[xmonad] xmonad vs. full screen

[Rickard Nilsson]

Quoting Thomas Friedrich <info at suud.de>:

> Hi everyone,
>
> In earlier versions of xmonad, when pressing the full screen button
> while watching a flash-movie, a new window would be opened, integrated
> in whichever layout one was using at the time, and the video, now
> running in "full-screen-mode", would take as much screen-real-estate as
> xmonad was willing to let it have.
>
> This behavior has changed with recent versions of xmonad (or at least
> the version that I am currently running).  A new window with the movie
> is still created, however, the movie now runs with the same resolution
> as the screen.  For example, if you're running the Tiled-layout and
> start a flash-movie within Firefox, you would see the Firefox-window on
> the right and the video-window on the left, however, now the movie
> being cut off in the middle.  (I also have the issue that when the
> video-window is loosing focus, it disappears, e.g. when moving the
> mouse out of the window, or when changing layouts, or when switching
> workspaces.)
>
> I was always thinking of the old behavior of xmonad as a feature.  A
> program running in "full-screen" would optimize itself according to the
> real-estate you -- as a user -- are willing to give to it.  This had
> great advantages.  You could watch a taped university lecture on
> youtube in full-screen WHILE looking things up on the web, etc.  This
> is not possible anymore, as each program running in "full-screen-mode"
> actually thinks that it would have the *full screen* available.
>
> So, I have two questions.
>
> 1)  I compiled xmonad from source.  Where in the code would I need to
> change what to get the old behavior back, handling full-screen movies?
> I would be really thankful, if someone could point me into the right
> direction.  Where to look, what to change, etc.?  Or even better, is it
> possible to trigger this within ones xmonad.hs?  Thanks so much for
> help.
>
> 2)  I would propose going back to the old behavior of handling
> full-screen-programs in xmonad.  It really should be the *user* who
> decides how "full-screen" a full-screen-program shall be.  Isn't this
> also more following the philosophy of xmonad?  You as a user decide,
> what is happening on your screen?  It might be not as intuitive, when
> switching to xmonad and you are used to other WMs, where full-screen
> means *full screen*.  I really miss that functionality, now that its
> gone.  What do you think?

I think the old behaviour made much more sense. As it is now, it's not  
possible to play a web flash movie in a separate, arbitrarily sized,  
window. You either have to watch it fullscreen-floating, or integrated  
in the web-page.

@Thomas - Did you ever manage to revert Xmonad to the old behaviour?

Regards,
   Rickard Nilsson