tweaking Window Buttons defaults

[Liviu Andronic]

Dear all,
Since we're discussing the tweaking of Xfce defaults to make it more
palatable to a larger audience, I would like to suggest an improvement
to the Window Buttons.

First, by default Window Buttons are displayed with the 'Show button
labels' option enabled. This is suboptimal in some cases, say when the
row size of the panel is bigger at ~45pixels. (See
http://askubuntu.com/questions/233200/how-to-increase-icon-size-of-xfce4-panel-window-buttons-panel-tasklist-menu/396307
for a report by a confused user. See also attached screenshot.) It
also gets very crowded and confusing when many apps (>6) open on the
same virtual desktop.

A much more useful config would be if the option were unchecked by
default, which would result in a Windows 7-like look & feel of the
tasklist. In this config, the icons are scaled appropriately. But it
also allows users to easily and quickly identify their apps simply by
using the very graphic icons (and by avoiding the often confusing long
labels). (With this config, the labels are always available as a
tooltip while hovering the icon.) Furthermore, it seems to me that in
recent years both Microsoft and Apple switched to (or consolidated)
this type of display for the running apps on user's desktops, and this
makes sense to me, too. Personally on each new installation of Xfce
(especially for my friends), I always switch this option to improve
user experience. See how much neater the desktop gets with this option
in the second screenshot.

And the 2nd gripe, which is more of  a personal preference of mine,
the default sorting order is 'Group title and timestamp', which can
result in sometimes unexpected sorting order of apps (at least for the
uninitiated). A more expected sorting order, and functionally more
useful, is 'None, allow DnD'. This gives users (who desire so)
complete control over how apps are displayed in Window Buttons.

What do you think? Regards,
Liviu

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