Re: [Pan-users] Firefox starts *behind* Pan window

[Duncan]

Maurice posted on Fri, 05 Jul 2013 21:26:46 +0000 as excerpted:

> On Fri, 05 Jul 2013 18:29:34 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
>> open firefox on a different desktop, then switch to the one you're
>> running pan on, and click a link.
> 
>   Yes, that works, but my point is that - without having Firefox open
> before clicking a URL  in e·g. KMail or Kwrite - Firefox does come up on
> top.
> 
> So with KDE apps it does, but with Pan (a Gnome app) it doesn't.
> 
> The question is: why the difference?
> 
> (And why did it not do that with 'old' Pan.)

Do you have any window rules that could affect either pan or firefox?

Here, I have window rules for both, but only the firefox window rule sets 
focus-stealing-prevention, forcing it to none.  If I change that to high 
or extreme, then firefox's new windows /always/ appear below pan/claws.

However, that's not advised as it would mess with firefox's alert 
windows, etc, as well, making them appear behind an existing firefox, 
which has security and usability implications.

At one point kwin shipped with a default rule to force firefox to focus-
stealing-prevention none for this very reason.  I don't believe it does 
any more altho I'm not sure, but it's very possible that kwin has a hard-
coded rule for firefox that deals with that now, which /could/ be 
interfering with the the rules we'd set, unless we make them strong 
enough to override it (high/extreme probably overrides it, as it'd 
probably apply only to normal focus-stealing, the default).

Talking about which, if you're going by the behavior of pan1 on your old 
system and pan2 on the new system, it may well be that it's kwin's 
behavior that has changed between versions.  But if you've tried both 
pans on the same system (thus with the same kwin) and old-pan behaved one 
way while new-pan behaves a different way, then that's excluded.


Meanwhile, I /can/ make firefox consistently appear above other 
windows... by setting keep above, apply initially, yes.  Of course that 
has other implications as well, namely that until I toggle the keep-above 
button in its titlebar (which I have set visible by default for all 
windows, customized titlebar buttons and button positions), firefox can't 
be lowered, because it has the keep-above attribute set.  However, I can 
still toggle it, because I set apply initially, not force.  If I'd set 
force, then the button in the titlebar would disappear as it'd no longer 
be possible to turn the attribute off (except by changing the rule) 
anyway.


It'd also be possible to script the behavior.  kwin's new javascripted 
window scripts /might/ be able to do it, I'm not sure, but I'm reasonably 
sure I could hack up a bash script using wmctrl or wmiface that would 
launch the new firefox window, set it to keep above (to raise it), sleep 
for a few seconds, then set it to normal (to not interfere with normal 
window operation).

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman