GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 336716
sort windows by recent usage
Last modified: 2006-03-31 16:41:21 UTC
That bug has been opened on https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/libwnck/+bug/36419 "Hi, there's a quick feature which would improve my desktop experience a lot. I'd like an alternate mode where the taskbar would sort its buttons by recent usage (like ALT-TAB does). This means that, each time I activate a window, the corresponding taskbar button would be shifted to the leftmost position. Why? This way it would be much easier to frequently toggle between two open windows. I'd start looking to the left and instantly find the window I need. This is currently very difficult when many windows are open. Reason why I need to use ALT-TAB very often, or keep few windows open. More in general, this would allow to keep many windows open and still minimize the average time needed to find a window, because the most used windows would tend to concentrate to the left. I know this does not exploit spatial memory, and you are against adding options, but I thought I'd try and ask anyway."
This was considered before; bug 52225 comment 17 (well the link from there) explains why this is a bad idea. Also, the utterly braindead task grouping of the tasklist might cause more problems, but the main point against it is that link that Federico provided.