GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 309481
Alt+tab strokes should alter between no more than two windows
Last modified: 2006-04-15 23:55:24 UTC
Distribution/Version: Ubuntu Hoary / Breezy-20050703 I'd expect a single alt+tab stroke to pop up the previous window I was using. Thus, consequential alt+tab strokes (releasing alt between them) should alter between no more than two windows. However, this isn't always the case. Suppose I have three windows, from topmost to bottom: "Pick a Font", "Font Preferences", and a gnome-terminal. The upper two windows belong to the gnome-font-properties process. The first alt+tab stroke activates the "Font Preferences" window but leaves the "Pick a Font" window on top of it. The second stroke pops up the gnome-terminal. The third stroke re-activates the "Font Preferences" window, putting the terminal to the back but leaving the "Pick a Font" window on top of it - but inactive. So, there seems to be *no way* of re-activating the "Pick a Font" window with the keyboard. This is very confusing and possibly a show-stopper for someone not using a mouse. Related to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142195 and supposedly many others.
Probably "pick a font" should be focused whenever you alt+tab to "font preferences", since "pick a font" is the active transient. However, this means that "pick a font" is effectively modal from the keyboard (you can't get to "Font Preferences"). One solution is to have a "cycle among windows in a group" key.
Related to bug 305259 (comments 5 and 6 in particular); the "cycle among windows in a group" key is bug 94682. Should we consider this a duplicate of 94682 then?
*** Bug 305259 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
No, if bug 94682 was fixed, this bug would still be occurring.
I'm consolidating this and other issues into bug 338660 (for which I'd appreciate usability feedback, mpt). *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 338660 ***