clicking on wingpanel with a full screen window in the background brings it back to focus

[shade379]

if there are multiple windows open and if one of them is open full screen in the background, then clicking on the wingpanel on the top of the screen brings forward the full screen window.

also i noticed if there are multiple windows open in the background in full screen, then clicking the wingpanel brings forward the first window that was put in full screen.

I think it should not bring any windows to focus but do nothing instead.
Is this behaviour intended?

[felix-andreas]

This was introduced in elementary/wingpanel#73 to make it more convenient to grab a maximized window. The related wingpanel code is:

https://github.com/elementary/wingpanel/blob/35dfcd8ce79878103523b83a59cf2d430d02f44f/src/Widgets/Panel.vala#L81-L111

and

https://github.com/elementary/wingpanel/blob/35dfcd8ce79878103523b83a59cf2d430d02f44f/wingpanel-interface/FocusManager.vala#L108-L138

It does exactly what you described:

1. On primary button click, it grabs the currently focused window if it is vertically maximized.
2. Otherwise it grabs the vertically maximized window with the lowest z-index.

Maybe it is more reasonable to skip 2. so that no background-window is focused when one accidentally clicks on the wingpanel instead of an indicator.

[shade379]

This was introduced in elementary/wingpanel#73 to make it more convenient to grab a maximized window.

ohhh, yeah that makes sense and is very useful.

Though I don't know how great it is though when they are maximized windows in the background.

1. On primary button click, it grabs the currently focused window if it is vertically maximized.
2. Otherwise it grabs the vertically maximized window with the lowest z-index.

Maybe it is more reasonable to skip 2. so that no background-window is focused when one accidentally clicks on the wingpanel instead of an indicator.

Yeah it might be better if we skipped 2, because I have clicked on the wingpanel accidentally multiple times and its brought forward maximized windows that I didn't want to before.

Maybe someone with some more experience with the user interface would have a better idea if 2 should be skipped (i can't decide if it is beneficial or not) or put up a poll to ask people?