How can I get window thumbnails when hovering over unity bar application icons?

Question

I am pretty sure that after installing 11.10 when an application had two or more windows open and I hovered over a unity bar icon with little white arrows (one for each window), I was getting a window thumbnail for each window of that application.

But I don't see that any more.

Does anyone know how to restore that?

Answer 1

You probably activated scale mode for the open windows by clicking the icon (with multiple windows open), since the window previews are disabled by default (due to a not-so-hot implementation of the feature).

In fact, that plugin does not work so well with Unity, so you would be better off using a dock.

From your comments, it seems like you did something to mess with the settings that has disabled the scale mode. If you don't mind having to add your favourites to the launcher again, you can run:

unity --reset

Also, by the way, installing a dock is simple. Open the Software Center and search for "dock", and then choose one you like. The are some good ones such as Avant Window Navigator, Cairo Dock, and Docky. All three support showing the window previews, but not for multiple windows.

For that, you would need to install DockBarX, and use it in a standalone way.

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dockbar-main/ppa
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install dockbarx
 sudo apt-get install dockbarx-themes-extra

Then run dockbarx. You can modify the options show that it activates scale mode when there are multiple windows open and you click on it.

Answer 2

1. Be sure to install both compizconfig-settings-manager (CompizConfig Settings Manager or CCSM) and compiz-plugins-extra. You can do this from Ubuntu Software Centre.
2. Open CCSM > Extras > Enable Window Previews (turn this on) > Taskbar Shows Only Windows Of Current Viewport (uncheck).

This will do as you wish.

Answer 3

If you have an app with more than one open window, there are a few ways to display previews. If you have one of that apps windows focused, then you can click the launcher entry once to get a big overview with previews. To switch between windows of a single app, with previews, you can press Alt+BAT (Button Above Tab).

There is no preview on hover by default.