GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 693441
VM in full screen mode hides gnome-shell notifications
Last modified: 2014-02-27 20:27:50 UTC
When I run a VM expanded to fill the screen, popup notifications like incoming chat messages are obscured. Additionally, I see inconsistent behavior in terms of whether I am able to mouse to the bottom of the display to make the notification bar raise up. Occasionally I will see it pop up and then immediately pop back down, other times I get no response from moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen at all. The only way I can see notifications is to take the VM out of full-screen mode or move the mouse to the top of the display so that the gnome-boxes window handle appears and then switch to another gnome workspace. I suggest that this is a gnome-boxes bug and not a gnome infrastructure or window manager bug because other apps that run full-screen, like 'rdesktop' or Remote Desktop Viewer, still seem to cooperate with popups and with the notification area.
I guess the mouse behaviour is is because we grab the mouse in fullscreen mode? Dunno why the popup notifications are covered though, we're not doing anything special to get fullscreen mode...
<zeenix> mclasen: wouldn't you say bug#693441 is more a gnome-shell issue than Boxes? <mclasen> zeenix: yes, this is up to the fullscreen policies implemented in the hsell
We've gone back and forth a couple of times on that behavior, and not showing non-urgent notifications when there is a fullscreen window on the primary monitor is what we settled on (see bug 677590). The assumption is that if you fullscreen a window, you want to focus on it alone and not be distracted unless absolutely necessary.