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Somewhere along the upgrade path, Unity has developed some strange logic behind window layering. First, before Oneiric, there was a way to see all the windows of an application - I think it was when you click on the icon in the launcher. Now, clicking on the icon often does nothing. Suppose I have two terminals open, one behind this Firefox window, and one in front of it. Clicking on the launcher does nothing - the only way to find the second terminal, afaics, is to move the Firefox window or use the task switcher.

Secondly, once I have both terminals on top, then I decide to close one of them, suddenly they both disappear (the second one, for some reason, has gone into hiding behind the Firefox window).

Third (though I can't pin it down now), sometimes when a window is on top, focus is still on a window in back; I click on the top x to close the window in front, only to find I've closed an important window in the back. (Update: this question details the problem)

I can't really believe these are bugs, since they seem too obvious to not have been fixed by now. My question is, am I missing something? Some compiz option I can set to make it act like it used to? Or is this really how Unity is supposed to act?

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yuttadhammo
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  • They are bugs, since I use Unity (and so do others) and don't see that behavior. :) – RolandiXor Nov 12 '11 at 12:45
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    This sounds like you're missing some settings or something. Maybe you need to reset unity or something: http://askubuntu.com/questions/17610/how-do-i-reset-my-unity-configuration – Jorge Castro Nov 12 '11 at 16:10
  • @Jorge, thank you, that was exactly it :) unity --reset fixed the problem - I knew it couldn't be a bug... – yuttadhammo Nov 13 '11 at 03:21
  • okay, still one strange behaviour... the second problem still persists. If I have Firefox open, then open two terminals on top of it, then switch to firefox, bringing it to the front, click on the terminal icon in the launcher, both terminals come back. Close one of the terminals, the other one disappears behind the firefox window. Is that supposed to happen? – yuttadhammo Nov 13 '11 at 03:30
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    The way you've just described seem fine. It's a matter of order of last focus. When you bring the terminals back one will have focus. Switch to the other terminal & close it instead. Focus will go to the remaining terminal – doug Nov 13 '11 at 04:33
  • @doug - well, that makes some sense... but suppose I'm talking about Firefox, and I have a source view window open on top. When I close the source view, why should the rest of the firefox app disappear? I get the logic, but it's a pain in several cases like this. Anyway, as long is I know it's not just me. – yuttadhammo Nov 13 '11 at 10:20

1 Answers1

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Application in the front does not have the focus:

you might want to look into these questions and bug reports:

See all the windows of one application:

I'm not sure what exactly you want. To see all windows of e.g. the terminal, I can click on the launcher icon twice. This results in this image:

enter image description here

There is also the application switcher (Alt+TAB) where you can use the arrow keys to show all the windows of one application:

enter image description here

All windows of one application disappear when one of them is closed

This seems to be the default behaviour when you first have the focus on application A, then click in the launcher on application B with windows B1, and B2. Then both B1 and B2 come to the front, but only one of them gets the focus. If this window is closed, the focus goes to the application which had the last focus, in this case A, which then comes to the front.

I do not know how this could be changed.

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xubuntix
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  • Sorry it sounded like a rant, but I wasn't trying to complain, just get an answer. I did get my answer - something messed up my settings along the line, and doing unity --reset fixed it. – yuttadhammo Nov 13 '11 at 03:22
  • It sounded to me a bit like a rant, but I have removed that comment. Sorry. And good to hear that your problems are now mainly solved. – xubuntix Nov 13 '11 at 07:35