Reordering of Windows when switching between multiple instances of same app...

[John M.K.]

The reordering of windows when switching between multiple instances of the same application (say Firefox) is really, really frustrating...

I hope I am not the only one here.

I expected (for me that is the intuitive choice) that when switching between say 4 instances of firefox, they would appear in the order in which I opened the various windows (top left the one opened first, on its right the one opened second, below on the left the third one, and so forth...).

I am fine with it being the otherway around, but changing the order whenever I choose a different instance? Implementation-wise that might be easy (keep a stack, permute top element with selected one...). For a human though, this is extremely confusing (maybe its just me, but I don't think with stacks : ).

A typical usage senario for me: I don't know any keyboard shortcut to switch between multiple instances of an app, say Firefox (I am sure there is one, I just don't know it). I want to copy something from one instance of Firefox, then switch to another instance and paste it there. And then again go back to the first copy, go to the second, paste,... So I have to keep double-clicking the firefox button in the Unity Launcher, select the instance I want, back and forth and back and forth. The whole process is really frustrating.

The only thing that can make it even more frustrating is having the order of the preview icons on the switcher change order every time I switch to a different instance. It takes time for my brain to process the visual stimuli and figure out the correct one. If the order was persistent (I think the obvious choice is keeping the temporal launch order...) it would be far less frustrating.