Panel and launcher visible on top of multimonitor non-focused fullscreen apps

[KarlRelton]

When a window is in 'fullscreen' mode (fullscreen, not maximize) on a multi-monitor output, then the unity top panel should stay hidden unless another (non fullscreen) window on that particular monitor is given the focus.

Currently, should the fullscreen window lose focus, then the unity panel takes precedence and goes on top, regardless of which monitor the newly focussed window is on.

My use case is this:

2 monitors being used with some presentation software (opensong) which has 2 windows - the presentation fullscreen window to show on the projector, and a control window to show on the other monitor.

Currently as soon as a user clicks in the control window, the presentation window having lost focus then has the panel appear over it - degrading the experience for the audience. This can be restored by clicking on the fullscreen window to give focus back to it, but really the operator should stay working within their control window to control what is being presented.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

I'd approve this in a jiffy, but not sure if it breaks design. To be safe, I'm marking this needs-design

[KarlRelton (karllinuxtest-relton)]

Yes - its a corner case that maybe needs to be related to the http://design.canonical.com/the-toolkit/unity-multi-monitor-interactions spec, particularly section 2.12 'Top bar and Global Menu'.

[Maximilian Federle (ppd)]

I believe the duplicate status is wrong. This bug here describes a situation where the panel and launcher appear on the fullscreen window AFTER it loses focus, whereas bug #734908 is dealing with general misbehaviour resulting in a situation where the panel and launcher always appear over the fullscreen window.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

I agree with Maximilian Federle (comment #3). This is not the same behavior.

In my case, I use my HD tv as a second monitor, to view movies. If I drag a movie to my tv and put it fullscreen (VLC) it displays completely correctly. If however someone else is opens another application or brings focus to it, the top panel and launcher become visible on top of the movie (that keeps playing fine.)

[Treris (treris)]

My use case is exactly like David Sommen's, I too often play movies (using Totem) on my TV while still surfing the internet or other stuff on my primary monitor. I don't see why unity should be allowed to break the full screen status of Totem and display the panel.
I should think this error gets even more annoying when you're giving a presentation using a beamer as a secondary screen. As soon as you do anything on the laptop screen your presentation (on the beamer) will be disturbed by the panel showing up....very unprofessional!

[Michał Kozal (panaut0lordv)]

Here we go. Eg. I use Virtualbox to have some fullscreen Win7 on laptop monitor and other things on top monitor.
The problem is that experience isn't seamless. Well, with VBox it's only partially annoying but when I try to watch fullscreen video on one monitor and do something else on the other it is extremely frustrating issue.

Maybe an option to have a top panel only on one display would be hack solution until it's fixed?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 748539, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Reversed duplication marking as this bug is already on our approved bug list and has a slightly better description (even though this bug is slightly newer)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Actually, I think bug 748539 is quite clear enough. It should be tracked there.