Modifications to Xfce - pointers please.

[Jack Coates]

> 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.

not really, but there's talk about it being closer to reality with the CVS
version... in the meantime, you might prefer the iconbox. Edit your
xinitrc and replace xfce4-taskbar with xfce4-iconbox.

> 2. How do I go about changing the colour of the panel from its default
> grey?
>

This will be a function of your GTK theme... you'll need to find a theme
that you like or create one.

> 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?

Every distribution has their own way of doing menus, I don't know Slack's.
There's a program out there called MenuMaker that will figure it all out
and spit out a Xfce4 menu for you.

> 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.
>

The developers switched to a lot of new standards that some apps are being
slow to catch up to. There's a utility called devilspie that will do what
you want, or you can try the xfce4-session manager from CVS; however, it
is supposed to be less stable.

> 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
>

Me too; I was whining about the change from 3.x, but I'm happy with it
now. Sadly I've been having to spend more time on my WinXP and MacOSX
boxen :(

-- 
Jack At Monkeynoodle.Org:  It's A Scientific Venture...
"Believe what you're told; there'd be chaos if everyone thought for
themselves." -- Top Dog hotdog stand, Berkeley, CA