Fancy Zones Editor: Zone Position Display, and Direct Input of Zone Number, Position, and Size.

[ShermanPK]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Hey all.

Just a suggestion, would probably not require major reworking of the existing code base, as it's just allowing direct entry of the underling data. But I think a lot of users would probably love to be able to directly enter (type) the Position & Size of a Zone, re-number Zones.

Zone position I think this is probably a necessary feature, I'd suggest adding a zone position in small text size and low contrast colour, perhaps monitor number. I think/suspect FancyZones treats multiple monitors as one display of the total resolution, so perhaps monitor is more effort than it's worth; not to mention the difficulty of having zones span multiple monitors. But having the position displayed say in the top corner of a zone would really help with positioning and moving of zones.

Value Editing: I'd imagine this could be accessed by double/right clicking the element that is to be changed and directly entering the new value. Alternatively, a dialogue box could be opened and all the new settings applied upon conformation. Regarding the Zone Number this could simply increment all existing Zones that are colliding.

Scenario when this would be used?

This would only be useful when setting up / creating new layouts or editing existing layouts. However it could significantly streamline the process for some users.

Zone Position Display: Zone positioning Display would significantly help with the creation of new zones allowing better alignment with secondary task bars, hidden task bars, and multi-monitor boarders.

Direct Zone Numbering: Nothing more annoying than making like 10 overlapping zones on screen one, then moving on and making another dozen zones for screen two, and then noticing 'oh, I missed the 3rd and 4th zones on screen 1' and facing the annoying choice of 'Do I delete the dozen zones I made on screen 2 or do I just accept zones 3 & 4 will just be wildly different numbers to all the other zones on that screen.'

Direct Zone Size: Another common frustration is when you are trying to carve up a screen and no matter what you do you just can't quite get it to be exactly the right number of pixels it's just always a few pixels too big, then a few pixels too small... etc.

Direct Zone Positioning: And probably the final frustration is when you are trying to put your FancyZone into the right spot, and for whatever reason it's just not quite going to where you want it. A few common particularly challenging situations are:

• Multiple monitors the spaces between monitors doesn't seam to snap.
• Task bars on a secondary monitor doesn't appear to snap.
• Auto hiding Task bars are difficult to avoid.
• Just any time for whatever reason you want to have exact positioning of a zone when you aren't near any snapping points.

Supporting information

No response

[julie777]

I have created a more general issue https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/22186 to prompt discussion for the entire topic as opposed to single issues.

[jesse-grimes-york]

I'd like to second what the OP stated about adding functionality to directly type the values in the FancyZone editor.

Here's a video showing my efforts to get a "zero" value for "space around zone". It is quite hard. Would love to just type the value I want. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/63531722/216422603-5b34a3dd-9eb5-4112-bb21-9319c1be1e23.mp4

Thanks!

[TheJoeFin]

/dup #463

[microsoft-github-policy-service[bot]]

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!