The writer window's width is most often resized to maximize the view of other windows, that is the writer window wants setting to the minimum width where all text is visible. Most often this is the space between the margins as most documents do not print outside the margins. When the width of the writer window is wider than the document width plus a border the horizontal scroll bar is not shown. When the window width is resized to less than this the horizontal scroll bar becomes displayed and the location is set to the far left, so that the left margin and the left border are always displayed. The right hand border, then the right hand margin, then the right hand internal progressively become out of view. As mentioned the most common reason for horizontal resizing is to keep all the internals (between the margins) in view. Currently to achieve this result the window needs resizing until the width between the margins is guessed, then the horizontal location needs adjusting with the horizontal scroll bar, and the guess is often wrong so this process needs repeating. On a resize from wider than the document width it would make more sense in the vast majority of cases to set the left hand horizontal location automatically to the left margin. I cannot envisage why anyone would ever want to see the left border or the left margin in preference. This would be a small feature, but it adds a little thoughtful helpfulness. Alternately the functionality could be achieved with a feature to automagically set the window width to display just the between margin width and to set the left scroll location to the left margin.
[This is an automated message.] This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases. Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1 more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html
But my be add option "Do not show page outside margins"? If this option enabled, page outside of margin not shown on screen. This will spare space on screen and disable described initially problem.
Dear bug submitter! Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs. To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem. Yours! Florian