onboard hidden if firefox in fullscreen mode

[Franz Gratzer]

I use Ubuntu 12.04 (including proprietary sources) on an EloTouch C3 19" touchscreen computer. Since I use the general Linux driver form EloTech for the touchscreen computer so far everything works fine with Ubuntu.

I have only one issue: If I set Firefox to fullscreen mode (F11) the Onboard screen keyboard doesn't show up any more even if I set the Onboard configuation to "always in foreground" option. (Sorry, I can't recall the exact name of the configuration option since I work in German and I'm writing this report from a different computer.)

I'm under the impression, that the screenboard actually is working fine still, but can't get to the top if Firefox is in fullscreen mode.

Am I missing something or is that an issue not encountered by the Onboard team yet?

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

There is an updated version of Onboard in our stable PPA for Ubuntu 12.04. Could you please try whether it fixes your issue?
https://launchpad.net/~onboard/+archive/stable

[Franz Gratzer (franz-gratzer)]

Thank you very much for your incredibly fast replie. I'll add the
backport to my sources list and report back as soon as possible...

On Sat, 2012-08-11 at 09:25 +0000, Francesco Fumanti wrote:
> There is an updated version of Onboard in our stable PPA for Ubuntu 12.04. Could you please try whether it fixes your issue?
> https://launchpad.net/~onboard/+archive/stable
>

[Franz Gratzer (franz-gratzer)]

Great, after adding the new soure to my sources list, updating the software and a reboot it works fine.

Now I can access the on screen keyboard even in browser fullscreen mode. (In fact I'm writing this message with the on screen keyboard in Firefox fullscreen mode already.)

Thank you very much for the fast response.

Onboard is a very fine piece of software. :)

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

Thanks for informing us that version 0.97.1 of Onboard fixes your problem.

Thanks also for telling us that you appreciate Onboard.

Feel free to contact us again if you have further issues.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

I found the upcoming Onboard 0.98 was still affected in Quantal. I've pushed a fix to set window type hints to NORMAL, this seems to keep Onboard on top of full-screen windows. Thanks for the bug report.

[Jeff Sereno (jsereno)]

Not sure how it worked for Franz, but testing 0.97.1-0ppa~precise2 myself in Ubuntu 12.04 (updated through to today) unfortunately yields no success in fullscreen applications be it Firefox, Chromium or Google Chrome.

Have tested in a VM, real Intel-graphics-based PC and a real NVidia-graphics-based PC. No joy. Everytime I go fullscreen, OnBoard remains behind the full-screen display despite "Force window to top" settings. Rebooted a few times just to make sure too.

Tried to use wmctrl to try and force the OnBoard window to the front too or force Chromium/Firefox to the back, but with no success.

Also tried toggling Compiz's "Fullscreen Legacy Support" in the Workarounds plugin on and off with no change either.

There is also no apparent difference with using Unity 2D and Unity 3D either.

At this stage I have had more success with 0.97.0 with being at the front on test machines and VM's in Unity 2D mode, but no success on the PC I intend to use. :(

As a side note, I've noticed 12.04's handling of fullscreen applications in general seems to have changed from previous versions - you can't even use MPlayer full-screen if Firefox or Chromium are already in fullscreen mode. Previously, you could.

Is there a place to get hold of 0.98 to try out?

[Franz Gratzer (franz-gratzer)]

Hi Jeff,

I'm not on the pc I configured successfully with full screen support,
but have you tried turning off the "Force window to top" option?

If I remember correctly it worked for me in this setting...

Good luck,
Franz

On Thu, 2012-08-23 at 05:30 +0000, Jeff Sereno wrote:
> Not sure how it worked for Franz, but testing 0.97.1-0ppa~precise2
> myself in Ubuntu 12.04 (updated through to today) unfortunately yields
> no success in fullscreen applications be it Firefox, Chromium or Google
> Chrome.
>
> Have tested in a VM, real Intel-graphics-based PC and a real NVidia-
> graphics-based PC. No joy. Everytime I go fullscreen, OnBoard remains
> behind the full-screen display despite "Force window to top" settings.
> Rebooted a few times just to make sure too.
>
> Tried to use wmctrl to try and force the OnBoard window to the front too
> or force Chromium/Firefox to the back, but with no success.
>
> Also tried toggling Compiz's "Fullscreen Legacy Support" in the
> Workarounds plugin on and off with no change either.
>
> There is also no apparent difference with using Unity 2D and Unity 3D
> either.
>
> At this stage I have had more success with 0.97.0 with being at the
> front on test machines and VM's in Unity 2D mode, but no success on the
> PC I intend to use. :(
>
> As a side note, I've noticed 12.04's handling of fullscreen applications
> in general seems to have changed from previous versions - you can't even
> use MPlayer full-screen if Firefox or Chromium are already in fullscreen
> mode. Previously, you could.
>
> Is there a place to get hold of 0.98 to try out?
>

[Jeff Sereno (jsereno)]

Hi Franz,

If I turn that option off, then it definitely doesn't come to the front unless the browser is a window.

I've had an interesting development, though - without changing anything else, all of a sudden OnBoard 0.97.1 is staying on top of Chromium about 8 times out of every 10 reboots on this Kiosk box I'm building, but it starts up very oddly: The startup process has a bash script execute which rotates my display 90 degrees left (for a portrait display) before launching OnBoard to be a specific size and position at the bottom of the screen. Chromium is then launched and run in Kiosk mode full-screen. OnBoard immediately disappears behind Chromium, but reappears by itself after exactly 40 seconds! If I close the browser, OnBoard stays. If I restart Chromium, OnBoard goes behind and stays there unless I pkill the OnBoard process and start it again AFTER starting Chromium.

Very odd, but sadly not consistent either.

I've also noticed that when OnBoard is on top and staying there, as soon as a JavaScript Alert box is used (eg: for prompting users about incorrect data entry), OnBoard disappears while focus goes to the Unity panel, you click OK on the alert, the browser comes back to focus and Unity disappears again, but OnBoard does not come back - it's lost behind the browser again until you kill and restart OnBoard after restarting Chromium again.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Jeff, we have just released 0.98 for Quantal, but I have yet to test and probably debug 0.98 for Precise. I'll let you know when it's ready. Quantal's Onboard runs with Python 3, whereas Precise requires Python 2 Onboard, hence the need for thorough testing.

Meanwhile, try turning on "Force window to top" mode and launch Onboard 0.97.1 like this:
$ onboard -q default

By coincidence, this does almost the same as the full-screen fix in 0.98. The only drawback will be that the keyboard window can be resized by Compiz' grid plugin, but that only applies when force-to-top is disabled anyway.

[Jeff Sereno (jsereno)]

Thanks Marmuta, I'll give that a try and provide some feedback later.

[Jeff Sereno (jsereno)]

Tried using the "-q default" parameters as suggested, and they didn't change anything. Same issues as before.

Just some further info in case it's relevant - my kiosk PC starts OnBoard and Chromium using the following script that runs upon auto-login of the kiosk user:

#!/bin bash
xrandr -o left
rsync -qr --delete --exclude='.Xauthority' --exclude='.gvfs' /etc/profile.d/kiosk/ $HOME/
xset -dpms
xset s off
onboard -s 1050x400 -x 0 -y 1280 &
sleep 10
while true;do
        chromium-browser --kiosk
        pkill onboard
        onboard -s 1050x400 -x 0 -y 1280 &
done

Screen res is 1080x1650, NVidia graphics on an ASRock ION330 box with Ubuntu 12.04. The pkill and restart for OnBoard I found necessary to ensure that OnBoard stayed on top if someone managed to shutdown Chromium (eg: USB keyboard and ALT+F4).

In Compiz, all functions related to resizing and moving windows (by the operator) are disabled. Unity is hidden. All keyboard shortcuts are disabled in Keyboard Shortcuts. The only function I can't stop is ALT+F4 from a USB keyboard. Not sure if any of those changes could potentially affect OnBoard.

Other than that, my setup is fairly vanilla Ubuntu.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Yes, confirming this is still an issue for full-screen windows launched after Onbord became visible the last time. This may be a problem of this specific use case, regular showing and hiding, e.g. by auto-show, does bring Onboard to top. When I launch chromium --kiosk first, Onboard last, it works here (Quantal).

Ultimately Onboard is at the mercy of the window manager. We can only suggest the stacking order, compiz is free to ignore that as it sees fit.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Trunk has a potential fix for this now. The mapping order shouldn't matter anymore, Onboard stays on top here no matter if it's started before of after the full-screen application. Needs more testing, though. I'll see that I get a snapshot into our PPA.
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~onboard/onboard/trunk/revision/945

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

A snapshot of revision 969 that contains the fix is available in our Snapshots PPA for precise and quantal as soon as they are finished building.
https://launchpad.net/~onboard/+archive/snapshots

[Omega (atrauzzi)]

I doubt the fix made it into 12.10, but I'm definitely encountering an issue where onboard doesn't always stay on top of chrome/chromium in full screen mode.

Hopefully the next Ubuntu will include the fix! :)

[Jeff Sereno (jsereno)]

I've found that when OnBoard doesn't want to stay on top of a full-screen Chrome, I have to start it as normal and then in a remote terminal I issue a deliberate restart of OnBoard as follows:

DISPLAY=:0 /usr/bin/pkill onboard;DISPLAY=:0 /usr/bin/onboard -s 1050x400 -x 0 -y 1280 &

In this case, referring to the first graphical display, it kills OnBoard then restarts it with a width of 1050 pixels by 400 pixels at a physical screen position of no pixels across and 1280 pixels down, and executes it as a background task (ampersand).

Oddly enough I can't just start it this way (via terminal) and expect it to stay on top. It only stays on top after I deliberately kill it and restart it for the first time.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

No, the fix didn't make it. That was rev. 945, while Onboard 0.98.0 was released with revision 940. We tried, but the update to 0.98.1 wasn't accepted into Quantal.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/onboard/+bug/1057518
You can get a newer version from our PPA, however, or with Raring.

Testing with Raring and Onboard 0.99 alpha, the fix still seems to work. I couldn't get Onboard below full-screen Chromium with either starting first or last.