Version: (using KDE KDE 3.3.0) This is about kicker and (I believe) kwin. Currently ALT+TAB brings up a window list sorted by recent usage, which I find very useful. Unfortunately, such a list cannot be opened with the mouse. it is very annoying to leave a hand on the keyboard just for that. The best you can do with the mouse is to use the window-list special-button on kicker, but the resulting list is sorted is by opening time, which IMHO is much less useful: you must scan many items on average to find what you need. This is also an inconsistency: the two lists (ALT-TAB and special-button) have similar semantics, but one can be called only with the mouse, the other only with the keyboard. One has no associated button, the other one does. To solve the problem, maybe another special button could be added to kicker, which brings a list sorted by usage time. Or maybe the two lists (ALT-TAB and the special-button) could be unified. This could also clean up the code base.
A simpler solution would be for the TASKBAR ITSELF to sort its items by recent usage. Of course, also the window list produced by taskbar grouping should be sorted by usage time. -------- An obvious question can be "Why don't you just use the taskbar?" Answer: of course the taskbar provides a list of open windows, but I need a list sorted by recent usage. Use case: I use to keep many konqueror windows open at a time (about six). But often I need to quickly toggle between two windows (the two that were used most recently). With the taskbar (or the special button), each time I toggle I must scan the list of all 6 windows. If the list were sorted by access time, the toggle wouldn't require ANY scan: I would just pick the window on top.
Thinking again, the taskbar can't do that sorting when taskbar grouping is on. Sorting by usage time can require to separate two explorer windows, whereas grouping requires them to be together. So, what is really needed is the window list special button to behave like alt-tab.
I wrote a kicker applet that does this. cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/logicaldesktop co windowlist
A fundamental reason to do something similar in KDE is that ALT-TAB is an important feature, but it is not discoverable.
and yet another camp wants it sorted alphabetically. alphabetically wins.