New windows appear at the bottom of the window stack, unless "New Window Focus" is active. New windows should appear at the top of the middle/normal window stack space, regardless of the "New Window Focus" setting, as is customary and common prior to v4.6. Is this, perhaps, a side-effect of the 4.6 code change referenced in the Changelog as, "Do not automatically give focus to windows placed on lower layers, but focus those on upper layers at first map?" The new behavior is "new windows appear at bottom of stack, unless setting to force focus on new windows is enabled," which is not the same thing. Focusing and Window placement should be completely independent, and have always been. This change is completely bizarre. I don't understand what was wrong with focusing on lower windows in the first place. I also don't understand why that behavior change resulted in a disruption of the behavior I like. Furthermore, shouldn't the default placement for new windows be at the top of the normal/middle stack space? Why is the default placement of new windows at the bottom of the stack space?
Thanks to Matthew for pointing me to http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3200 At least this suggests how this change may have started. But, I still don't understand the change. The 3200 bug doesn't make it clear why this change was accepted or even if the security claim is valid. I think the claims in bug 3200 are fairly easy to refute and, certainly, the behavior I like should be preserved even if a change was made.
From Olivier's comments in bug 3200, it would seem that the behavior I did *not* like--i.e. new windows are placed below the active window--has always been available as "Focus Stealing Prevention". Now, however, in 4.6, focus stealing prevention seems to have no effect: on or off, new windows appear below the active window. Is this what changed in 4.6? I don't know if I should be happy that there is an existing option that controls this or even more disappointed that the option still exists but doesn't work. Could someone explain what focus stealing prevention is supposed to do and how it may have changed with 4.6? There doesn't seem to be any documentation on the Window Manger Tweaks settings control panel.
(In reply to comment #0) Correction. Placement isn't at the bottom of the stack space, it's just behind the active window. Although, the active window isn't necessarily the application that created the new window.
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