4.5 Moving Windows

As we have seen, the organization of windows can be changed at any time by selecting a notebook containing several editors or browsers, and selecting one of the Split menus in the Window menu.

A more intuitive method is also provided, based on the drag-and-drop paradigm. The idea is simply to select a window, wherever it is, and then, by clicking on it and moving the mouse while keeping the left button pressed, drop it anywhere else inside GPS.

Selecting an item so that it can be dragged is done simply by clicking with the left mouse button in its title bar, and keep the button pressed while moving the mouse.

If the window is inside a notebook, you can also choose to select the notebook tab to start dragging the window around. In such a case, the windows within the notebook can also be reordered: select the tab, then start moving left or right to the new position the window should have. Note that your mouse must remain within the tab area, since otherwise GPS will enter in the mode where the window can be put in other notebooks.

If you want to move a window to another notebook by dragging its tab, you should first move out of the tab area (vertically in general), and then anywhere in GPS. That's to distinguish between the mode where you want to reorder tabs and the mode where you want to move windows.

While you keep the mouse button pressed, and move the mouse around, the selected drop area is highlighted with a dashed border. This shows precisely where the window would be put if you were to release the mouse button at that point.

If you move your mouse all the way to the side of the desktop, and then drop the window, that window will occupy the full width (resp. height) of the desktop on that side.

Here are the various places where a window can be dropped:

Inside the MDI

The location of the current window is indicated by a dashed rectangle, and the window you are dragging will be positioned at the same location as that rectangle: either on top of the window on which you dropped it (therefore they will both be put inside a notebook), or to one of the sides of that window, splitting as needed.

System window

If you drop a window outside of GPS (for instance, on the background of your screen), the window will be floated.

If you maintain the <shift> key pressed while dropping the window, this might result in a copy operation instead of a simple move. For instance, if you are dropping an editor, a new view of the same editor will be created, resulting in two views present in GPS: the original one is left at its initial location, and a second view is created at the new location.

If you maintain the <control> key pressed while dropping the window, all the windows that were in the same notebook are moved, instead of the single one you selected. This is the fastest way to move a group of windows to a new location, instead of moving them one by one.