I am not sure if I got what you want but I fail to observe much difference in the behaviour of a maximized firefox window, a maximized chrome window, or a u++ application window. You'll have to unmaximize it before you can adjust its size.
One of the way to unmaximized the window is like you said, holding the title bar and drop down a little. Or you can used the restore button. Or right click on the title bar, in the popup menu, select 'restore'.