Working with 1 display in Unity3 on Mac: Tear off the Game view, or do Window > Animation to get a floating window. then click on the Scene view or the inspector, then you lose all your foreground tool windows.
This is really frustrating way to work on one large display. Particularly when you want to have the Game window float, and also be able to tweak the inspector while playing.
Contrast this with how Maya 2011 works. If you tear off any menu, or pick anything from the Window menu, then it stays in front of the main window.
At least there are keyboard shortcuts for everything in the Window menu.
I thought about filing a bug report or feature request on this, but thought I would see what other people working on a single display think. I can see how it would be a non-issue on multiple displays, perhaps.
I noticed the same thing when working with the profiler. My specific issue was that when I tried to click the drag-area of the profiler window (in a torn off floating window) it would click-through to the scene and pause my game/hide my profiler window.
This is by design. I would prefer for them to float as well, but I couldn’t talk anyone else here into it. So yeah, I put those windows on a second monitor… for people with one monitor on OSX it might be annoying. I’ll keep poking Nich about this every now and then, but he’s pretty convinced that they shouldn’t float on OSX (they do on PC).
Technically it’s not a bug…there are two types of windows, those that are always on top and those that aren’t. Making a custom wizard, for example, is always on top. I hadn’t thought about whether non-always-on-top windows are a problem, since I use tabs for everything and don’t have floating windows, which has been working well.
You’re on a Mac; there are keyboard shortcuts for every single menu item if desired. Go to the keyboard preferences and add/change anything you want.
Thanks Ethan, please do keep prodding now and again. Maya 2011 on Mac is a good counterexample of how such windows should work . IMHO @Eric, yes, keyboard shortcuts or unfortunately yet just keeping all windows docked seems to be the only solution if you want to see the inspector and anything else at the same time.
One strong supporting argument might be found from the Apple Human Interface Guidelines where one can refer the “panels” behaviour: “Panels float above other windows and provide tools or controls that users can work with while documents are open.”
What’s worse, Window > Bring all to Front has no effect on Mac anyways- don’t have a Windows box to try it on. Ugh! Unity should just not allow tear-off panels if they are going to act all weird and disappear behind the main window.
I filed a bug on this:
Ticket# 381251_ghnnjdfv
Thanks if you can bump this somehow, or maybe it will be fixed in 3.1 - that would be sweet.
@Ethan,
See (Case 381251) “Editor windows keep getting lost behind the main editor”.
Morten said he is closing the ticket because it’s “by design”. I am pleading with him not to close it, and that the design is broken. I asked him to contact you.
@Juha, Thanks for the link to the Apple HIG docs, hopefully that will help.
Cool, I just got word that case 381251 is resulting in a change of behavior for detachable editor panels! Thanks to Morten, Ethan everyone who helped on this one
It’s a bug according to Apple’s UI guidelines, plus common sense because it’s annoying as hell. It’s still not fixed. I’m going to add a note to case 381251 in case it got lost.
Jessy, thank you! I didnt know about Command ~ (actually Command ). That's great. I had given up on it because Window | Bring all to front is a noop on Unity on the Mac. But Command is just the trick.
Unity is the only app where I need to constantly use command ~ or Exposé all the time, in order to find windows. What app is there where dockable windows move behind, like that? There’s got to be some precedent.