Make window lowering with middle click optional

Submitted by Antti Savolainen

Assigned to Olivier Fourdan @olivier

Link to original bug (#14154)

Description

Sometimes closing tabs with middle click overshoots a little and lowers the window. I'm wishing for a setting to make this optional.

I found a 2013 branch implementing it, but I don't know how valid or up to date the code is.

https://github.com/CBke/xfwm4/commit/e34e71e06f0bdadee45e5fde4af7c5f51e7dc358

Andre Miranda @andreldm submitted a patch:

Updated patch for current git master. I also introduced a UI toggle at Window Manager Tweaks -> Accessibility.

Lowering the window with middleclick is especially annoying when one tries to close a Firefox tab but accidentally clicks on the window title.

Patch 7539, "Updated patch":
optional_lower_middleclick.patch

Antti Savolainen said:

Bumping this as it has a patch that hasn't been merged to the master.

added 5. Mouse 5. Window Titlebar Patch labels

@andreldm: want to push in your modified patch.

There you go: !25 (closed)

As mentioned in the commit message, this won't work for CSD windows.

mentioned in merge request !25 (closed)

Hi guys.

Looks like issues #171 and #280 (this) are kind of duplicates.

I'm very interested in the fix. Will re-post my comment here also...

Not sure, but may be the quickest solution in 2 steps:

1. On "Windows Manager" -> "Advanced" tab we already have Double click action, so we can add similar Middle click action drop-down.
2. Add "Lower window" to the list of actions in drop-down.

Also as an option we can add other drop-downs there (Click action, Right click action, Double middle click action, Double right click action etc).

I think this is going to be rejected too, see !25 (comment 26779)

@andreldm , my approach is kind of more general than a checkbox, because it is more flexible and adds similar to what we already have.

Actually a checkbox is also a way to go for me. This window lowering in browsers is super-annoying.

As for @olivier 's cautions as for non-creating a lot of options... basically it makes sense, but

• XFCE/XFWM is for advanced users, which know how to perform configurations;
• Someday we can add a search window for options;
• This feature present in standard gnome, e.g.: org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences action-middle-click-titlebar 'none'.

I would like this middle-click anti-feature to be removed altogether. If less options are a goal, that's fine. Just remove the unwanted functionality. If anyone really needs this function they can make an issue to create an option that re-adds it.

I'm just another user that never wants to click to lower any windows so I would definitely want this to be configurable instead of hard-coded.

For me, the best possible option would be to change the middle click (both titlebar click and Super+middle click) to toggle vertical maximize instead. As an another option, I might use Super+middle click drag to resize windows in addition to Super+right click drag that I currently use. (I always use Super for "easy_click" instead of Alt because I use Blender/Gimp/Inkscape which requires using Alt quite a bit.)

As such, making middle button click configurable between 'none', 'lower' and 'vertical-maximize' (and maybe even 'close' to match browser tab behavior) would probably make most sense for near term future.

Could somebody with the power to make a decision about the future of the xfwm4 comment about the existing patch (https://github.com/CBke/xfwm4/commit/e34e71e06f0bdadee45e5fde4af7c5f51e7dc358)? If that style of implementation is considered generally acceptable, I might be able to provide a patch to implement such feature. However, if the existing patch is considered no-go for any reason, I'd rather not waste may time porting the code forward and extending it.

mentioned in issue #42

@olivier there is some demand here for a change, do you still keep your opinion on NOT making this feature optional? What about removing it?

I apologize but am a little confused with the state of this request?

Ahh, I thought I was the only one that experienced this, happens quite often when trying to close tabs for me as well. Hard to say because I do like this feature and would not want to necessarily see this removed. Also not really right to offer a feature and get certain users useed to it and then just remove it completely. I would think this would just be a setting that user could have the choice to be able to turn it on or off.

Either way though, could anyone maybe give some info about how this is going to be handled?

Thank You

For the time being, I don't think this request is going anywhere.

Thank you for your response