Hi I use the following layout: myLayout = tiled ||| Mirror tiled ||| Full ||| HintedTile 1 0.1 0.5 TopLeft XMonad.Layout.HintedTile.Tall where -- default tiling algorithm partitions the screen into two panes tiled = XMonad.Tall nmaster delta ratio -- The default number of windows in the master pane nmaster = 1 -- Default proportion of screen occupied by master pane ratio = 1/2 -- Percent of screen to increment by when resizing panes delta = 3/100 Some applications like firefox, thunderbird make heavy use of modal dialogs, for example to set preferences. These are usually small windows that float over the application until you dismiss them. However, with the layouts I use, those windows get scaled to fill have of the screen, left to the application. That is annoying , in particular since the control buttons (OK Cancel ) do not appear , so I have to force quit that window. I really like those layouts above for everything (xterm windows, vims , etc ) but I would like to adjust xmonad in order to take into account the modal dialogs for the typical GUI Apps. Any ideas are welcomed Thanks for help Peter