Who wants a taskbar in xfce ? Well, it's in the CVS !

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hi all

Yes, you read it in the title : Marcin Staszyszyn has contributed a
taskbar for xfce3. It's now in the CVS.

I copy his mail for intructions on how to use/configure it :
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Hello Oliver!
At the beginning I must say that I'm impressed by XFCE. Its idea and
realisation perfectly fits into Uni*x concept as an powerful environment
build of small, but extendable and perfectly fitting together pieces of
software. The most important thing for me as a developer is that XFCE is
open source and it is written in C. Its small (?) size allows to easy
start extending its functionality, despite of lack of documentation
(well, good written code can document itself ;-)
First extension I want to contribute to XFCE is a taskbar. I know some
people are pro and some are anti taskbar in XFCE but I think I could be
good to give user a possibility to decide whether he wants to have
taskbar or not. My proposition has the following advantages over other
taskbar implementations:
- it can be disabled at compile time (in fact it must be explicity
enabled by passing '--enable-taskbar' to 'configure' script)
- it can be switch on/off during work
- it can be shown either as a part of XFCE panel or as a standalone
window (Windows-like). In the first case taskbar inherits XFCE look and
feel
(colors, fonts, etc.)
Personally I think my solution is useful but I don't want to break your
concept of XFCE. So instead of sending this letter to mail list I'm
sending it directly to you in order to avoid unnecessary discussion on
the list. If you decide this concept of taskbar is good and it could be
nice to have it in XFCE -- please forward most important part of this
message to xfce-group.
If not or you have some improvements I could do before making taskbar
public -- please let me know.

Taskbar installation

./configure     --prefix=/usr \
                --datadir=/usr/share \
                --sysconfdir=/etc/X11 \
                --enable-xft \
                --enable-taskbar \
                --enable-gdm && \
make && \
make install-strip


Taskbar usage
After loading of XFCE taskbar is closed be default. You can open it by
clicking wide, thin button at the bottom of XFCE panel. After that
several
buttons appears, each of them pointing to one XFWM window. Depending on
your
colour palette some of them can have different background colour --
taskbar
distinguish between current and other screens' windows. Window which has
focus (is active) is indicated by 'pushed' (selected) button. By
clicking
that button the window can be minimalised and maximised alternatively.
To
select (make active) another windows click corresponding button -- it
will
be maximised.
Taskbar can be closed by clicking leftmost, small button (so called
close
button). When you click right mouse button (in fact >=second) on that
button, pop-up menu appears. From it you can:
- make taskbar standalone window (Windows-like behaviour) and switch
that
feature off
- chose buttons order on taskbar. They can be sorted by Xwindow id,
name,
desktop they appear on or remain unsorted.
- turn on/off indicator of processor load. It is available only (?) on
linux
when '/proc/stat' pseudo-file is present. When turned on taskbar close
button changes colour according to current processor load.

Cheers,
-- 
Olivier               <fourdan at xfce.org>            http://www.xfce.org
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