Remarks on Xfce4

[roger@MailingList]

Hi guys,

I'm currently running xfce4-rc3 on an x86.

My encounter with xfce was 2 and half years ago just after I installed Linux 
on my brand-new PC. I was then looking around for a decent window manager / 
desktop and found xfce3 as being the more capable (personal opinion) of what 
could run on Linux.

I have to say that most of my professional experience has been related to the 
development of applications running on Unix and written using Motif. That 
probably will explain why I'll have more a Unix-style approach than a 
Microsoft one in the following.

To me, xfce3 was very impressive, especially regarding its execution speed. 
However I believe it had some weaknesses, such as:
- Limited number of pop up menus in the panel;
- Configuration not that easy, such as moving a pop menu menu across the panel 
(I consider xfce3 as being less good than CDE in that matter, despite what 
some people say);
- Inability do dock basic applications, such as CPU, memory meters or mail 
indicator, into the panel;
- Icons (minimized applications) not having the same size.

Xfce4 is a huge improvement regarding the first 3 points.

However, the 4th point is not treated at all!

There is a task bar, which is (to me) a legacy left by Microsoft when it 
wasn't possible to run more than 2 applications at once without crashing the 
whole system. In addition, I've got the very bad habit of having too many 
applications running at the same time, such as something like 10 xterms and 
20 editors. So the task bar is definitely not for me.

As regards the icon box, I don't find it very handy, though I actually use it. 
There is no title under the icons (I know there are tool tips) and there is 
obviously (that's just an icon box after all) no possibility of setting a 
position on the screen for an individual icon (e.g . I want this particular 
icon to be on the bottom right of the screen), so that's quite difficult to 
know what is what in the icon box (remember my 20 minimized file editors).
Also, when the panel layer is set to "top", so is the icon box. I think there 
should be 2 separate setups; this would allow not to have the icon box on top 
when the panel is.

Please find the following general remarks regarding xfce4:

- Xfce4 is definitely not as responsive as xfce3.

- Minimizing applications as "real" icons should be possible, such as it's 
done within MWM.

- There is the possibility of adding separators into the panel. It would be 
nice to have separators also in the panel pop up menus. 

- How about having the possibility to add scrolling sub menus in the panel pop 
up menus (CDE doesn't provide it but Gnome does).

- There are only 3 options for setting the panel layer: top, normal and 
bottom. Xfce3 provided much better choice.

- I couldn't manage to set any color for any panel plug ins (system load, net 
load). The indicator is gray whatever color I try. The volume control scale 
is gray as well.

- I personally use the Mofit theme (I just don't want to kill an application 
with an accidental single-click on the right button of the window's menu 
bar). Double-clicking on the window's close button doesn't work all the time, 
regardless how the mouse double-click speed is set. This especially happens 
when trying to close several windows quickly one after the other. I didn't 
have this problem with xfce3.

- I couldn't find a way of setting the border color of the window having the 
focus (this was possible with xfce3 through the color palette). With Mofit, 
this color is blue. How can I change it, for example, to red?
I believe that the ability of working with colors should be a windows manager 
requirement. I know submarine-embedded graphical software currently running 
on Solaris CDE that is being considered to be ported onto Linux. The graphic 
of this software has to be very dark (mostly barely black) to prevent it from 
glaring.

- I definitely believe that xfce4 is a pretty good piece of software! That's 
my window manager / desktop since rc1, the previous one having been xfce3.

Cheers,
Roger