Launcher - no discoverable way to open multipule instances of an app from only the launcher

[Hans Heintze]

Currently there is no way to open multipule intances of an app except for middle clicking the launcher icon. this is entireley undiscoverable.

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

Hi

Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10
unity:
  Installed: 4.24.0-0ubuntu2.1
  Candidate: 4.24.0-0ubuntu2.1
  Version table:
 *** 4.24.0-0ubuntu2.1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     4.22.0-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
I can confirm that when using the package unity on Ubuntu 11.10 using the steps provided by Hans that I can reproduce the bug. Therefore I have set this bug to confirmed.

I use this feature everyday and feel that it is a very important feature of unity. However I only found it out by accident, therefore I guess that many other people don't know about it as there is no discoverable way to find the feature.

I feel that this bug needs discussing with the design team, so I have added them to this bug.

Andy

[Hans Heintze (hansheintze1)]

I forgot to mention that the middle click functionality is not mentioned in the ubuntu desktop guide. I'm not sure if this belongs in a seperate bug or not.

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Leaving status as new because we have a solution to the problem but it won't land until at least P + 1

[John Lea (johnlea)]

The recently announced "Spread" feature will provide a discoverable way to open new instances of an application window, see http://design.canonical.com/2012/03/task-switching-in-ubuntu-and-a-introduction-to-the-spread/ and http://design.canonical.com/the-toolkit/unity-task-switching/ for full details.

As this is a whole project that requires implementation (and which will be tracked separately), I am marking this bug 'confirmed' but no action should be taken to resolve this bug outside of "The Spread" project.