Hi,
I have recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04, KDE 4.4. Before I used a window cycling mode, where the subsequent windows were just raised to the top of all other windows when pushing Alt+Tab, after each other. In the latest version this possibility seems to have disappeared. I can only make window cycling via the compositing effects, and the closest mode to what I like is 'Box Switching', but this is still much inferior to the old way:
- it displays a very large panel, showing a thumbnail of all the windows. this is very disturbing for me
- it has a time lag
Is it possible to switch back to the old mode, where Alt+Tab just raises the next window in the cycle to the top? I hate these sophisticated effects. Or at least switch off the thumbnail panel of Box Switching?
Thanks

You can change the settings in: SystemSettings>WindowBehaviour>NavigateThroughWindows

You can configure two alternative methods to cycle windows (with different shortcuts) so you can make one of them a "simple" switch.

I'd recommend setting "no effect" as the effect, and disabling "show window list"

Hi,
Thanks, I tried setting "no effect" and disabling "display list while switching", in which case just nothing happens (i.e. nothing is shown during the cycling, only when I finish the cycling, but this is a random process, since I do not see the windows in the meantime).
If I enable "Show outline of selected window", then at least the outline of the windows during the cycling is shown, but this is of very little information.
Any other suggestions?

I tried it myself, and you're right. It doesn't offer much feedback when cycling through multiple windows.

That probably qualifies as a usability bug, it probably should bring the windows up front "live" as you cycle through them.

You could try enabling "show window list" again, the window list can be configured to be fairly minimalistic (at least you can get rid of window thumbnails)

This is definitely a bug, please file a bug report at bugs.kde.org.

bcooksley wrote:This is definitely a bug, please file a bug report at bugs.kde.org.

No, the bug is already reported: Bug #227324

In fact the old behavior was a bug. The old cycling was a solution to make unreasonable focus policies work with alt+tab. So alt+tab wasn't a real cycling, but it switched the window each time alt+tab was pressed.

The old behaviour can be simulated with the highlight windows feature. Unfortunately it requires the list to be shown.