How to split screen into two independent areas?

Question

I want to split my screen so blue area is Unity Sidebar, red area is area1 and green area2. Mouse should not be able to move from area1 to area2 (only keyboard shortcut will allow to switch mouse position between areas). Any application assigned to area1 or area2 should treat them as an independent screen (if application is forced to full screen mode it should "feel" assigned area and only it).
E.g. if I launched full screen movie or game in red area, I should be able to see green area unobstructed.

Answer 1

Possible solution:

Use a tiling screen manager (such as xmonad or my personal favourite, spectrwm).

This allows you to run applications in an area and automatically tile them (like the Windows 'Stack windows horizontally' feature). Because the areas have sections, multiple programs can be run under each area including in full screen mode without obstructing the view of the others.

As far as mouse locking goes, I can't find a way to stop the mouse from going between areas, but you can stop the focus from being changed when the mouse moves (such that the area will only "switch focus" upon a keyboard shortcut combination). To achieve this, edit the .spectrwm.conf (the config file for spectrwm) in your home directory so that the line:

#focus_mode = default

is changed to

focus_mode = manual

Cons:

• Can't use Unity sidebar (although someone might have a way around this)

Answer 2

I don't think full screen means what you think it means.

If it's absolutely important for you to be able to fullscreen an application in a window and still have a sidebar available on your screen, you probably need to go the way of a windowed virtual machine. That will do the input grabs too.

It's possible to use the Compiz place plugin under Ubuntu Unity to describe specific areas of the screen in which to maximize windows, but that doesn't do the input grabbing you're describing.