Unity windows names when displaying multiple windows of the same category

[Alex Burdu]

I don't know if this is the best summary description but what i am referring to is when you have multiple windows opened with the same program (e.g.: you have multiple .pdf files opened) and they get grouped in the same lens in the unity task bar. When you click twice on the lens, thumbnails of those windows will appear in the center of the screen.

The problem is that, when you have too many windows, you don't know which is which, so showing their name on top of their thumbnail would be great. Many times i click the wrong thumbnail and i have to repeat the steps until i get the one i was looking for

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to report this. Even though I am able to reproduce the _exact_ behaviour you describe, I can easily solve the problem by mousing over the thumbnail which reveals the name to me. Would you consider this a suitable alternative to your proposed solution of overlaying the thumbnail with the window's name?

[Alex Burdu (alex.burdu)]

Hi Chris,

Mousing over does not reveal the name for me (maybe it;s a bug?). Anyway, even if it had, i would still find it less efficient. Imagine this situation: you are working on a project with lots of applications open and many of the same category. You want to be able to move fast between them and alt+tab wouldn't do the job well because you have too many windows open. I think that clicking on the icon in the bar and then being able to spot the right thumbnail very fast increases the speed at which you are working. Mousing over each thumbnail would just slow things down.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

How about having the name of each instance of the application listed in the context menu for the lens, so that right-clicking will give you a list of open instances of the application?

The thing about using the thumbnails to identify a particular document is that it would become very difficult to do on a smaller screen with a lot of windows open, as the instance name would have to be heavily compressed, either in font size or having it wrap around multiple times, or order to fit on the screen.

[Alex Burdu (alex.burdu)]

i think that would do the trick (and having the compiz mouse over thumbnail utility working with this would be great too), but then what would be the point of having the thumbnails on left click? It would be just a show off behaviour with not that much utility.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

I've forwarded this to Ayatana Design since a solution to this may need some input from them.

[John Lea (johnlea)]

This is a issue we are very much aware of, unfortunately we don't have the resources for fix this issue in the 12.04 cycle, however it is on our radar and will be solved in a subsequent release. Marking 'opinion' because the solution will be part of a larger body of new functionality, and the desired solution is not included in this bug report.