Hi, up to version 2.4 I could configure the mouse in a way that I press a button on the root desktop (say the right button), move the cursor to a window and release the button there. This would close that window cleanly. This feature was especially useful when a web browser opened a number of links in windows rather than in tabs. Each window could then be closed with the above method without destroying the browser (like xkill would). Is this smooth closure feature configurable in fvwm3? (I use FreeBSD, binary packages). Thanks / JB
I’m not quite sure what was being used to do this, it could have been Stroke, which is still in fvwm3, though unsure how much it is used. The only part in your description I’m a bit confused on is you say this is triggered off the button release, so unsure how to get the exact behavior you describe, but there are tons of alternatives.
Mouse 3 R M Close
This will set up a binding that holding alt (you can change the M to A to make it not require alt) and right clicking the root window will run Close. This will make it so the next window you click is closed. But why not just setup some key binding for this, and in this case you don’t even have to click in the root window, just hit the key binding and the window close.
Key C W M Close
This makes it so alt-C will close whatever window your mouse is over (I chose alt vs ctrl since ctrl-C would be copy in many applications). To me this would be a bit easier than a mouse binding. But here are two options similar to what you describe.
As stated, I’m unsure what was being done to make it so it was a mouse click / release to trigger close, you would have to dig back into your old 2.4 config to share the exact configuration that is being used. There is a high chance it will still just work (depending on what it was doing).
Thank you kindly. Mouse 3 R A Close seems to work to good effect in that the skull&crossbones don’t Destroy the original window but only Closes the window underneath. I still have to click twice (on the root window and on the window I want to close). No great deal but I am trying to close the window by just releasing the pressed mouse button. When I write Mouse 3 R A Destroy then the entire browser is killed.
This elegant feature is actually coded into Afterstep which I used many years ago. It is still there but Afterstep has become convoluted to configure.
Use Close or Delete, that will only close a single window, Destroy will kill the process, which is why all windows get killed when using that. The difference between Close and Delete, is Close will ask a window to close itself (if it honors that), while Delete just gets rid of the window, which is more destructive (doesn’t give the app a chance to shut itself down).
I don’t really know of how to get fvwm to run actions on mouse release like you describe. I personally would use a key binding vs a mouse binding for this, but as mentioned, look into Stroke, you could make it so all you have to do is say hold down the stroke key (this can be any key you want), and draw an X on the window with the mouse, and it will close the window if setup correctly.