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alt+tab does not "circulate raise" windows from below
Status:
RESOLVED: DUPLICATE
Severity:
enhancement

Comments

Description Paul Johnson 2014-01-23 17:47:51 CET
I've got xfwm 4.11.1.  I can't tell which program is being raised to the top when using alt+tab. When I alt+tab, I see a "middle strip" of program icons, but they don't differentiate various terminals or windows of various programs.  I can't predict which terminal I'm going to get when I let go of the tab key.  

I found the XFCE4 window manager tweak where it will highlight the outside frame of the window to be raised. That highlights the shape, but doesn't raise the content of the window itself. I can tell the shape of the thing that will be brought to the top, but I can't tell what is in that box. 

Do you see it too?  Open 6 terminals, then Firefox, and maybe the Gimp. alt+tab will let you change, but you've got no idea which terminal you are changing into.

In WindowMaker, there's a setting "circulate raise" so that windows come to the top as you hit alt+tab, you can tell what you are getting. xfwm4 does not raise windows, and it is really tough to tell what you are getting.  It shows the same icon for all of the terminals that are open. The outlines of the window frames are highlighted, but the windows themselves don't rise, I can't tell what I'm getting.   

The old window managers often had this issue, but I've not seen it for quite a while, since 2005, maybe.  I wondered if window compositing is failing, so xfwm4 is trying to raise the windows, but it can't, and yet it can draw the electric edge around the window to be raised.
Comment 1 Kamil Kaminski 2014-02-24 05:48:44 CET
Have you found a workaround for this, a way to paint window's content instead of just getting an outline/border?
Comment 2 Simon Steinbeiss editbugs 2014-08-05 17:25:01 CEST
Not sure this is a great idea to be honest. The current behavior is working as intended as far as I can say, only showing the outlines can help you to identify a window by its size/position, but doesn't use as many resources as actually raising it.

Also, with most applications (the terminals are a bit of an exception there) the window descriptions are helpful enough to identify the window. If you're using the xfce4-terminal heavily, you should also be able to name your terminal window.
Comment 3 Simon Steinbeiss editbugs 2014-08-05 17:27:04 CEST
Also, I just noticed that this is a duplicate.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 2701 ***

Bug #10645

Reported by:
Paul Johnson
Reported on: 2014-01-23
Last modified on: 2014-08-05

People

Assignee:
Olivier Fourdan
CC List:
2 users

Version

Version:
4.10.1

Attachments

Additional information