pass click

  This makes the clicked window active and passes a mouse click to the application within the window.

Activate

  This simply makes the clicked window active. The mouse click is not passed on to the application within the window.

Activate and Raise

  This makes the clicked window active and raises the window to the top of the display. The mouse click is not passed on to the application within the window.

### Inner Window, titlebar and frame

This bottom section, allows you to configure additional actions, when the &Alt; key is pressed, and a mouse click is made on a window.

Once again, you can select different actions for Left, Middle and Right button clicks.

Your choices are:

Lower

  Will move this window to the bottom of the display. This will get the window out of the way.

Move

  Allows you to drag the selected window around the desktop.

Nothing

  Just like it says. Nothing happens.

Raise

  Will bring the window to the top of the display. All other windows which overlap with this one, will be hidden below it.

Resize

  Allows you to change the size of the selected window.

Toggle Raise and Lower

  This will raise windows which are not on top, and lower windows which are already on top.

## Moving

### Windows

The options here determine how windows appear on screen when you are moving them. Most of these options exact a price in performance, so if you want to streamline your desktop, you should turn them off. However, if you have a fast computer, they may make your day a little more pleasant, so leave them on.

Display content in moving windows

  Enable this option if you want a window's content to be fully shown while moving it, instead of just showing a window skeleton. The result may not be satisfying on slow computers without graphic acceleration.

Display content in resizing windows

  Enable this option if you want a window's content to be shown while resizing it, instead of just showing a window skeleton. The result, again, may not be satisfying on slower computers.

Animate Minimize and Restore

  Enable this option if you want an animation shown when windows are minimized or restored.

  With the slider, you can set the speed of the animation.

Allow Moving and Resizing of maximized windows

  When enabled, this feature activates the border of maximized windows, and allows you to move or resize them just as you can normal windows.

Placement

  The placement policy determines where a new window will appear on the desktop. For now there are three policies. Smart will try to achieve a minimum overlap of windows, Cascade will cascade the windows, and Random will use a random position.

### Snap Zones

The rest of this page allows you to configure the Snap Zones. These are like a magnetic field along the side of the deskop and each window, which will make windows snap alongside when moved near.

Border Snap Zones

  Here you can set the snap zone for screen borders. Moving a window within the configured distance will make it snap to the edge of the desktop.

Window snap zone

  Here you can set the snap zone for windows. As with screen borders, moving a window near to another will make it snap to the edge as if the windows were magnetized.

Snap windows only when overlapping

  If checked, windows will not snap together if they are only near each other, they must be overlapping, by the configured amount or less.

## Advanced

In the Advanced panel you can do more advanced fine tuning to the window behavior.

### Shading

Animate

  If this option is enabled, shading, or rolling up a window until just the title bar is shown, will be animated.

Shade hover

  If this option is enabled, a shaded window will un-shade automatically when the mouse pointer has been over the title bar for some time. Use the slider to configure the delay un-shading.

Finally, you can configure Active Desktop Borders. If this is enabled, moving the mouse to a screen border will change your desktop. This is useful if you want to drag windows from one desktop to another.

You can set this option to Disabled, which is the default, to Only when moving windows, or to Always enabled in which case just pushing your mouse against the side of the screen will switch you to a new desktop.

## Section Author

This section written by:

Mike McBride mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

Jost Schenck jost@schenck.de