new windows pop under

[helmo]

When I click the 'New Activity' or 'Show overview' menu items the appropriate window opens ... but hidden behind other open windows. (Ubuntu 14.04)

This looks like projecthamster/hamster#139

Any idea how to fix it here?

[nchachereau]

This is somewhat complicated: if I remember correctly, window managers try to prevent windows coming to the front if you have not asked for them explicitly (e.g. to prevent disruptions in your work). In this case, of course, the user wants the window to be in the front. However, the window manager does not know this, because everything works through DBus messages.

What we could look into:

• There might be a way to pass a parameter (I think it was a timestamp) when creating the window, to help the window manager (e.g. Unity).
• We could import code from hamster and display the window directly, instead of calling the functions that send DBus messages. But with the current code, it would not be a clean way of dealing with this. To achieve it in a cleaner way, the hamster code base would need a major restructuring, which it needs anyway, as discussed in dev-mailinglist hamster#261. But as the last message in that thread demonstrates, there are not enough people with enough time to achieve this now.