Transparent windows: how to get rid of it?

[Liam Proven]

On 3 December 2011 13:40, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3 December 2011 09:59, Freddy Van Ingelgom <freddyek at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think that my question is confusing the way I posed here. In fact I should
>> not speak about a window, but I do not know how to name it: sometimes it
>> appears on the screen as a sort of indication were to put a existing window,
>> a sort of placeholder or how should I name it? It is a sort of transparent
>> rectangular that appears on top of my desktop and it does not affect the way
>> I worked, it is there, I can see and continue my current work, and the only
>> way to get rid of it is to resize a window, place it on this transparent and
>> then the window takes the size of that transparent which disappear and after
>> that I can return to the size that i like for my current work (Firefox for
>> example, or whatever).
>> I know that my question is not very clear, but the problem is that I dont
>> know the name or the meaning, or even the purpose of that transparent
>> rectangular.
>> Any help is very appreciated.
>
> Ahh, right. I think I have seen this and know what you are talking about.
>
> Windows 7 introduced a new feature of edge-snap window tiling. If you
> drag a window to the right or left edge of the monitor, it will resize
> that window so that it takes either the left or the right half of the
> screen. This means that by dragging one window to the left and one to
> the right, you end up with 2 vertically-tiled windows, side-by-side.
> It is very handy.
>
> Similarly, dragging a window to the top of the screen maximises it.
>
> Also on Windows, resizing the top of a window right to the top of the
> screen will snap-resize the window to the full height of the screen
> but not change the width.
>
> The window manager in the Unity desktop tries to do the same, but it
> implements it badly. Rather than the *mouse pointer* touching the side
> of the screen, if the *edge of the window* touches the side of the
> screen, it attempts to snap-resize it to half the screen size, and if
> the window-edge touches the top, it tries to maximise it. It shows
> what it is going to do by drawing a translucent brown rectangle with
> an orange border over where the window is going to go.
>
> If you don't want this to happen and you therefore move the window
> back away from the screen-edge a little bit, the overlay box
> disappears and the window is not resized.
>
> I find it very irritating, to be honest, but I just live with it.
>
> The snag is that sometimes, if you move the window, the overlay box
> does not disappear, but remains visible. You can see the window
> contents through it, so it's not fatal, but it's irritating.
>
> I have not been able to isolate a cause of the persistent overlay box.
>
> What I have found is how to get rid of it. It is not always easy. What
> you must do is this:
> * identify /which/ window you were moving to get the overlay box. It
> may not be the last one you were using.
> * grab its title bar and move it slightly.
> * if this does not cause the box to disappear, then:
> * move the target window to one edge of the screen, left, right or
> top, so that the window-manager offers to snap-resize it again. At
> this point, it will draw a /new/ overlay box to show where it's going
> to go - and then it will "remember" the old leftover one and remove
> it.
> * move the window back where it was, so that the new overlay box disappears.
>
> Now the screen should be clear and unobstructed.

This might be the bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-distro-priority/+bug/875557

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508