Windows Previews Ubuntu 12.04 - Massive Confusion

[dln9]

Ubuntu 12.04.

I am massively confused regarding windows previews.

I am familiar with them in Windows 7: You hover the pointer over the item in the taskbar, and a preview pops up for each window in that item, no matter the application. Then, you leftt click on the preview of the window you're interested in, and that window is raised and has the focus, and the previews disappear.

Isn't that how it is supposed to work in Ubuntu?

Sometimes I have to merely hover over the launchbar item, and the preview appears.

Sometimes (for the same launchbar item) I have to right click on the launchar item to raise the windows, and THEN the preview appears. Kind of pointless at that time.

Many times - but not always! - the preview won't go away until and unless I move the pointer over a different launchbar item.

I have NEVER gotten more than one preview to appear, even though I have several windows of the application running. And, as far as I can tell, the window that gets displayed in the preview is completely arbitrary.

Also, clicking on the preview ALWAYS accomplishes nothing.

Finally, I have noticed that how windows previews (mis)behaves varies by the application involved.

Am I completely misunderstanding how windows previews is supposed to work?

Or, are there several known bugs, and I should just turn that feature off? (How?)

Or, are there settings I need to alter to fix these problems? If so, please tell me what they are, I'm having no luck.

Thanks for any help.

[Viper1987]

Having the same issue. Except, when i turn my previews on with a hiding dash, the whole computer feezes, except for mouse movement. Looking forward to getting a resolution out of this.

[traditionalist]

You could use Gloobus preview; http://gloobus.net/

you just tap the space bar when you have marked something you want to preview.

I can't see the point in comparing what happens in Windows 7 to what happens in Linux. They are different systems and function and behave differently. If you prefer how Windows behaves then you must perforce use Windows.

[deadflowr]

I find the windows preview in unity to be pretty cruddy. All the problems the OP listed seem to be issues all around. It is nowhere near as go as win7. The closes to win7 would be KDE's.
If you want to turn it off, I know that compizconfig-settings-manager has a check mark for it to disable.It's in the Extras section.