window spread not working with always on top

[Edwin Lee]

Greetings:

I encountered an issue on my working install of 12.10 64-bit, and was able to replicate the issue on a fresh install on a virtualbox.

In this bug, I will refer to window "spread" as the action achieved by clicking on a Unity Launcher icon when multiple instances of that app are already open. I can't recall if that is the official name or not.

I noticed that when I tried to spread an app's windows didn't work when one of the windows was marked as always on top. I think I can confirm that this issue only occurs when a separate app is open and in between the current app's drawing stack order. Consider a working example:

I have a browser (chrome) open in the background with my email. I open another application (TeXMaker...) to do some writing. I open another browser window, make it small, and put it on the corner of my screen, set to 'always-on-top', to monitor something while I write.

I then want to see my email window. When I click the Unity Launcher, I expect the two browsers to spread so I can select my email instance. Instead, nothing happens. The 'always on top' window stays on top, and the screen doesn't change.

OK, so I tried on a fresh 12.10 install on a virtual box.
1. I open two nautilus windows. I mark one as 'always on top'. Click on the nautilus Unity launcher, and it spreads fine.
2. Then I opened firefox. It opens in front of one nautilus and behind the 'always-on-top' nautilus window.
3. I click on the nautilus launcher again it no longer spreads.

I can provide any further information that would help. I don't think it matters but I am running the x-swat nvidia driver, and I have been upgrading this installation since 11.04.

Thanks!

(Cross-reference: This is discussed on a thread I started at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=12493592#post12493592 prior to opening this bug.)

[varunendra (varunendra)]

Just tried it on a Live session of 12.10 32-bit on a virtualbox VM, and can confirm the behaviour.

However, on my 12.04 64-bit host, everything is working fine.

[Edwin Lee (leeed2001)]

I guess that makes it a regression from 12.04, unless either it was some as-designed change, or I am just missing something.

Thanks for confirming this. I hope to be a part of the bug fix process.