Xfce Forum

STN

Member

Registered: 2011-08-31

Posts: 1

Temporarily disable transparency of an inactive window

I won't spend too many lines groveling before you with the standard introductions.  I have a massive nerd chubby for my Slackware 13.37 system running XFCE, it's fantastic, well done.

I'm running 4.6.2 and I have the inactive windows go 50% opaque in the settings.  This is the setup I have grown to love and cherish.  Occasionally when I watch a video however I would like to temporarily disable the transparency on the video display window, while leaving everything else in place.  This would allow me to watch the video while working in another window.

I believe I could disable the inactive window settings and then manually adjust my other windows up and down.  I will be trying this for the next few days to see how it goes.  However, is there a way to pull this off without disabling the inactive settings in the settings?  I was hoping I could hover on the title bar of the inactive window and dial it up, but no luck.  This functionality works but it would not let go higher than the 50% setting that was in the settings.

Thanks.

ruuk

Member

Registered: 2011-12-25

Posts: 7

Re: Temporarily disable transparency of an inactive window

I have a somewhat similar issue, but in my case I have the problem of the Gimp main window going transparent when I'm adjusting an image from a dialog. It would be nice if there was an option to allow for all windows of an application instance to stay opaque when active.

ruuk

Member

Registered: 2011-12-25

Posts: 7

Re: Temporarily disable transparency of an inactive window

Occasionally when I watch a video however I would like to temporarily disable the transparency on the video display window, while leaving everything else in place.  This would allow me to watch the video while working in another window.
Thanks.

I have a decent workaround for you, after much searching and fiddling.

Try typing this command in a terminal:

xprop -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY_LOCKED 32c -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY_LOCKED 1

It will allow you to select any window with the mouse cursor, and that window will be ignored by the window manager for transparency.

I added a launcher to my panel which just runs this command.
I believe you could make script for launching apps that would do this automatically. But I'll leave that to better scripters - unless I get a wild hair

Mellowbob

Member

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 286

Re: Temporarily disable transparency of an inactive window

So ... a few year have gone by Any one come up with a script for this so I don't need to klutz around when I decide to GIMP a photo. Having the main window go transparent really inhibits adjusting colors, etc.

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Temporarily disable transparency of an inactive window

The words "massive nerd chubby" in the first post probably scared everyone away, lol.

It's not a script, but can you place mouse cursor on the window you wish to opaque(?), hold one of the Alt keys, and move your finger up (or to the right) along your mousepad's vertical (or horizontal) scroll-area if using a laptop mousepad, or turn the mousewheel up (if using a mouse)?

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Mountain Dew Maniac

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Mellowbob

Member

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 286

Re: Temporarily disable transparency of an inactive window

2 problems I find with the alt mouse on the title bar thing:

1. It doesn't restore the "main" window to 100% opaque.

2. It's a pain to do this every time I call up a program like GIMP.

I think I'll probably just un-set the transparent stuff in my windows settings (a shame); unless someone has a setting/script which, in effect, says: don't do the transparency stuff for this program???