Gala: Picture-in-Picture: hard to resize without moving away from bottom/right edges

[marbetschar]

Problem

Its hard to resize the Picture-in-Picture window, if it is placed in the lower right corner of the screen. That's due to the resize button beeing in the bottom right corner - therefore it is not possible to make the Picture-in-Picture window bigger without beeing moved away from the corner first.

Proposal

When using Picture-in-Picture mode, the close and resize buttons should be placed depending of the position of the Picture-in-Picture window:

If the Picture-in-Picture window is:

• in the upper-left of the screen: close button is top-left, resize button bottom-right
• in the upper-right of the screen: close button is top-right, resize button is bottom-left
• in the lower-left of the screen: close button is lower-left, resize button is top-right
• in the lower-right of the screen: close button is lower-right, resize button is top-left

This way, the Picture-in-Picture window can easily placed in any corner - but keeps resizable without the need of previously moving the window to another place.

Prior Art

Basic functionality is already there - I guess the only part missing is detecting screen position and adjusting button placement accordingly.

[cassidyjames]

So this is certainly a possible solution, but let's look at the problem:

Its hard to resize the Picture-in-Picture window, if it is placed in the lower right corner of the screen. That's due to the resize button beeing in the bottom right corner - therefore it is not possible to make the Picture-in-Picture window bigger without beeing moved away from the corner first.

As @janxkoci mentioned on another issue,

The only issue is when you want to resize it - using only one corner for resizing is quite limiting and requires quite a lot of resize-then-reposition, as you put it. Allowing resizing from any corner / edge would fix it.

I think I like that solution better than moving interface icons around in a way that might feel arbitrary/unpredictable to the user—especially when dealing with the close button which should be consistently-placed compared to the rest of the OS.

Since @janxkoci never opened that as a separate issue as far as I can tell, we can use this issue to solve that root problem. :)

[janxkoci]

Since janxkoci never opened that as a separate issue as far as I can tell

Ah, sorry about that. I think I wanted to search open issues more thoroughly first before opening new issue, but I left it for later and I forgot about it I guess :smile:

Edit: Just some comments for the OP - note that currently PIP can be placed anywhere, not just in the corners.

I use this feature quite often for showing part of some document near window with another document. For example, showing part of a table of samples that I need to iterate over in my code, or showing some description from a website close to my word processor, where I write based on that description, and so on.

Having the PIP freefloating and easily movable anywhere I want is what makes it so useful for all kinds of multitasking workflows. I even remember a few occasions when I had multiple PIPs with different parts of different windows positioned on the screen around and close to a few actual windows where I did some work that required this sort of cross-referencing.

[marbetschar]

I'm aware that PIP can be placed anywhere on the screen. But since I use it often on my 13" Laptop, I don't really have much space available. Therefore, for me its either at the left edge of the screen - or at the right. For some reason I prefer the right side.

IMHO the proposed solution of re-positioning the buttons was the first thing which came to my head - but I'm fine with every solution which makes resizing when positioned at a corner easier.

[hanaral]

I do have a reacommendation, how about having 2 main settings (based on x% of the active display's size) the window can alternate between by double clicking it. It feels like the most natural thing to do, and then the current method could possibly stay as-is.