cosmetic suggestions for xfce

[Antonis Tsolomitis]

To older people the suggestions I would like to make will remind them of
CDE. However, I do not suggest
these as a wish for a return back (CDE had some good things and many
bad) but as useful additions.

The first one has been written several times as one can see in the
archives of the list. It is about the arrows of the panel
that open the drawers. It should be possible to put them above the icons
and not next to them. This is a usability feature since
many times I find myself for need of horizontal space on the panel.

The second one is for the preference to show minimized applications on
the desktop and not files and folders. This is a unique feature of xfce
(compared to gnome and kde) and I believe it should improve.
It seems that the current version of xfce has a very coarse grid on the
desktop for the minimized apps that can not be made finer, and the user
can not choose where to minimize the apps (they are always minimized on
top left and from the top to bottom). Moreover the icons used for this
minimization, does not distinguish
the minimized apps from an application startup link. If there is a
different design for the icons of the minimized apps, then these two schemes
could also be mixed, ie, it could be possible to have both app links,
files and folders on the desktop and minimized apps.

The panel: One cosmetic change that will be also useful
is to be possible to draw a line around the panel like the one that
application windows have, depending on the current theme.
It was like this in CDE and I think it really makes a difference as it
makes the panel really stand out. Bringing the arrows
of drawers at the top will also make space at the top corners for an
extra button to give the possibility to minimize the panel. Currently
only if the panel is at fixed positions it can autohide. This somewhat
replaces minimization, although minimization is better to my opinion,
since it is not something you have to configure, that is, enable and
disable from preferences. You just minimize and restore.

Goodies for panel: From all three desktops (KDE, Gnome, XFCE) a simple
goodie is missing. I refer to the possibility to know the current date
by just looking at the panel. This existed, I believe, in older xfce and
existed in CDE. Orage has already a nice icon that could be used
for such a purpose. (see for example the icon at
http://www.xfce.org/projects/orage/). I know that there is a balloon
that says the date. I also know that you can configure some of the
clocks to show the date. But I talk about cosmetic changes here. And
these solutions are (to my opinion) ugly. Usually people know the
current year :-) and the current month (unless maybe very close to the
change of month). So an applet showing only the day, say 28, or the day
and month, say Jan 28, with a design like the icon of orage above, is
what I talk about.

Another lever of focus for the Terminal: If you see a screenshot of
dtterm (yeah I know that to many people it sucks) there is an extra line
with color around the part of the window that accepts user input. This
greatly helps people working on terminals to focus on their work.  A
screen shot can be found here:
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/commandprompt
There is also extra padding between the two color lines; the outer and
the internal. This is not foreign to modern designs also. For example
gedit (version 2.24) uses this to help people focus on their work. The
only difference is that they use a black line and I do not know
how one can configure it's color. Such an addition would be useful for
mousepad too.

What do you think? Do you think that these will make xfce better and
more attractive? Are they difficult to implement?

Antonis.