Re: Alt Mouse Modifier (Was: Adaptive mode)

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 8 Feb, 2006, at 11:39 AM, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 16:34 -0600, Shaun McCance wrote:
> ...
> > If you need anything more than Ctrl+<letter> in your
> > application, you're pretty much screwed.
>
> ? I fail to see the relevance, this is window level, not application
> level, feature.
> ...

Taking it for a window-level feature prevents it from being used for 
any application-level feature. For example, in a Web browser there are 
all sorts of things you can do with a link: open it in a new window, 
open it in a new background window, open it in a new tab, open it in a 
new background tab, or download the linked item. In Epiphany we would 
like to be able to use (Shift+)Alt+click for one or two of those 
things, like popular Web browsers on other platforms do. But we can't, 
because Metacity has taken it.

I would much prefer that the easy way of moving a window was "drag any 
part of the window that isn't for something else", with no modifier key 
necessary. Drag a window's title bar, status bar, an empty part of a 
toolbar, an empty space between controls, and so on. That would provide 
less target area than Alt+drag did (though still *much* more target 
area than on Windows or the Mac), but (1) it would be more obvious, (2) 
it wouldn't need two hands, and (3) it would remove the need for the 
clutter of a title bar and the rest of the window being visually 
distinct elements.

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/