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How can you move a window with the keyboard?

Am I the only person in the Maciverse that regularly switches between using my laptop with and without a desktop monitor? Judged by the beauty of the Apple Cinema Display, I doubt it. But judged by the problems I run into with the OS, I do.



Off-screen MarsEdit.pngThe issue is that as I switch from laptop with monitor to laptop without monitor, windows end off-screen, and I can’t get them back on-screen without attaching the monitor, dragging the window, and then detaching again. On the right is a screenshot of where that just happened again. Note how I can’t actually get to drag the damn window, because Yojimbo is on top.



In this case, the fix was simple: Close Yojimbo, then move the window, dragging in those few pixels that are on-screen and not buttons. But in other cases, the window will be completely off-screen, but on some virtual screen, which can be witnessed by minimizing the app, which causes the window to do the geenie from where it is (isn’t) to the dock and back. I’ll usually close and reopen the app, even though I know that the friendly app will remember teh window position for me till next time. Ugh. In a few apps I can do Window > Zoom, but it’s far from all.



In Windows I also had this problem, but there you can hit Ctrl-Space and get access to the window menu which lets you move the window using the keyboard alone. Problem solved. I haven’t found the equivalent for Mac. Is it there?



TextMate offers another weirdance, which is that after attaching or detaching the external monitor, the Find In Project window will get its bearings wrong, and when you click somewhere to select a result line, it’ll get the link wrong by a fixed number of pixels. Resize the window by any amount, and it recalculates and gets things right again.



All of this just makes me wonder if I’m the only one. Admittedly, with the laptop having the world’s best keyboard, it’s tempting to just give in to the wife and leave the beautiful 23” in the living room with the Mac Mini PVR and just use the 15” or 17” built-in, but is that really what you all are using your 23” cinema displays for?

Serial intern

2 comments

Mark Aufflick
 

I do the same (except with a Silicon Graphics 22" CRT display) and I sometimes get the same problem. I usually find that maximizing the window (Command-M) does the trick to make the whole window fit inside the screen. And since in MacOS X Maximization simply modifies the bounds of the window, you can then move/resize as you like. (unlike in windows or X11 where you can't modify a maximized window). Tiger is MUCH better at handling monitor changes. It even successfully remembers all the settings for when I switch between an external monitor and the s-video out, and back.
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Lars Pind
 

Cmd-M is minimize, no? You mean Cmd-Shift-M?
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