rhkramer posted on Fri, 16 Dec 2022 07:56:11 -0500 as excerpted: > As I'm going through my emails, > I click on links that I want to read later (usually after getting > through some portion of my emails). > > With my old versions of firefox (still in use) I am not distracted from > my email reading. > > On my most recent installation of (Debian Jesse / Firefox (yes, I > know)), when I click on a link in an email it immediately switches me to > the firefox desktop and "raises" that window.
Chuckled at the sig. FWIW, while I can agree the new behavior could be annoying, not to brag (well... sort of... but see the compromises below) I don't have the particular problem you describe due to my layout, two 4K 75-inch TVs side- by-side for 7680x2160 overall resolution, 130x36 inch (3.3x0.9m). The left-hand monitor often runs firefox PnP mode fullscreen youtube, with the right hand monitor being divided into four 1860x1080 working panes (sized so there's a narrow 120-px wide strip left on the far right for my conky system monitors) in 2x2 layout. I use kwin window rules to default my usual windows to the working pane size. So matching to your scenario the left monitor would still be a full- monitor firefox PnP video window, with the regular ff window in one pane on the right, and email in another pane. That would leave two other panes open for say an email reply and a konsole window. Clicking email links would open new tabs in the existing ff main window, obscuring the youtube page tab, but the video would still be playing unobstructed full-screen on the other monitor and with the tree-style-tab extension side-bar open in the firefox main-window, switching tabs there is a non-issue. All windows still visible, and with appropriate kwin focus policy and focus-stealing-prevention, the email window retains focus if that's what the mouse is over. And even if the ff window gets focus, scrolling scrolls the window its over not the window with focus, so would scroll the mail window. And clicking another link would of course raise the email window and pass the click, opening the link in firefox as expected even if the email window didn't have focus when the link was clicked. Such a big workspace really changes the way you work. With the exception of full-screen videos, you don't /want/ most things maximized or full- screened, for instance, because it's just /too/ big. 1/4 screen (half vert, half horiz) for a 2x2 layout on one monitor, is /much/ more practical, of course leaving the other panes of the 2x2 open for other things without obscuring anything. Tho I do still use multiple desktops, but they tend to be for really different tasks, like one for games, one for online (rss feeds, email, etc), and one for upgrades (a bunch of konsole windows, keeping in mind I run gentoo and actually build the upgrades from sources, plus run live-git for some things like most of kde, tracking various git logs as part of my upgrade process, so a bunch of konsole windows and a ff window to read logs while upgrading while troubleshooting and investigating/filing bugs makes sense), not for different bits of the same task (clicking links in an email client to open them in the browser for your example, or the different konsole windows and browser window for the upgrade task example). But while it's a dream in many aspects, there have been compromises. The cpu/mobo are a decade old now, a six-thread AMD fx6100 from 2011, the graphics a half-decade-old AMD Radeon rx460 (polaris 11 baffin), and while I did upgrade to ssds and it has a then sizable now middling 16 gig RAM, it really struggles to play full 4K 3840x2160@60Hz web videos (50Hz is better, only an occasional frame-freeze with nothing else going, 25 or 30 Hz much better with middle-duty additional tasks, or downgrade to full HD 1920x1080 if I'm doing something heavy like a gentoo upgrade build). And the TVs are low-end, some of the first 75" 4Ks to sell under $1000 each and now several years old, so are dimming and showing edge-lit-LED artifact banding, not to mention the "percussive maintenance" I have to do on the one to get it to turn on if I leave it off long enough to cool down. But low-Q or not, old computer backing up the fancy if low-q display or not, how many have such a display "wall" at all? That's /something/. And it /does/ change the way you work. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
