Hi,

My desktop has dual screens.

Whenever a new application opens, its window will be mostly on one screen, and have about 10 or so pixels on the other screen.

This is making me nuts. I always maximize or manually drag-resize these windows to have them be on one desktop. But usually if the application starts again, its window will again be partially on the two screens.

This happens to applications like file manager, KDiff3, text editors, Kile, PDF viewers, etc....

Some applications probably do or don't do various things on their own with their window size when they start up, but I really doubt any application is deliberately coded in such a way to take up one screen + 10 pixels of the other screen as space.

It happens both to windows on the left and on the right screen, those on the left have a small part of their right side on the right screen. Those on the right have a small part of their left side on the left screen.

It's as if KDE first snaps the window to the side of the screen, and then, for some useless and annoying reason, moves the window 10 or so pixels over the border to the other screen.

Why does KDE do this, and can I avoid this? It makes me nuts!

Can you reproduce under a new user?

Also, do you have any panels on the left or right side of your screen?

I've noticed this too, and it seems to me that it's actually the glow added by the Oxygen decoration that is spilling on to the other screen, not the window itself. Going to System Settings -> Appearance -> Windows -> Oxygen -> Shadows and unchecking Active Window GLow stops the behavior for me.

If this fixes the issue, can a bug report please be filed at bugs.kde.org, since that shouldn't happen...

I can't really try as new user currently, but here's some more info at least:

I have 3 panels in total: on the left screen, one at the bottom and one at the top. On the right screen, one at the bottom.

Both the bottom panels have a Task Manager widget, i.e. the widget that shows buttons of open windows. In there, I have the "Only show tasks from the current screen" setting enabled.

When a window has the 8 pixel over the middle position, then it gets a button in both the taskbars, because it's over the two screens.

When only the glow of a window is on the other screen, then there are no problems.

But in my situation, it's actually 8 pixels of the actual window contents that go on the other screen (I counted them this time ). Here's a screenshot of the zone between the two screens. The edge of the screens can be recognised due to the vertical transition between the two panels at the bottom.

http://img534.imageshack.us/i/screenedge.png/

I couldn't find the setting to disable window glow with Oxygen, only one to toggle stripes in the title bar (I'm using KDE 4.3 of Ubuntu currently). However I tried Plastik, and there the problem still occurs even though plastik has no glow border.

The problem occurs only if I maximize an application, then close it, then open it again.

E.g. kolourpaint: I maximize it. Close it. Open it. It's 8 pixels wider. If I make kolourpaint smaller than the left screen, it remembers that state next time. If I enlarge the window of kolourpaint again to exactly hit the end of the screen, the window auto-maximizes. If I close kolourpaint again and open it again, it's again 8 pixels wider. And if I make the kolourpaint window so that it's smaller in the vertical direction, and exactly as big as the left monitor in horizontal direction, then it'll take that exact same size when reopening it.


I've found a way to solve it for me now: I choose "Special application settings" and make it remember Position, Size, Maximized horizontally and Maximized vertically. Then the windows of that application will remember that position next time, and that is a lot better already.