## Tuesday, January 21, 2014

### Snapping windows to half screen in Fluxbox

I've recently begun using Windows 7 more heavily, and one feature I do miss when on Linux, despite initially scoffing at it, is the ability to snap a window to half the screen.  I figured this wouldn't be too hard to replicate, and it turns out I was right.  There is a program called wmctrl which should be usable with any windows manager, but Fluxbox had some built in commands I used.

I stole a very good idea from this thread about using the numpad to move windows to either the left/right, top/bottom, or the four corners of the screen.

Here is what I added to my ~/.fluxbox/keys file:
### TILING WINDOWS ###
#1920 / 2 = 960
#1080 / 2 = 540
Control KP_0 :Minimize
Control KP_1 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 958  540} {MoveTo 00 00 LowerLeft}
Control KP_2 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 1920 540} {MoveTo 00 00 LowerLeft}
Control KP_3 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 958  540} {MoveTo 00 00 LowerRight}
Control KP_4 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 958 1060} {MoveTo 00 00 UpperLeft}
Control KP_5 :Maximize
Control KP_6 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 958 1060} {MoveTo 00 00 UpperRight}
Control KP_7 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 958  540} {MoveTo 00 00 UpperLeft}
Control KP_8 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 1920 540} {MoveTo 00 00 UpperLeft}
Control KP_9 :MacroCmd {ResizeTo 958  540} {MoveTo 00 00 UpperRight}  

Note the subtraction of 2 pixels from the left/right measurements to account for window borders.  Also, note the subtraction of 20 pixels from the full height measurement to account for my taskbar.  Finally, note that the title bar will be overlapped when stacked vertically.

Here is a sample after using Ctrl+7, Ctrl+1, Ctrl+6: