Not enough space to grab window on Mac

hamson
edited July 20, 2022
Now that Zotero is also a PDF reader, the tabs of the PDFs fill up the entire vertical space of the window on macOS. This becomes an issue when you have enough PDFs that it fills horizontally the full width of the window as well, because it severely limits the area of the window which can be grabbed in order to move the application around on the screen.

Here is what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/RcefkMF There are only tiny bits of space to grab the window to move it around, in the top left (dodging the stoplight buttons), and top right (dodging the arrow).

If the concern is that there would be too much wasted space for the top of the window otherwise, perhaps a compromise could be made just by reducing the vertical heights of the tabs, because they have a lot of padding on both the top and bottom sides of the text. Having that space be part of the Zotero window instead would make it a lot easier to use.

Sorry if this is a duplicate issue, but I couldn't find anything.
  • dstillman
    You can also drag from anywhere in the toolbar, which has plenty of open space. That just doesn't currently work within a PDF reader tab for technical reasons, but we'll see if we're able to fix that.

    In addition to those areas, you can drag the window around from any edge — including the top edge above the tabs — if you start the drag in the opposite direction of the resizing. (This works in any Mac app.)

    (And, as you note, this is only an issue if you have enough tabs to cover the whole tab bar.)
  • hamson
    Hi @dstillman, thanks for the quick reply.

    I didn't know about grabbing the toolbar, but as you note that only helps if you're in the library tab. Grabbing the edges is pretty impractical, as you have to hone in on a space a few pixels long and then carefully drag in one of two directions.

    If you're against the suggestion of making the tabs themselves shorter, then I think the only practical change you can make is allowing users to grab from the toolbar in PDF tabs as well.

    I'd have to imagine it's pretty common for people to have ~11 tabs open at once, so the current solutions aren't super user friendly IMO. I'm sure there are other priorities, but it certainly be a quality of life improvement when it's practical for the developers to address.

    Thanks again--

  • dstillman
    Grabbing the edges is pretty impractical, as you have to hone in on a space a few pixels long and then carefully drag in one of two directions.
    Did you try it? It's really much easier than it sounds. The actual click area is much bigger than the visible window border, the cursor changes to show you when it's active, and the actual angle you can drag is very wide — you really only have to be slightly off-axis from the vertical.

    In any case, we'll see what we can do about the PDF reader toolbar.
  • hamson
    I did try it, lol. It doesn't change that it's unnatural, given that it's not how you have to move windows for every other application. Especially with a dual screen setup where one screen is above the other.

    Thanks for seeing what you can do about it :).
  • dstillman
    You don't "have" to move the Zotero window this way either. I'm just suggesting it as an option that works in all apps — it's a good thing to know as a Mac user, and quite fast once you get used to it.

    As you note, you can click around the stoplight buttons or in the top-right corner. Firefox works the same way with the title bar disabled (which I think it is by default), and they have much less open toolbar space. The main difference is that they give a bit more room before the first tab and after the last, and we should probably do that regardless of the toolbar fix.

    Chrome does what you suggest — adds some space above the tabs — and in my view it barely makes a difference. It gives you about the same amount of space as the top edge area itself — possibly even slightly less — so you're likely to grab the edge even if you're not trying to, and you don't get the benefit of the resize cursor to quickly see when you're in the right place. I find it much faster to move a Chrome window using the top edge.
  • Szabolcs
    edited June 8, 2024
    I also found it quite frustrating (also on a Mac), but I could manage. However, I just tried Zotero 7, which is even worse in this regard, bordering on unusable for me. (I understand that it's less of a difficulty for some others, but we are all different.) I find it extremely frustrating. Please consider treating this as an accessibility issue.

    Firefox has a similar tab arrangement, but it does leave two small drag areas free, one on the left (between window controls and tabs) and one on the right. I never had this frustration with Firefox. In comparison, Zotero has zero space between the window controls and tabs (on the left on a Mac), and the only space on the right is taken up by the sync button.

    > The main difference is that they give a bit more room before the first tab and after the last, and we should probably do that regardless of the toolbar fix.

    Copying Firefox's solution would be a great improvement, and very much appreciated.
  • dstillman
    edited June 9, 2024
    @Szabolcs: As I say above, you can also drag from anywhere on the toolbar, and since 2022 we've made that work in the reader as well. We still may add some more space to the right of the window controls, but as is there's far more area to drag from than Firefox has.
  • dstillman
    In beta 95, we've added some additional space to the right of the window controls. The toolbar is still the largest draggable area, though.
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