SUMMARY *** Aurorae-themed windows lose their borders when maximized, even when "borderless maximized windows" is deactivated. *** STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Use an Aurorae window decoration 2. .config/kwinrc: BorderlessMaximizedWindows=false 3. Maximize a window OBSERVED RESULT Window has no borders. EXPECTED RESULT Window has borders. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION The setting does work with binary window decorations. No borders on maximized windows means that the window can't be resized from the edges. On the other hand I don't see a usability advantage of no borders apart from a tiny amount pixels space saved, and perhaps aesthetics. If it is not possible to make Aurorae themes use the setting, then i.m.o. not removing borders when maximized would be the better default. Other users reporting the same problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/ssn8jx/comment/hwztbud/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3, https://www.pling.com/p/1678088/ SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Operating System: Arch Linux KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.91.0 Qt Version: 5.15.3 Kernel Version: 5.16.13-arch1-1 (64-bit) Graphics Platform: X11
I missed the more important reason why no borders on maximized windows can be a usability problem: When the window decoration has no titlebar (e.g. Active Accent Frame), there is no way to identify a maximized windows as active on a multi-screen setup.
Now I'm using multiple monitors, I find this quite disorienting. It seems the general UI trend of last has been going to flatter designs and everything in varying shades of grey. Or something like that, as have recently installed a couple of systems anew with KDE, and found I'm feeling more like I can't discern the elements on my desktop quite as easily as I have been on Cinnamon/older versions/other desktops. Fair enough, not for me to decide what the trends are, but not to my taste. I like light schemes with my monitors brightness turned relatively far down, and I like clear differentiation between different UI elements. If the window decorations, the plasma menu bars, the UI widget,s the UI backgrounds, are all similarish shades of grey, personally my eye struggles to scan things, and that hurts my productivity. I'm a developer so I regularly have 100 open windows across 20 workspaces. I've been customising some themes I have been using a while to add accent colours. This is working nicely as of today - but the inability to toggle if window borders are drawn when maximised is sticking a bit. Currently the active window kind of bleeds into the plasma menubar. I can tune the accent colours a bit but I prefeer a sharp border, especially if I have the font size turned down as far as I can easily see so I can fit more text on one window. Same with placing the menu elements like a Mac does in the top, as Unity switched to by default some time ago - I don't like it myself as I like things to sit inside clear containers. So I'd like to be able to turn this back on, even if it's sensible to have it off by default (leave that for someone else to decide). I just realised I'd been ignoring the little pencil icon when I go to choose my decorations. Some decorations I have installed have a lot of customisable options in the menu there - I assume this is for themes that involve a solib in some way/are compiled into KWin, rather than just unpacked files in my Aurorae folder, as the only option I see for several is the size of the buttons. Things could be changed in the theme RC file, but I feel adding more options to the customisation menu would be a nicer way to go with this, then the user decides, rather than requiring anything from the theme author. No idea what complications this would add to the implementation though.