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

[Christoph Wickert]

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.

> >       * 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