From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0 Description of problem: The "Show Desktop" button does do what it is advertised to do in the most simple usage. Clicking it shows the desktop, (the button remains "pressed"). And clicking it again returns all the hidden programs to their normal view). But, if a new window is mapped while the show desktop button is pressed, then it resets itself while leaving all hidden windows in a limbo state. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Show Desktop Button 2.8.1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open any application window 2. Click the show desktop button 3. Double-click Home icon to bring up a new window 4. Click show desktop again Actual Results: The original application is hidden by step 2 as expected. Step 3 "deselects" the show desktop button. But the second click in step 4 also hides the second window. Expected Results: In step 3 the show desktop button should have remained selected. Or, alternately, this button could reset as it does, but if so, then it should have return all hidden windows to their normal state. Additional info: Windows in limbo are really confusing in several parts of the interface. The workspace switcher applet continues to show them, and they don't have the fade-out appearance of a minmized window in the window list applet. In every sense they look like they should be visible, except that they aren't.
The button just toggles _NET_SHOWING_DESKTOP - moving to metacity
This is the intended behavior I think: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92335 If it's wrong (entirely possible) should discuss it upstream after reading the historical discussion.