Window displayed on wrong desktop and up in the air

[Martin Wildam]

Hi,
I noticed a strange behaviour of Unity when working with multiple windows on different desktops: It may happen that a window is thrown up above the top edge of the screen when clicking the launcher + moving it to another desktop.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open an application on desktop 1 (Thunderbird or Geany are the ones where it happens often to me and can be reproduced with those).
2. Switch to another desktop (number 3 for example).
3. Open another application (Firefox, Nautilus or whatever).
4. Open a second window of that application.
5. Click once on the desktop background and once on the first window (this step may be omited, however with this step for me it happened to be 100 % reproducable, instead if omiting did not always happen).
6. Click on the launcher for the first application started (currently on Desktop 1). Desktop is switched and application is shown - fine.
7. Click on the launcher for the second application.

Effect: Nothing happens (however, small triangle left to launcher icon is displayed filled). If you now press ALT+Space, followed by "m" then you can move the mouse to get the window back to viewport. It looks like the window has been moved to current desktop but up in the air above the top edge of the screen.

Desired effect: Switch to desktop 3 and show the last window of the second app started.

Not sure if it is understandable therefore I made a video to show (see attachment).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: unity 5.12-0ubuntu1.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-25.40-generic-pae 3.2.18
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-25-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,decor,gnomecompat,regex,compiztoolbox,place,widget,move,imgpng,animation,workarounds,snap,grid,expo,vpswitch,session,commands,resize,mousepoll,unitymtgrabhandles,ezoom,wall,switcher,fade,scale,unityshell]
Date: Sun Jun 17 14:55:22 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20120423)
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

I changed desktop settings back to the original 2x2 and problem then does not seem to occur.

Side note: 2x2 desktop however is very unhandy for me (and in general I think) because it is much more difficult to keep in mind how to switch to previous or next desktop using keyboard shortcuts. With 3x1 (or 4x1) I only need to go left for previous desktops or right for next desktops. This is more fluently to remember. In Gnome 2 at least you could see on what desktop you are, now on unity you don't see that any more. See http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29858/

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I'm fairly sure this is a bug that was fixed recently. But I can't find that bug right now.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

If a window appears lost, try this as a workaround:

1. Click on its icon on the launcher.
2. Press Alt+F7
3. Move the mouse around (and be careful not to press any buttons). This will automatically grab and drag the window you selected in the launcher.
4. When you have the window where you want it, click the mouse.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

All (other than Martin),

If you're affected by this bug, what Ubuntu version(s) are you using?