Why do floating panels snap to the Start menu bar in Windows?

[bbrother]

Sometimes after pulling the panel out of the right studio (Ade) I had trouble lifting it freely. At first I thought it was a mouse or in app focus problem, until I noticed that penels got snapped to the start menu bar as soon as their bottom edge got too close to the bar.

A few questions:

• Does anyone know anything about this?
• Is this behavior intentional?
• I searched but didn't find any mention of it in the documentation?
• How is this supposed to make your job easier or better?

I made a video that's showing this behaviour.

 

 

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, bbrother said:

until I noticed that penels got snapped to the start menu bar as soon as their bottom edge got too close to the bar.

Looks more like a snapping to the bottom part of ADe window itself and that the Win start task bar then focus wise recognizes that some panel/window is starting to hitting/covering it's area (like a drag'n'drop to that area). - What happens if you make instead the ADe win smaller and do then move a detached panel to it's bottom ADe window area, does it snap to there then (meaning without covering the Win start bar area at all)?

[Pšenda]

Snapping to the bottom of the screen (that is, the taskbar), as well as snapping to the sides and top of the screen, seems natural and reasonable to me. If I want to place the panel very close to the edge, I probably want it to be placed "exactly" on the edge. Placing it behind the edge and thus hiding part of the panel doesn't make much sense to me, which is why snapping is useful.

[mopperle]

I can not recreate this on latest Win11 and ADe 2.3.1. Checked it with ADe in fullscreen/windowed mode, taskbar fixed or hiding automatically, I can move a floating panel whereever I want, no snapping. E.g. with a fixed taskbar it goes always behind the taskbar when moving the panel to the bottom of the screen.

So maybe a special setting in Windows or another tool?

 

[PaulEC]

For me there does seem to be a slight snapping when moving a panel to the bottom edge of the screen, but there is no problem whatsoever in then moving it elsewhere.

[bbrother]

40 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Looks more like a snapping to the bottom part of ADe window

No, I checked correctly. To the start menu bar.

 

20 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

For me there does seem to be a slight snapping when moving a panel to the bottom edge of the screen, but there is no problem whatsoever in then moving it elsewhere.

I can't say the same. The few times I moved the paragraph panel, it snapped to the Start menu bar. And that wasn't my intention. That why it caught my attention? I also wanted to move the panel higher several times, but for some reason it didn't allow me to do so.

Once again a better video with resized ADe window

 

 

 

[Pšenda]

38 minutes ago, mopperle said:

I can not recreate this on latest Win11 and ADe 2.3.1.

 

 

[bbrother]

It appears that floating panels in affinity apps are treated like windows that can be snapped to all edges of the screen.
Is this the case with all windows applications?

[mopperle]

If this is what you see in Psendas video and call it snapping, yes this is default Windows behaviour.

 

[mopperle]

Sorry for using Photshop in this example. 😀

[bbrother]

4 minutes ago, mopperle said:

If this is what you see in Psendas video and call it snapping

It seems so. Case solved.

[v_kyr]

Other than that, there are also a bunch of third party windowing tools for Windows which can also effect certain system & apps windowing behaviors here. - For just one example, Microsoft itself offers their MS PowerToys for tweaking certain windowing things ...

• PowerToys
• https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.77.0
• Always on Top (PowerToys util)
• Fancy Zones (PowerToys util)
• ... and so on ...