No way to switch quickly between windows (or apps) on the same desktop

Bug #842475 reported by Jonathan Lange
36
This bug affects 8 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Unity
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I love many new things about the new Switcher, and have been loyally trying to use it and enjoy it over the last few days.

However, I really, really need a way of switching between windows or apps on the same desktop. Using Scale to get a view of windows on a desktop is just too slow and too mousey.

It doesn't have to be Alt-Tab, although truly that would be easiest for my eighteen year old muscle memory, but it does have to be a key I can quickly hit.

My main use case, fwiw, is switching rapidly between my text editor and the terminal that I use to run tests and do other programmerly things.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: unity 4.12.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.15-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,mousepoll,resize,gnomecompat,place,wall,vpswitch,move,regex,snap,session,animation,expo,workarounds,ezoom,staticswitcher,fade,scale,unityshell]
Date: Tue Sep 6 10:50:48 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-07-26 (41 days ago)

Revision history for this message
Jonathan Lange (jml) wrote :
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in unity:
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Marcin Juszkiewicz (hrw) wrote :

I am trying Unity instead of my usual XFCE based setup today. Switching between windows on one desktop is important for me as I have terminals where I build packages and gvim windows where I edit them. With default setup when I want to switch terminal<>gvim I end in firefox instead.

Revision history for this message
Dylan Weremeichik (dylan.weremeichik) wrote :

I do believe that you can now use alt-tab to change between your windows on any desktop, as well as alt-` (also known as alt-grave) to switch between two windows of a specific application. This was released in 11.10. Hope this is what you were looking for!

Revision history for this message
Jonathan Lange (jml) wrote :

Dylan, thanks, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a way to switch rapidly between windows on the same desktop, and not to windows on any other desktop. That is, a switcher that is restricted to windows (or apps, I guess) on the current desktop.

Alt-` is a switcher restricted to windows of an application, regardless of desktop. That's definitely not what I want in this case (although it's very handy to have in other cases).

Revision history for this message
Dylan Weremeichik (dylan.weremeichik) wrote :

This may be a regression bug, the help page for shortcuts says that super+w would do what your asking, now it pulls up all of them, like super+a used to do. The link to the help page is: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KeyboardShortcuts#Desktop_Effects_enabled_shortcuts

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