I have a separated opus toolbar that I have set to "auto-hide" and "keep on top - Top level" at the top of my monitor. Several times a day the toolbar stops appearing on top of the other windows but I couldn't find out a common action that was causing it to stop working.
Now I think I've found out what brakes it. For some reason whenever I maximise a remote desktop window from the windows taskbar and then minimize it again the opus toolbar will no longer "keep on top". If I move my mouse pointer to the top of the screen it pulls the toolbar down but comes up behind other windows, not in front. I have to reset the setting to fix it. But each time I open a windows remote desktop window it loses the settings again
I don't see that on my Vista machine at least. Just tried with a full-screen Remote Desktop on the same monitor, but the auto-hide + on-top toolbar remained on-top (even of the Remote Desktop window).
Are any of the windows which appear above the toolbar themselves on-top? (On-top windows can appear below other on-top windows.)
Is the toolbar set to "Keep On Top -> Top Level" or "Keep On Top -> Opus Only" ?
When I minimize the remote desktop window all the other windows on the system come on top of the opus toolbar, including Outlook and my web browser. If I click the opus toolbar it seems to remember that it's supposed to be on top and starts working again until I maximize/minimize the remote desktop window again at which point it start going behind the other windows again.
One other thing i've noticed about this as well. When I minimize the remote desktop window and the toolbar is in it's forget state, if I hit the show desktop window the toolbar disappears completely and doesn't appear if I move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen. If I click an opus lister it appears again but each time I click show desktop it disappears again. If I click the toolbar to get it to remember to be on top and then hit the show desktop button the toolbar doesn't disappear and I can continue to access it.
I can reproduce the problem now. It seems to happen if you:
Open Remote Desktop.
Minimize Remote Desktop.
Activate a normal (not on-top) window.
Click Remote Desktop in the taskbar.
Remote Desktop is now on-top of all the on-top windows, and if you minimize it gain those on-top windows can go below normal (not on-top) windows, which seems wrong.
It doesn't just affect Opus docked toolbars; it seems to affect most on-top windows. e.g. I can reproduce the same problem with TextPad.
As far as I can tell it is a bug/quirk of Windows. Using Spy++ I can see that the Opus toolbar, and TextPad, are still on-top (WM_EX_TOPMOST), yet normal (not on-top) windows will appear above them when activated. The problem goes away as soon as the toolbar, or TextPad, are activated.
I noticed that this problem does not affect Vista's Sidebar if it is set on-top. I also noticed that when Remote Desktop is minimized the Sidebar flashes redraws itself, so it seems like the Sidebar is detecting the full-screen Remote Desktop minimizing and correcting itself. Maybe Opus's toolbars could do the same. (Still seems like a bug/quirk in Windows to me but one I expect will never be fixed, like all the others. Maybe there's a good reason for it.)
Maybe there's a good reason for it.)