Idea #5448: Always open application in workspace where it was started

457

Written by Ansible the 22 Mar 08 at 22:29. Category: Look and Feel.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

I mainly see this with Eclipse, but it also happens with OpenOffice. What happens is this: I'm in workspace A looking at my email. I decide to start Eclipse in workspace B. The Eclipse splash screen appears and I flip back to workspace A again, because eclipse takes a while to start. After a while the eclipse main window comes up on top of my email program, in workspace A. Then I have to drag it over to workspace B, where I wanted it to appear. I would prefer that it come up in the workspade where I started it.

OpenOffice has a similar result, but GIMP will actually pull you over to workspace B when it comes up. That's kind of cool, but behavior is inconsistent between GIMP and OpenOffice or Eclipse.

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Duplicates

Idea #7171: Applications open in the workspace that you opened them in (225 votes)

[Report a duplicate and merge its votes to this idea]

Comments

caligarn wrote on the 23 Mar 08 at 02:29

i wrote an idea similar to this, but maybe a little broader. Basically, make "devilspie" (http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie) into a GUI. This will make it easier for the user to manipulate windows management.

s3a wrote on the 23 Mar 08 at 05:28

OMG, I hate having to bring windows back to the workspace I wanted to start it in! I too hope someone solves this!

andruk wrote on the 23 Mar 08 at 05:51

This may be a bit confusing for new users ("Where did GIMP go? Why did it appear over there?"), at least when it does popup, it lets you know. Some sort of notification would be nice, like "GIMP is waiting for you on workspace 2" and a button to go to workspace 2 or an arrow pointing to the workspace or something would be nice.

blindvic wrote on the 23 Mar 08 at 09:07

Maybe workspace should be flashing when a new windows pops up requiring your attention

DFreeze wrote on the 23 Mar 08 at 09:53

I up your score on this one! But notification is probably a bit 'patronizing' since people that know how to use the different workspaces, will also know they started something on a different workspace.
The only annoying thing is that you can't always start something on the workspace you want because the application follows you back to where you are working now. I didn't know that the behavior even changes per application - I just stopped using the workspaces this way since they wouldn't allow me to use them the way I want. So yay to having persistent and intuitive behavior!

nicoladimaria wrote on the 23 Mar 08 at 13:14

what about alt+click on launcher open that application in next workspace ?

Ansible wrote on the 2 Apr 08 at 16:23

There's another situation sort of relevant to this. That's where you have Thunderbird open in another workspace. What happens is I forget that its open over there and I click on the thunderbird icon. In windows this action would bring up the already-open thunderbird. But in ubuntu this creates a thunderbird window that kind of stalls out. It never opens, and you aren't directed to the other workspace. I generally stare at it a second and then realize what happened, and go search for the original thunderbird instance.

This is probably 70% a bug with thunderbird, but thought I'd mention it anyway.

wearzeep wrote on the 13 Apr 08 at 17:02

Yes! This is soo annoying.

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