Window Positioning on Re-Opening Application

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Hi,

I upgraded my main PC from Win 7 Pro 64-bit to Win 10 as soon as the Fall Update (Version 1511) became available. Everything went surprisingly smoothly and I am in general very pleased with Win 10*.

But I have one nagging problem… It has for years been my habit to position application windows to one side of the screen (24″ monitor, 1920x1200px, 96dpi), e.g. Word to the right, Excel to the left. This worked fine for all apps. up to Windows 7 – close the app, and it re-opens with the same window size and position. All pretty standard Windows practice.

But in Win 10 it does not always work properly – if an app. is docked to the left, right or bottom it re-opens with the window 7 pixels in from the screen edge. (The top is OK.) This problem affects most apps,(e.g. IE11, Firefox and Notepad++), although not Office 2016, Visual Studio or Adobe Lightroom. In effect the top-left of the screen is at (-7,0) rather than (0,0).

Does anyone recognise this problem? Is there a fix for its root cause?

In my own programs (WPF / .NET 4.5) I am now fudging the window position by subtracting 7 from left and adding 7 to right and bottom, but this is hardly satisfactory.

JPL

* Except for the Start Menu – a stunningly pathetic implementation, fine if you have only Office and a browser installed but hopeless if there are lots of applications accessed via a multi-level menu tree. Without Classic Shell I would be tearing my hair out all day every day.

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I’ve just tried on my W10 and I got a different result (not as good as yours!). The only app that came up in the right place was HD Sentinel. Notepad++ came up with the bottom right corner off the screen. Word was in the middle of the screen and Excel miniaturised at the top left (I could open it up by dragging the bottom right corner). The only one not docked at the top was HD Sentinel – whether that was significant will require further testing. However, I don’t normally use docking, just relying on the app opening where I closed it (that doesn’t seem to be a problem on 10). I don’t know whether the fact I use Remote Desktop to login to this machine is a factor either.

As far as the start menu is concerned, I like the fact that the folders remain open when you move the mouse – I could never keep the mouse in the right place on 7 and they would promptly close if I strayed just a smidgeon too far. And the fact they are larger than 7’s menu is also a bonus. As a thought, isn’t the layout just the same? I haven’t used 7’s menu very often after I moved off it (just the occasional help with my wife’s 7 laptop).

But I still think 8.1’s start page is superior though!

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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The overall effect is as though the window were positioned to allow space for the thick borders of Win 7 rather than the 1 pixel line of Win 10.

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JPL,

I just tested this on my Win-10 (Insider Preview 11099 rs1 release 160109_1156).

If “Docked” the positions do NOT hold. However, if you dock the apps then slightly adjust the window down & back to almost docked then close holding the Shift key they will return to the set locations.
43332-w10apppos

As interesting side bar, I used the Snipping tool to take the screen shot and I didn’t know that if you selected Full-Screen Snip and have dual monitors it captures both monitors. So in the image above the left-most window is on the Laptop’s monitor and the PowerShell & NotePad++ windows are on the secondary monitor…who knew? I sure didn’t! It is also interesting that you can see the relative sizes of the two monitors in the snip.

HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Retired Geek,

That’s interesting, but I could not get your method to work for Firefox.

I have found before that for a window ordinarily just touching the task bar, several programs (including MS Office ones, I think) will remember window height on closing only if the task bar is first set to auto-hide. Otherwise it reverts to its previous setting.

With task bar on auto-hide and the window docking to top and right and set to just touch the task bar at the bottom, Notepad++ does remember its position (docked / full height). (Can’t think why I hadn’t tried this before.) It seems that Notepad++ and Firefox work differently here – the positions “stuck” for Notepad++ but Firefox reverted to the original behaviour as soon as I switched off task bar auto-hide.

For my WPF program the window is precisely docked to the left of the monitor screen by setting
this.left = -7;
This really should be zero, as it was in Windows 7 and XP. (I’ve never used 8 or Vista.)

It looks like we have more than one type of problem here: Firefox and my programs perhaps behave in the same way, but for Notepad++ I was just “doing it wrong”.

P.S. Screenshots are one-to-one copies of screen pixels and would be expected to be sized as per monitor resolution, I think.

JPL

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This small, free program might be of use to you:

ShellFolderFix – Manage folder window positions/size – http://www.sevenforums.com/free-developer-programs-projects/40916-shellfolderfix-manage-folder-window-positions-size.html

I’ve used to it with W7, 8, 8.1 and currently with W10 very successfully. It makes Explorer folder windows remember their size and position.
Give it a try.

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I do not often use Windows Explorer (only one files pane – hopeless).

I am looking for a more general solution than a fix for one specific program.

Also, in the case of my C# program at least, the problem is not in remembering and restoring the window position, which it does without problems. The issue is that to dock the window exactly to the left of the screen its position has to be set to -7; this should be 0 of course, which was previously the case for this same application on this same PC under Windows 7.

It is as though Windows 10 thinks the program window still has a chunky, Windows 7 style border even though it now has a single pixel border in the normal Windows 10 style.

JPL

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