This a user experience issue and easily reproducible.
Open multiple instances of your favorite application. Then click on Unity's icon for the app when you are already focused on one instance of it. This opens up a tile of the instances of the application which you can select from with the mouse.
Now while that tile is shown, use ATL+backtick to select the window you want instead of clicking with the mouse. The result is that the tile window doesn't go away.
If you use ALT+backtick and switch to ALT+tab (or start from ALT+tab from the start) and select another kind of application, then the tile goes away correctly and the other application comes in the front.
I can verify that the window you would select with ALT+backtick does actually get to the top of the view and is marked as the "last visited instance", because if you switch to another application (using ALT+tab) and click back on the group of the original application you would see the one you previously selected with ALT+backtick.
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Here are step-by-step instructions.
- Open a couple of terminals
- Open firefox
- Click on the terminal icon
* This should open a tile showing the various terminal windows you have open
* If that doesn't happen, click again (you were not on a terminal window before)
- Use ALT+backtick to select one of the terminal windows
Expected behavior: The tile of terminals goes away and the selected terminal is focused
Observed behavior: The tile of terminals stays on the screen
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: unity 7.3.1+14.10.20141016-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-29.39-generic 3.16.7-ckt2
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-29-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,decor,place,grid,mousepoll,compiztoolbox,vpswitch,regex,gnomecompat,imgpng,snap,move,unitymtgrabhandles,resize,session,wall,animation,workarounds,fade,expo,scale,ezoom,unityshell]
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Jan 17 16:32:05 2015
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/compiz
ProcEnviron:
PATH=(custom, no user)
LANGUAGE=en_US
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to utopic on 2014-11-01 (76 days ago)
Thanks for the report.... I guess the actual solution would be to close the spread instead.
Of course we might even select the right window, but this seems like it's an edge the case where the user actually wants to just use the Alt+`