Introducing preview of xfdashboard - a "gnome shell"-like dashboard for xfce

[Stephan Haller]

Hi @all,


Nearly since one and a half years I'm a so called "gnome3 refugee" and 
switched over to xfce completely ;) Before I always looked at xfce every 
now and then to see the improvements. But one thing I'm missing and 
that's the way how window switching and application launching is done in 
Gnome Shell of Gnome 3.

So I decided to try if I can rewrite it and make it fit into xfce. The 
project is called "xfdashboard". It's not the best name but it was first 
one coming into my mind ;)  Now I reached the point where the 
application is still neither complete nor finished nor nice-looking but 
in an usable state. You can switch between the windows of current 
workspace, start application from the quicklaunch bar at the left, add 
or remove new applications to quicklaunch bar by drag'n'drop and search 
for applications by just typing the application's display name, 
description or command.

I was encouraged to show it to a wider public audience so I created a 
preview tarball which can be downloaded at:
https://github.com/gmc-holle/xfdashboard/releases/tag/v0.0.1-alpha_20131125

To build xfdashboard the following libraries and headers (-dev packages) 
have to be installed:

libwnck >= 2.10
clutter >= 1.12
glib >= 2.30.3
gio >= 2.30.3
gio-unix-2.0 >= 2.30.3
xfconf >= 4.10.0
dbus-glib >= 0.98

To use xfdashboard I advice to define an application shortcut in 
Settings -> Keyboard like <Super>+<Tab> which calls "xfdashboard".

Although it is working and usable for me and might crash on your 
workstation. One issue I know about is one machine using OSS driver 
nouveau (for nvidia graphics adapter) has broken textures sometimes 
rendering the application unusable.

You're welcome for any kind of feedback.

The project's page itself is located at:
https://github.com/gmc-holle/xfdashboard

Regards,
Stephan