Moving, Resizing, and Minimizing Windows

Documentation / Contents - Window Manager

• Overview of the Window Manager
• Desks: Your Virtual Desktops
  • Switching Desks
  • Moving a Window to Another Desk
• How Windows Get the Keyboard: Focus
  • The Three Focus Policies
• Moving, Resizing, and Minimizing Windows
  • Moving a Window
  • Resizing a Window
  • Minimizing a Window
  • Maximizing a Window
• The Window Menu
  • The Commands
  • Close Versus Exit
• Tiling Windows Into a Mosaic
  • Turning Tiling On

Other cards

• Copyright Information

Moving, Resizing, and Minimizing Windows

Every window cywm frames has a title bar across the top and a border around the edges. Those are the handles you use to move, resize, and put a window away.

Moving a Window

Drag the title bar to move a window. While you drag, cywm can show the move in one of three styles, chosen in Blueprint Preferences:

• Opaque: the whole window moves with the pointer, redrawn live.
• Technical: a drafting-style wireframe with live pixel measurements moves instead of the window, in keeping with the blueprint theme. This is the default.
• Outline: a plain outline box moves, the lightest-weight choice.

Resizing a Window

Drag any edge or corner of the border to resize. The opposite edge stays put while the edge you grabbed follows the pointer, and a corner resizes in two directions at once. Resizing uses the same three styles as moving, set separately.

Some windows fix their size and cannot be resized or maximized; their border simply does not respond.

Minimizing a Window

Minimizing puts a window away without closing it, shrinking it to a small icon so its space is freed. Click the minimize button on the title bar, or choose Minimize from the window menu. Open the icon again to bring the window back exactly as it was.

Maximizing a Window

Maximizing grows a window to fill the screen. Click the maximize button, or choose Maximize from the window menu. Choose Maximize a second time, or Restore, to return the window to its former size and place. Maximize leaves any reserved edge strip untouched. That strip is the Desktop Exclusion Zone, a band of the screen that both tiling and maximize keep clear if you set one.

See The Window Menu for the full list of window commands and their keyboard shortcuts.