Unresponsive titlebar

[brendan]

13.10: I have been having a a strange problem. Occasionally I try to go back to one of my windows and find it "minimized" such that only the titlebar appears, and the titlebar is unresponsive to maximizing and resizing. I can still mimimize or put it in a different workspace. This has happened for emacs(causing me to lose work) and for chrome. So far I have not seen it happen to other applications. Am I missing something here or is this a bug?

[brendan]

Not really solved. It was a slightly stale computer so installing 13.10 was probably not the greatest idea.

[jlittle]

Occasionally I try to go back to one of my windows and find it "minimized" such that only the titlebar appears

That's called "Shade", it's something kwin can do.
If it happens, right-click the titlebar or the entry in the task bar -> More actions -> unclick "shade".

I expect you've got some key chord or "action" set to "Shade". You might check System Settings -> Window Behaviour -> Window Behaviour -> Titlebar Actions; I had to set Titlebar Double-click to Shade to make the shade work. Another place to check would be System Settings -> Shortcuts and Gestures->Global Keyboard Shortcuts -> KDE component drop-down -> select KWin, scroll down to "Shade Window".

KDE has lots of functionality; most users remain unaware of its breadth. At least, I imagine so... maybe others pick up stuff faster than me.

Regards, John Little

[kubicle]

Window Shading would be my prime canditate as well, although shaded windows should not be "unresponsive" to maximize (of course it's possible the OP meant that maximizing only maximizes the titlebar, not that it's literally unresponsive)

[jlittle]

Window Shading would be my prime canditate as well, although shaded windows should not be "unresponsive" to maximize

Shade, maximize and minimize are separate attributes. I suspect KDE is a little buggy here, I get different behaviours now than I seem to recall earlier when I played with it. Earlier, if I attempted to maximize a shaded window, nothing appeared to happen (as the OP reported) but the maximize attribute for the window is set, so that it would be maximized on un-shading.

Now, if I maximize a shaded window, it is minimized, except that the minimize check box is not ticked. Same if I set shade on a maximized window. If I minimize such a shaded window, the shade attribute is reset, so that it unminimizes to a maximized window. If I use right-click on the task bar menu to set the shade attribute on a minimized window, minimize is unchecked, but the window isn't displayed.

Further mucking around produced unpredictable results, including 2 long unresponsive pauses which suggest kwin was restarting. I managed only once to get a maximized titlebar on a shaded window, but half way down the screen.

Regards, John Little

[kubicle]

I wrote the previous from memory (as I don't use shading regularly), but maximizing shaded windows works as expected here (titlebar maximizes, but the window stays shaded), but of course if you're experiencing the same behaviour as the OP that makes it more likely that the issue is caused by "accidentally" triggering window shading.

So I'm not seeing the bugs you described, but there are a lot of things affecting kwin, so it might be a bug that only affects some combinations of kwin version/graphics drivers/desktop effects/window decoration/configuration/whatever.

[brendan]

As in you feel you need to use older software on older hardware?
13.10 has been quite good and I can't really imagine it being worse than older versions.

I did not mean old software, I meant a lighter, more conventional desktop. This was my boss's computer so I was not witnessing how things happened, only the result. Any my not being familiar with the new Kubuntu desktop did not help. So I went with Mint Mate 13.10. I like the new Kubuntu, and would choose it for myself where I have the leisure to figure it all out, but am stuck on a Windows box.

A new feature like this can be a chore if you do not know it exists or what it is called and don't have time to RTFM. The window behaviour should have been default, but I have no idea what my boss changed in the settings.

[kubicle]

A new feature like this can be a chore if you do not know it exists or what it is called and do have time to RTFM.

It's actually a very old (some would say "legacy") feature. IIRC [which is far from given] it was in KDE 1.0 and I know it was present in some window managers in the 90's.

However, I won't deny it can cause some head scratching if you haven't seen it before.

So I went with Mint Mate 13.10

The "shade windows" feature is in Mate/Gnome as well, so you're not really out of the woods yet

[brendan]

I'll have to hope my boss does not push the wrong button...