layout testing - browser resizing

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If you want to test a flexible or elastic site layout in Ubuntu you will be doing some window resizing. In MS Windows and Mac OSX window contents dynamically resize. It is a feature that makes it nice for seeing how CSS floats and positioning are behaving. I don’t know if it is a consequence of Compiz or what, but Ubuntu doesn’t do this be default. It only redraws the contents one you are finished resizing. Dynamic resizing is something you can enable in Ubuntu, though it is certainly not an area where Ubuntu shines. To enable you will have to open CompizConfig Settings Manager (install it first if you don’t have it, obviously), open the “Resize Window” settings go to the “General” tab and from the “default  resize mode” drop down choose ‘normal’ You should now see window contents redrawn during the resize process, but chances are it is really laggy and crappy. To avoid the majority of this annoying crappiness on the rest of your desktop you can reset the default resize mode to rectangle or outline, and on the line that says “Normal Resize Windows” click the ”+” icon. In the dialog that appears use the “grab” feature to pick the browser you want to have dynamic resizing on then click “add” to finish. That’s it! Close the settings Manager and you should be set. UPDATE: A little more research turned up that this was in fact more an issue with Compiz. So I installed Compiz Fusion Icon , started that up and selected Metacity as the window manager. Dynamic resizing works in all the windows I tested and pretty fast/smooth. The downside is all my Compiz effects are gone, but it’s relatively easy to flip back and forth between Metacity and Compiz, so this is probably a better solution to this issue. I also noticed my javascript animations got much smoother with Compiz off. Really if the only significant piece of compiz animation I would actually miss is the desktop switcher and zoom functionality. Also, just tried it and this Metacity fix all goes away if you turn on Metacity’s compositioning feature as well. Compositioning is the problem, so it seems…