Some thoughts on xfce4 design

[Jasper Huijsmans]

Just to keep an open mind about things I tried to think about
alternative ways to configure the panel.

Instead of the right-click dialog we could add a tab to the global
dialog which shows a list of items on the panel. The user can then add /
remove / edit / reorder items and separators from this list. Dragging
things around would also be simple to implement. I made something in
glade to give you an idea of what I mean (just imagine the list is
actually filled with items ;-).

Some things would become simpler (separators, central panel), while
there will also be difficulties. For instance this methods requires that
the user always has access to the config dialog. Unless we open this tab
also on right-clicking an item, hmm ...

I'm just trying to make sure that the panel configuration remains easy,
both for the user and for the programmer (me ;-). 

What do you think about this? Do you have other suggestions? 

The reason I'm looking for other ways to do the configuration is mainly,
the central panel. There are some awkward things, e.g. if it is to be
a'normal' item like the others, where do you connect the right-click
callback to? Another solution is to keep the current interface where the
central panel is treated specially and we have left and right panel
controls. This doesn't feel like the right solution to me either.

greetings,
	Jasper

-- 
IRC channel: #xfce on irc.openprojects.net
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