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

Wed Mar 9 06:25:43 UTC 2011

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Christoph Wickert <
christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, den 08.03.2011, 21:00 +0100 schrieb Martin Sourada:
> > On Tue, 08 Mar 2011 19:43:34 +0100
> > Christoph Wickert wrote:
> > > 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.
> > I believe that would confuse some users. It's probably better to not
> > hide it be default, IMHO.
>
> +1. One more reason: The hide function didn't work properly, at least in
> Xfce 4.6 the panel often remained on the screen after clicking a
> launcher.
>
> > >       * If we leave the height as is, we should at least add ore
> > > buttons so it becomes more useful.
> > Yeah, currently it is mostly nothing more then space eater.
>
> I think we all agree on that.
>
> > >       * Only have a single panel.
> > Only if there are not too many applets. I hate it when there is too
> > little space left for tasklist. Plus, lately, systemtray tends to
> > expand exponentially (volume control, ibus, network, power, various
> > apps that can hide there, ...). This almost calls for having it on
> > different panel than tasklist, IMHO.
>
> Let's see how much plugins we have.
>
> > > MUST have plugins:
> > >       * applications menu
> > >       * tasklist
> > >       * systemtray
> > >       * pager
> > +1 for all
> >
> > >       * a clock, I suggest datetime
> > Personally I prefer orage. What we IMHO need is: short weekday + short
> > date + hh:min displayed, in tooltip long date (with weekday) and on
> > click calendar.
>
> I don't think we can ship these tweaks because they are in the panel's
> rc files while we can only modify the default.xml file. Means we can
> decide what plugins to use but not necessarily their configuration.
>
> Another reason to go with the default config is the fact that time and
> date formats differ a lot based on the user's locale. We should just  on
> the plugin using proper defaults from the system.
>
> > Datetime seems to almost support this, but the layout
> > is horrible (two lines are just too much for small panel). Orage on the
> > other hand does not open the calendar beside the applet but in the
> > centre of the screen.
>
> The position should be saved be xfwm4. I can put it where I want it, but
> frankly speaking I dislike orage and never use it.
>
> > >       * mixer
> > Don't we have volume control (pulseaudio) in systemtray already?
>
> this is gnome-sound-applet and we want to get rid of it for several
> reasons:
>      * it lacks the icon (bug 678696)
>      * it's GTK+3 and we don't have a fitting theme
>      * it's not supposed to be in the spin, in the latest nightly it's
>        no longer their because dependencies on the GNOME side have
>        changed.
>
> > Either
> > way, since sound in fedora is best handled by pulseaudio, whatever
> > mixer applet we have, it needs to be able to work with pa nicely, not
> > just show master control for it...
>
> I think xfce4-mixer-plugin is ok for the panel where you only do Master
> channel. The command to launch the mixer on click can be configured, so
> we can even call pavucontrol from xfce4-mixer-plugin.
>
> > > SHOULD have plugins
> > >       * some launchers: browser, filemanager, terminal, mail client
> > +1, maybe add music player and instant messaging to the lot
>
> These are problematic because we are configuring xfce4-panel not only
> for the spin but the package itself. We cannot be sure if pidgin or
> quodlibet are always installed. The launchers for browser, mail client,
> filemanager and terminal on the other hand call exo-open, which is
> always there and will open the apps set in exo-preferred-applications.
>
> > >       * actions: lock screen, log out
> > +1
>
> we also could consider the session menu for this, it combines all the
> commands and some more.
>
> For me the session menu didn't work really reliable! I would go for two
separate buttons, one for locking the screen and one for calling the
shutdown menu.

> > >       * show desktop
> > I'm not sure, I've never used it, and people seem to complain both when
> > it's there and it isn't :-D
>
> It's in the default config for quite a while, I think we should not
> remove it.
>
> > >       * folder menu
> > Maybe too complex, does not integrate with bookmarks. Does not include
> > mounted volumes. There does not seem to be a way to show text
> > instead of/alongside the folder icon. I believe Places would work
> > better.
>
> Ok, but ATM places unfortunately doesn't handle removable media
> correctly either (bug 678432).
>
> > >       * thrash
> > Again, I don't incline either way here. I personaly use it, but it
> > feels a bit like duplicating things when it's already present on
> > desktop.
>
> Same as desktop I think.
>
> > > More suggestions? Let us hear them!
> > Remove frames all the applets. It looks soo oldish.
>
> Not sure if we can do it. We'd have to patch all plugins because we
> cannot provide the configuration for them and new plugins should also be
> borderless by default.
>
> >  Use start-here
> > (themed) icon for applications menu, that's what they're people used
> > from gnome and kde and maybe change the label (I don't recall from the
> > top of my head what was there, but I changed it to Applications) to
> > better suggest what it does.
>
> Good point, we had this in 4.6 and need to bring it back but I think it
> requires a change in the fedora-logos package (because the icon we use
> is in there and must be for legal reasons).
>
> > Consider weather applet, I don't have usability studies regarding that,
> > but most people I know use something like that. Would be nice if the
> > location could be synced with timezone like in gnome but that's a
> > harder goal. The way it is now it wouldn't probably work out of box so
> > maybe fix this issue first and then consider adding it.
>
> xfce4-weather-plugin uses the IP address to determine the location of
> the user. But it doesn't really work 100% reliably and exact of course.
>
> > Plus, we *could* consider theming the panels a little instead of using
> > just plain color, all the above listed applets seems to work with it
> > nicely.
>
> I think this should go into the theme, just as the changes for the
> desktop icons we proposed. The theme should provide styles for them in
> it's gtkrc.
>
> Thanks for all your input,
> Christoph
>
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