I have one lister layout which contain 2 lister windows. Before dopus v13, when I opened this lister layout, the two separate listers were sequentlially ordered in the Windows ALT+TAB key sequence so that I could quickly switch between the two open lister windows.
Since v13, if any other Windows applications windows are open, one of my listers opens as the first window in the entire sequence of open window applications, but the second lister is placed by Windows as the last open window in the sequence of ALT+TAB, which means I have to ALT+TAB 2 or more times to switch between the two lister windows in my layout.
Is there a way to correct/improve this behaviour?
Additionally, and also in versions of Dopus earlier than v13, these two lister windows in my layout open correctly but in the task bar, the desired lister window, although my top window, is listed second in the taskbar rather than first, and the secondary lister window, which correctly opens under the first lister window in the lister layout, is listed first in the taskbar, which is counter-intuitive. I have tried several times to resave the lister layout as I would like them to appear, but no luck. Is there a way to correct this too?
Hi. I'm on v13.6 now and just resaved my lister layout, hoping this problem is now solved, as suggested by Leo it would be. But I'm having the same issue. Should I be doing something more to "reset" this and get it working right, or is the problem not yet actually fixed?
Still working OK here, at least with three simple windows in the layout.
If your windows (or system speed/load) are such that they take a moment to open, Opus might stop waiting for them to finish doing that before opening the next window in the layout.
I've got a super powerful, super fast (very expensive) laptop. I don't think that's the issue.
Might be that my stupid is the problem, but I'm not sure.
For my own tests, I opened three windows, in C:\, D:\, E:\, and arranged them so they partially overlap and are in that order (C:\ at the back, E:\ at the front).
I then used Settings > Lister Layouts > Save All Listers and called the layout "Test", setting it to close existing windows when it opens (makes testing easier, but shouldn't really matter).
Then I opened the layout via the tray icon menu, and checked the windows were still in that order.
Have done that a few times, on both Windows 10 and 11, and haven't seen it go wrong yet.
Hi Leo. Thanks for going through this with me. I've attached now a video capture of what I'm doing and what I get from that, including my voiceover explaining as I go along. Hope this helps.
The window ordering is only applied to how the windows stack on the screen, and the order they are on the taskbar, when initially opened.
The alt-tab list in Windows orders things based on which window was last active, and won't keep multiple windows together at all, no matter what we do. There's no way to insert a window into a particular place in the alt-tab list.
When a layout is opened, the topmost window is chosen as the one that becomes active, which puts it at the front of the alt-tab list. The other windows aren't made active at all, so they'll be at the bottom of the alt-tab list. As soon as you start clicking on other windows in the system, the list will be jumbled up anyway, so it's not something you can really keep ordered in that way.
We could (temporarily) activate each window as it opens, but that would cause some flickering (at least on the taskbar, if not the windows themselves), and it'd potentially cause very unwanted behavior with layouts that open windows on multiple virtual desktops, as it would cause multiple desktop switches back and forth as the layout opened. (Or it'd have to avoid activating windows on other desktops, which would result in inconsistent alt-tab orders for some layouts/windows vs others.) I'm not sure that would be worth doing, given the order will be jumbled up as soon as you click on other windows.
I see. I understand now too.
Thanks for the time you took with this. The outcome is annoying and disappointing, but certainly not a big deal. So thanks.
