focus-follow-mouse works poorly with popups

[leonbottou]

Using the 'focus follow mouse' mode,
kwin activates the window below the cursor
when the mouse crosses the window boundary.

It should also activate the window below the
cursor when a modal popup (a menu for instance)
pops down.

Suppose you pop the knetworkmanager menu up
and move the window to another window because you have
the proper network selected. You click the mouse
button into another window. The popup pops down,
but that other window does not get activated.
Instead we get the window that was activated before
popping the menu. That can be very counter-intuitive.

- L.

[leonbottou (leon-bottou)]

I just discovered that this problem also
happens in 'click-to-focus' mode.
It is just more annoying
in 'focus-follows-mouse' mode.

When a popup is displayed, a click outside
the popup window hides the popup and is passed
to the window below the cursor.
But that does not cause the activation of
the underlying window because the window
manager is not informed of that click.
Basically it does not involve the 'Activate and pass click'
function of the window manager.

Here is a precise scenario to reproduce:

- two partially overlapping konqueror windows.
  make sure that one can see the 'new tab' button
  of the lower window.
- perform a quick single click on a menu of the upper
  konqueror window, so that the menu popup is
  displayed and stays there without maintaining
  the mouse button depressed.
- move the mouse over the 'new tab' button of
  the lower window and perform a quick single click.
  The popup disappears and the 'new tab' button
  is triggered. But the lower konqueror window
  remains inactive.

Going to report upstream...

- L.

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

I can confirm this behavior on KDE 3.5.6. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature though.

Could you link your upstream report to this bug?

[kko (kko)]

Quote from the linked upstream report:

"Lubos Lunak 2007-03-23 15:54
It seems focus changes are not handled properly while/after input grabs."

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Hi there!

Thanks for reporting this bug! Your bug seems to be a problem with the KDE program itself, and not with our KDE packages. But don't worry! This issue is being tracked by the KDE developers at: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142040
Once fixed in KDE, it will be included in Kubuntu once the KDE version the fix is in in reaches Kubuntu.

Thanks!