Modifications to Xfce - pointers please.

[andy]

Hi all

After much digging in of my heels I finally let go of Xfce-3.8.18 when I 
upgraded to Slackware 10 and did a fresh installation. Having used 
Xfce-4.05 exclusively for the last couple of weeks now, I believe that I 
have passed the stage of shock at using a new desktop environment. 
Overall, I am very happy with the design changes, and although it lost 
that old clunky feel of the 3.8 it has lost none of stability and speed, 
and has even added on features too. Clean interface and sharp edges. 
Very nice.
There are two queries about the layout/settings that I cannot find 
documentation on how to fix or modify.
1. Is it possible to get rid of the task bar and embed it in the panel 
or as a pop-up menu of some sort? This is more than auto-hide.
2. How do I go about changing the colour of the panel from its default grey?

A couple of questions about functionality, while on the subject:
1. On Xfce-3.8 I could right click on the desktop and a context menu 
would open allowing me to access KDE apps via a menu and (some) Gnome 
apps. That ability seems to have been phased out or did I not configure 
something correctly to get those options in the context menu?
2. Again with the old 3.8 there was the settings option to set the 
default for where one wanted the windows to open at, which was quite 
specific I recall. Now when opening a new app window, it will quite 
regularly open at the bottom of the screen underneath the panel.

This desktop environment version has won over a new convert to the 
design, although I have been a fan of the desktop environment itself for 
about 18 months now.
 All the best

Andy