Neat KWin trick
September 27th 2008 10:42 pm
I’m not sure when this changed in KDE 4 but if you move your mouse to the upper-left corner and keep trying to “push” you’ll get the “exposé” effect without having to use the keyboard shortcut, and then click on the window you want. Handy alternative to Alt-Tab.
The feature is called “active screen edge” and the edges/corners that activate the effects can be selected in the desktop effect plugin configuration panels.
There will hopefully be a better GUI to configure them in 4.2 and in 4.3 they will support activating of any shortcut, not just KWin effects.
that’s awesome to hear about the new features in 4.2/4.3. but does anyone find it a bit awkward that you have to almost aggressively push the mouse in the corner?
the hot corners in os x/compiz are much more natural, which I think is something Kwin should go for. after all, the hot-corners are there for speed, aren’t they?
Well I don’t find it “aggressive” at all. I do know that anytime I’ve ever enabled a feature whereby something happens merely by having the mouse in a screen corner, that I would accidentally activate more often than I would activate it on purpose.
So I’m glad that activating this takes a little extra nudge as it means I can leave the feature enabled.
I think there should be an option to switch between the “aggressive mode” and the “os x mode”. I was using my friend’s macbook the other day and found it better as well.
The os x mode often causes accidental activation of effects. Every time I use my macbook I want to deactivate that function…but sometimes is useful.Kwin (like compiz) mode is less intrusive
I also find the “sensitivity” of corners in KDE just perfect. When my sister still had a macbook we both found it was too sensitive, almost to the point of being irritating. I guess some 3 way setting of sensitivity (slow, normal, fast) would be usefull for different “tastes”.
I also like the sensivity of corners in Compiz much better than that in KWin
I would like the corner effect to be easier to trigger. This is especially relevant with big screens, where you have to go long ways with the pointer. But the biggest problem I have is with the touchpad on my laptop, it’s hard to trigger the effect. This is because you don’t have much space to move the pointer in one go, and I often barely reach the corner, leave alone going way beyond. Also I noticed that I often don’t reach exactly the corner pixel, but end up 2 or 3 pixels below the corner.
Michael: I would recommend adjusting your mouse speed and/or acceleration settings such that you can move the pointer accurately across the screen in one swipe of your touchpad before you start worrying about the sensitivity of corner gestures. ;)
I don’t know when this feature was added either, but i can tell for sure it was pre-KDE 4.1
I found this feature accidentally and it’s useful, but it sometimes annoying for example while playing RTS games, where ramming the corner with the mouse is common.
I triggered the feature by accident several times and never knew how I did it, so I was quite annoyed by it. Thank you for pointing out how it works!
I agree with Thomas R, but more generally if one could configure screen edge / corner sensitivity (like one does mouse acceleration or double-click time) that’d be great!
I’m actually in the odd position of being satisfied with neither implementation — I find myself triggering Expose too frequently in OS X and having to ‘push’ more than I would in KDE. If anyone could point me at the relevant code I’d be happy to have a dig through and try and do it, that’s what Free Software is about isn’t it?