[FancyZones] One-handed activation feature for disabled people

[Werner63]

Hello PowerToys team,

At first, I’d like to thank you for your PowerToys Tool, it’s a great help for me! It’s working perfectly with my new 49 inch screen.

I have a little suggestion on how to improve the tool even further: Due to the fact that I’m a disabled person, it is hard for me to operate the mouse and keyboard at the same time. Therefore it would be better for me to use the Image Resizer without pressing the Shift button (it would probably be more intuitive for other people, too). I already found the option to use it without „Shift“ and that’s working good. But there is the little disadvantage that all windows that I just want to move a bit (like e.g. little pop-up windows) directly activate the Image Resize function. If I want to just move it, I have to use „Shift“ again.

My suggestion for improvement would be to only activate Image Resizer when the windows is dragged towards the upper/lower edge of the screen (similar to the original Microsoft function). Maybe it would be possible to include this behaviour as an option? So with this activated, a simple mouse drag would not resize the window until I move the mouse close to the edges. With this solution, it would be a perfect one-handed function without use of the keyboard.

I wouldn’t change the functionality of the Image Resizer itself, I use it all the time to resize the windows to 1/3 of the screen. I would just change the activation event for this function.

Thank you very much and keep on with the good work!

(Sorry for my english, I'm a native german speaker)

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[Jay-o-Way]

Hello and welcome. Two things:

1. I believe you are talking about FancyZones, not Image Resizer.
2. FancyZones has a lot of options in the settings have you "checked" them? The first two are related to the activation. You could also combine the setting to toggle with your non-primary mouse button.

[Werner63]

Hello,

Thanks for your answer - you're correct, I was talking about FancyZones. I already checked the options but can not find the possibility for one-handed operation without directly activating the FancyZones. As far as I know it's only possible to activate FZ directly when dragging a window, or you deactivate the option but then you can't use FZ without using the keyboard. When using just the mouse, it is either always activated or always deactivated. It would be much easier if it would be deactivated until I drag the window close to the screen edges and then FZ would activate.

I hope my english and my suggestion are understandable.

Thanks and greetings!

[enricogior]

@Werner63 if you set your settings like this: you will be able to activate the zones pressing a secondary mouse button, without having to use the keyboard.

[enricogior]

@Werner63 I would like figure out an ideal behavior that would be good in general. Some users might not want to activate the zones for all screen edges. We can add "activation areas" that are configurable, or a list of presets to choose from:

• near all 4 edges
• near the 4 corners
• near the top edge
• near the right or left edge

[Werner63]

Hello enricogior, thanks for your response. You surely know the functionality of MS windows, where you can drag a window to the left/right corner and when you drop, the window fits itself in the left/right half of the screen. In my opinion, it would be the most convenient and intuitive way to keep this basic functionality but extend it to 3 possible window positions, so not just left/right, but left/middle/right. I would separate the top edge of the screen into 3 virtual areas, where you can drag your window and when dropped, it adjusts to the corresponding third of the screen.

Thank you very much for your help, I'm looking forward to the update ;)

Greetings

[vertigo220]

I personally find the suggested method confusing. First, it's not obvious at all to check both those boxes to accomplish this, and then once I do it still doesn't work well. I would assume the RMB would be a "non-primary mouse button," but only the middle button works, and not very well (it turns zone selection on ok, but turning it back off doesn't work so well, taking multiple attempts), not to mention it's difficult to click it while holding down the LMB and moving it (using a ThinkPad with a TrackPoint, but even with an actual mouse this wouldn't be the easiest maneuver). There are a few other possible ways of doing this that I can think of off the top of my head:

• activate it by a slow double-click of the taskbar, so instead a fast double-click that would cycle between maximize and restore, click, release, then ~half a second later click and drag, and then zone selection would be active
• use right-click and drag instead of left-click
• only snap to a zone if the title bar if released in a certain hotspot in the zone (this has potential issues, though)
• cycle the zone selection by dragging the window to the top of the screen, as if intending to maximize it, then back away (this might be the best method, since it would be the easiest and least likely to result in unexpected results, though it would have the downside of having to drag windows to the top of the screen first, but considering probably >90-95% of the time when moving windows I'd want to do so without FZ, that would be more than acceptable)
• only snap to the zone if released within a (preferably user-customizable) time limit, since if they user wants it snapped, they'd likely drag it into the zone and release right away, whereas if they don't they're going to take a bit of extra time putting it where they actually want it

[MaxPordon]

If possible, I'd like to add another suggestion related to this.

Imo it would be good if one could also snap a window with one hand to more than 2 windows. It is already possible to snap window to 2 zones by holding the secondary mouse button (MB2), but the user would have to hold Ctrl in the process to allow the window to span over 3 or more zones. My suggestion would be:

• Step 1: Click MB2: 'zone selection' UI opens. Then:
• Step 2: Hold MB2: the zones will be selected from the starting zone (where the mouse was upon holding MB2) up to and including the last zone that the mouse crossed while holding MB2. (Of course MB2 can also be held from the moment the zone selection UI was opened)