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Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

Windows 7 allows you to do something similar.

The window layout manager is smart enough not to let you push the window totally off the screen, but if you grab a window and pull it down under the taskbar (assuming the taskbar is in the default bottom position and does not autohide) in Windows 7, you're somewhat boned because while the window is still there, the taskbar's zorder makes it impossible to click on it to recover it. You can fix this situation by unlocking the taskbar (if it is locked) and moving it or by setting it to autohide, but neither of these things is a particularly intuitive move for the average user, I'd guess.

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Pressing alt-space, m followed by the arrow keys usually worked when I was using XP.

On Windows 7 this is not an issue as the windows snap to the sides and top, and if you drag towards the bottom of the screen there are several pixels on the titlebar where you can only resize the window and not move it, it is really difficult to lose a window by dragging it as shown on the website.

It is an issue in Windows 7, at least with default settings. As mentioned in the grantparent post, if you have a default taskbar setup (at the bottom, no autohide) you can very easily drag a window below the taskbar (because the taskbar is larger than the entire window titlebar), which might as well be off the screen because the zorder of the taskbar is greater than that of the window, so you can't interact with the window via the mouse until you move the taskbar or set it to auto-hide.

I just tried with the taskbar on the bottom, and I could not drag the mouse cursor below the top edge of the taskbar.

That's odd, because I've got 3 different Windows 7 installs here and every one of them allows me to drag the mouse cursor below the top edge of the taskbar while dragging a window.

I'm not suggesting you're wrong here, just that I've never seen the behavior you're seeing and I use Windows 7 frequently. Perhaps you have some option set that I do not.

You can only drag into the taskbar area if you have multiple monitors.

On a single monitor setup it captures the mouse and prevents this issue.

My setups are all multi-monitor so I guess that's the issue? Thanks for the info.

On Windows 7 you could also use the Windows + Arrow Keys to move the window back on screen.

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