RFE: Show onboard also on fullscreen applications

Bug #326120 reported by Francesco Fumanti
26
This bug affects 5 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Onboard
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
smartphone
Confirmed
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

It would be good if there was an option in onboard that would allow the user to choose whether onboard should remain visible when a fullscreen application is used.

Revision history for this message
Most People Use Their Full Name here (fullname1) wrote :

I second that.
Also noticed it is a hurdle that drop down dialogs can get in the way. firefox wonderbar is the only item I can think of right now.

Revision history for this message
Most People Use Their Full Name here (fullname1) wrote :

Just tested onboard in maverick RC netbook omap4 preinstalled image and noticed a major showstopper using netbooklauncher-efl and onboard:
When the 'go home' gnome-panel-applet is pressed that will show the netbooklauncher-efl 'desktop' the onboard floating maximize icon and onboard itself will disappear behind it.
As I see many use cases for onboard in netbook images I think this is very important thing to fix.
Best regards

Changed in smartphone:
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in onboard:
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in smartphone:
importance: Undecided → High
Revision history for this message
marmuta (marmuta) wrote :

I believe this is fixed in trunk. I've change the window type hint to normal. In my testing, keyboard and icon palette stay on top of full screen apps.

Changed in onboard:
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Jeff Sereno (jsereno) wrote :

Came across this bug report when looking for solutions to the same problem - if I use Firefox or Chromium in full-screen mode, OnBoard does not stay on top despite the OnBoard Preferences set to "Force window to top".

In my testing I discovered that this issue appeared to only apply to Unity 3D. If I switched to Unity 2D, then OnBoard stays on top at all times, even with Firefox or Chromium in full-screen mode.

But after that, I found that NVidia-graphics based machines would persistently put OnBoard behind the full-screen browser regardless of 2D or 3D modes while non-NVidia (on real PC's and VM's using VirtualBox 4.1.20 drivers) would only put OnBoard behind in 3D mode but leave it where I expected in 2D mode. I can alt-tab back to OnBoard only if another window is open such as a Terminal or a Nautilus window. Very much up in the air on this one... :(

I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 fully updated through to today and OnBoard 0.97.0-0ubuntu3. I have not tested the trunk version as described by Marmuta.

Revision history for this message
marmuta (marmuta) wrote :

Interesting and frightening, Jeff. I wasn't aware of window stacking being dependent on the video driver.

I should have been more specific before: commit http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~onboard/onboard/trunk/revision/897 tries to keep Onboard on top of full-screen windows only in compiz/unity and only with "force to top" mode enabled.
I'm not aware of a solution for unity-2d, unfortunately. However, seeing that unity-2d is gone from Quantal, we may not have to find one anymore.

You can try trunk, but on Precise you'll probably run into problems due to the shift to Python3. We were planning to release a version compatible with Precise eventually, though..

Revision history for this message
Francesco Fumanti (frafu) wrote :

Running trunk revision 938 in the quantal development version. I tried Firefox, totem and vlc. If force to top mode is enabled, Onboard remains visible above the fullscreen window; if the force to top mode is disabled, Onboard disappears behind the fullscreen window. I am running the binary nvidia driver, but not yet the 1.12.99 version of the xserver, as the nvidia driver is currently incompatible to it and the nouveau driver has a bug for the GT240.

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Jeff Sereno (jsereno) wrote :

Just thought I'd add another quick comment since I'm now putting most of my comments in the other OnBoard fullscreen bug-report - (https://bugs.launchpad.net/onboard/+bug/1035578) after testing OnBoard 0.97.1, the NVidia-centric issue no longer appears to be an issue. The problem is still present, but now appears to be uniform against any graphics driver.

Revision history for this message
marmuta (marmuta) wrote :

I'll reopen this bug report, because it asks for a choice to keep Onboard on top of full-screen windows. We don't have this yet and it might be difficult to get too. We don't have that much fine grained control over window stacking under a single window manager, let alone across multiple desktop environments. Not saying it won't happen, but don't hold your breath.
Similar bug #1035578 is still fixed, I believe.

Changed in onboard:
status: Fix Committed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
wilk (j-cubizolles) wrote :

Not sure if this bug report is still relevant but since upgrading from 14.10 to 15.04, onboard (the keyboard or the floating icon) disappear in fullscreen mode. I noticed it with the presentation mode of evince and the fullscreen mode of comix/mcomix. you can go full screen and still get the floating icon on top but the icon disappear as soon as you click it and the keyboard doesn't show up (it's actually "behind" the fullscreen window). I'm using a microsoft surface and the only way to get out of fullscreen mode to get a keyboard back is to press the windows button on the screen.

Revision history for this message
marmuta (marmuta) wrote :

Hi wilk, this bug isn't the best match for the new issue in Ubuntu 15.04. I've opened fresh bug #1458402 for you.

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N. W. (nw9165-3201) wrote :
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