Can Xfce plugins work outside of the xfce panel -- or a better way to compiz?

[Andrew Robinson]

Thank you all for your opinions. I think I will stay on Xfce and just
install KDE to play around and just see what others have been up to. I
found a very simple blog on howto "fix" the xfce startup on ubuntu to
replace xfwm with compiz. As for the focus problems, hopefully those
can be address by not using xfwm, but we'll see.

Please discontinue the thread as I got the info I wanted and would
hate to see my post start yet another flame war.

BTW- compiz is not all eye-candy, I mainly use it for zooming (good
for authoring web pages when you want to analyze every pixel),
wall/expo and the window picker (scale)

Thanks,
Andrew