Panel layout in Xfce 4.8 (was Re: Goal: Make XFCE rock in Fedora)

Christoph Wickert christoph.wickert at googlemail.com
Tue Mar 8 18:43:34 UTC 2011


Am Dienstag, den 08.03.2011, 10:40 -0700 schrieb Kevin Fenzi:
> On Mon, 7 Mar 2011 10:58:43 +0100
> Martin Sourada <martin.sourada at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > as some of you might have noticed (on fedora planet) I have switched
> > from gnome to xfce and I like xfce very much. However, IMHO there are
> > issues that need to be addressed to make xfce a first class citizen. I
> > put together an initial list of them in my wiki space:
> > 
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mso/XFCE
> > 
> > Feel free to chime in and edit the page (or its Talk: page) if you
> > feel something is missing/wrong. Since next major release of xfce
> > (4.10) is scheduled for next January we're probably talking here
> > about Fedora 17 time frame. So let's join forces and make XFCE rock
> > in Fedora 17.
> 
> Thanks for working on this Martin! :) 
> 
> Happy to look at ideas and work to improve Xfce in Fedora. 

+1. I'm really happy we now have an brillant artist in the team. I think
Fedora owes you a lot for your Nodoka artwork. Perhaps we can revive it
for F15 and have a GTK+3 version of it?

> What are you thinking for panel layout? In the past we have just stuck
> pretty close to upstream as this is very much a personal thing, but
> perhaps we could look at re-arraging things if enough people expressed
> interest or had rationale for changes.

Glad you bring this up, Kevin. I just worked on the panel layout a
little and added the mixer, this was one of the things on Matthias'
list.

Nevertheless I feel that upstream's panel layout still has room for
improvement, especially the bottom panel: It takes way too much space
but only has little use.

Some toughs:
      * Hide it automatically so it doesn't waste so much space.
      * Reduce it's height but make it wider.
      * If we leave the height as is, we should at least add ore buttons
        so it becomes more useful.
      * Only have a single panel.

I suggest we first agree on a set of plugins we want to have in the
panel(s) and then think about the layout.

MUST have plugins:
      * applications menu
      * tasklist
      * systemtray
      * pager
      * a clock, I suggest datetime
      * mixer

(these could fit into a single panel)

SHOULD have plugins
      * some launchers: browser, filemanager, terminal, mail client
      * actions: lock screen, log out
      * show desktop
      * folder menu
      * thrash

More suggestions? Let us hear them!

Cheers,
Christoph



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