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Author Topic: Feature Suggestion: Use grid according to window title  (Read 6552 times)

Kamel

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Feature Suggestion: Use grid according to window title
« on: November 12, 2008, 08:26 PM »
I was just thinking, I would love to use grid for instant messenger programs, since so many small windows can get difficult to manage. Then I realized, that would get very annoying to have to switch my grid type every time I wanted to switch between using grid to manage my programming and manage my instant messenger windows etc. Thinking further, I thought you know, each type of program I use can usually use grid in a slightly different manner. Most of these can very easily be defined by the window name. Here is an example of what I am referring to.

Grid associations:
*Mozilla Firefox: browser.grid
*WordPad: 3-part.grid
*: 4-part.grid

Totally bogus example, but I believe perhaps you get what I mean. I think this would allow you to have lots of control over your grid and add much more automation to the process. I also get the feeling that implementing such a system would be very trivial as in the little programming I've done, I seem to remember that capturing the window name is very trivial. As a side-note, you should be able to change the order, therefore if you were to move the *: entry to the top, everything would use 4-part.grid.

Edit: Please don't laugh, my next suggestions appears to already be there in exactly the way I suggested it o_O. I still don't know how to use this feature :(. I will continue to read through the help, but for the time being I will leave my suggestion as it doesn't appear to work exactly the way I was hoping for.

My other idea may already be implemented, but it is to have like a command to expand onto other 'grid panes'. For instance, using a 4-part grid all equally sized like 4-part.grid that comes with grid, and you would like to have a window take the entire left-hand side of the screen. Rather than changing grids, or manually moving the bottom part of the window downwards to suit your needs, you could first activate grid by the standard method, click left corner of program then drag, then while still holding left click, also right click and trigger expansion mode. This would basically mean if I were to then move the mouse down a specified amount (say, 15 pixels), it will expand the grid box to the next grid under it. Then if I were to continue holding both mouse buttons and move right, it would expand the window to the right onto the grid to the right side (Note: If detecting what grid panes are under or to the right is too difficult as I believe I recall reading, perhaps one could just make it expand to the edge of the screen). I believe this would increase productivity with grid quite a bit, but perhaps that feature already exists somehow? If so, please explain. I am still a newbie to this whole thing.

Thanks a lot :D
I'm the guy you yell at when your DSL goes down...
« Last Edit: November 12, 2008, 08:34 PM by Kamel »

jgpaiva

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Re: Feature Suggestion: Use grid according to window title
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2008, 04:58 AM »
About the first idea: I think it's better if you solve it by merging 2 grids together, because the change in grids takes some time, and changing it everytime you switch programs would really make GridMove slower (and more resource-intensive, it'd be using processor everytime you switch applications).

About the second thing.. Look at Edge Grid. It's really similar to 4-part grid, but has 2 parts along the top and left parts of the screen that maximise windows vertically and horizontally ;)

Kamel

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Re: Feature Suggestion: Use grid according to window title
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2008, 09:43 AM »
I see, hadn't thought about performance problems. I will look into using Edge Grid, didn't know about it.
I'm the guy you yell at when your DSL goes down...