GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 705908
ctrlAltTab popup shows _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DIALOG windows
Last modified: 2021-07-05 14:19:54 UTC
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, so feel free to close it if the latter. the ctrlAltTab popup currently shows _DIALOG windows, e.g. password prompts in empathy or the "revert to previous screen resolution" countdown dialog from g-c-c's display panel. If that is desired, we should fix those windows so the ctrlAltTab popup displays their names (it currently doesn't, probably because the windows don't properly set a window name).
Created attachment 251484 [details] screenshot
This behavior was copied from metacity. Ctrl+Alt+Tab shows any window that has input / can take focus that has the skip-taskbar hint set, along with docks. I think it's a feature, but whether we actually want it I'm not sure.
I wonder if removing that would have any effects on a11y, i.e. could you still switch to those windows with the keyboard? If they don't appear on altTab and we remove them from ctrlAltTab too...
The g-c-c countdown window seems to be modal and transient, so it's still possible to switch to it with alt+tab by going to the g-c-c window. If this is a general rule and not specific to this case, I don't think it makes sense to display these modal windows in ctrlAltTab.
The empathy-auth-client window is not modal (I don't think it can be as it is launched from a different process) but seems to be transient for every window (empathy, devhelp, whatever...), and doesn't appear in alt+tab either. Since its always on top, whether it has focus or not, it's possible to switch to it by going to another workspace and coming back. It may make sense to remove it from ctrlAltTab *and* move it to altTab.
One of the issues that I forgot to mention is that these dialogs don't generally have a title set, so they appear in ctrlAltTab without a name, and with a non-symbolic icon, and that looks quite ugly (see the screenshot I attached in comment #1).
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