Comment 2 for bug 465763

There are a couple things going on here.

First is that the default configuration (/apps/awn-applet-taskmanager/disable_icon_changes ) is to not show the window icons in the task icon (ever).

Second, is that the current code only uses the app icon _if_ the window icon is changed after the window appears is appears. This works quite well with a lot of apps but not with Pidgin (and probably a few others). There are a couple reasons for attempting this: some applications tend to provide very low quality window icons (Open Office is a long lasting example of this) and the fact that the icons specified in desktop files often do not match the icons that apps provide as Window icons.

That being said:

Sometime in the next couple days I will be pushing the following changes:
1) Changing the default of /apps/awn-applet-taskmanager/disable_icon_changes so the Window icons are displayed. I don't guarantee that this will remain the default but I won't consider changing it again before the setting is exposed in awn-settings.
2) Removing the logic that only used the Window icon if the app changed the icon after the fact (this should fix the Pidgin issue). Not that this will probably lead to, what some will regard, as undesirable icons appearing in the Taskmanager.

and probably

3) Adding an additional modifier that attempts to be smart and only use the Window icon when it contains useful info (some variation on what it does currently). It will probably be some variation on the current approach that special cases apps that identified as being currently a problem.