can't alt-tab out of new modal dialogs

[Amnon Aaronsohn]

Binary package hint: metacity

I'm using metacity version 2.16.3-0ubuntu2. When an application opens a modal dialog (e.g. "Open File" in firefox), the dialog is shown and receives the focus as expected. However, when you press alt-tab once to switch to another open application, nothing happens -- the focus stays at the dialog. After you "break out" of the window (by pressing alt-tab-tab or by using the mouse) the application works as usual.

Steps to reproduce:

(1) open firefox and another application (say gnome-terminal).
(2) notice that you can move between the applications by pressing alt-tab
(3) press ctrl-o to open the "open file" dialog in firefox
(4) press alt-tab and notice that the focus stays at the "open file" dialog instead of moving to the terminal.
(5) hold alt and press tab twice to switch to the terminal
(6) return to the still-open dialog and notice that now you can switch to the
terminal by pressing alt-tab.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Using alt-tab switch to the firefox non-modal window there, is that what you describe as a bug?

[Amnon Aaronsohn (bla-cs)]

I don't understand your question. However, note that firefox was only an example. Same thing happens in other places, such as "save as" dialog in gedit. And the problem is only with modal dialogs (non-modal dialogs have another problem with alt-tab...)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

What I'm saying is that when using alt-tab the focus switch from the modal dialo to the app dialog on my desktop (you can look at the border around the window to know which is being selected), is that the same behaviour you are having and considering buggy?

[Amnon Aaronsohn (bla-cs)]

In the dialog when I press alt-tab, as long as alt is pressed, the border of the current application (firefox in the example above) is marked. When I release the alt key the focus returns to the dialog. The result is that pressing alt-tab does nothing.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

probably similar to bug #16755