Thunderbird not respecting current workspace settings

[vdcbb]

My goal is to have different workspaces isolated from one another and have gnome's workspace-switcher (Alt+TAB) and AppKeys (Super+#key) only work within the current workspace (not across workspaces).

Within gnome I set "gsettings set org.gnome.shell.app-switcher current-workspace-only 'true''' to make Alt+TAB work this way.

Within AppKeys I enabled "Cycle Windows on Active Workspace". Is this the correct setting to enable this behavior?

Here's the problem: If the Nautilus App (Super+1 position) is open in Workspace-2 and I tap Super+1 from within Workspace-1, then Nautilus opens a new window in Workspace-1 (which is what I want). The end result is that I have two Nautilus windows open (one in Workspace-1 and another in Workspace-2). But Thunderbird is not working this way. If the Thunderbird app (Super+2 position) is open in Workspace-2 and I tap Super+2 from within Workspace-1, then I am taken to Workspace-2. What should have happened is that a new Thunderbird window opened in Workspace-1.

Do you know why these apps are behaving differently across workspaces? Is this a bug, or maybe a configuration error on my part?

I'm using Debian 8.

[franglais125]

As far as I'm aware, this depends on the app. When trying to launch a new instance of an application, not all will behave in the same way. Even within the same workspace, if you try to launch Thunderbird again, it won't allow you to do so.

You can have a look at this discussion: https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock/issues/445. We ended up checking if an application can launch new windows at all, using app.can_open_new_window(). The answer here is Thunderbird will return false to that...

Hence, when calling something like app.open_new_window(), Thunderbird activates the window in the other workspace.