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

[Martin Sourada]

On Tue, 08 Mar 2011 19:43:34 +0100 
Christoph Wickert wrote:
> +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?
> 
Unless someone helps a lot, its very unlikely. I don't have that much
time for hacking I used to have, sadly :( It looks realistically though
to have it done in time for xfce 4.10 release.

> 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.

>       * Reduce it's height but make it wider.
Fair point. My thinking about this is that if it does not fill entire
screen it seems just like space waster and looks strange. The desktop
feels much more connected (especially if you use maximized windows) if
both panels fill the entire width.

>       * 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.

>       * 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.

> I suggest we first agree on a set of plugins we want to have in the
> panel(s) and then think about the layout.
> 
+1.

> 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. 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.

>       * mixer 
Don't we have volume control (pulseaudio) in systemtray already? 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...

> SHOULD have plugins
>       * some launchers: browser, filemanager, terminal, mail client
+1, maybe add music player and instant messaging to the lot

>       * actions: lock screen, log out
+1

>       * 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

>       * 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.

>       * 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. 


> More suggestions? Let us hear them!
Remove frames all the applets. It looks soo oldish. 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.

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.

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. 

Cheers,
Martin
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