tweaking Window Buttons defaults

[Andrzej]

On 01/01/14 14:30, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> 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.

I think you have stepped on a larger problem - there are so many (good) 
possible panel configurations that configurations are simply running out 
of steam. What I'd personally like is a "panel theme" selection dialog, 
where I could change multiple panel/plugin settings at once.

Alistair has come up with a tool for that, but it is not integrated in 
panel settings (and will not be, because at least for now it is a 
command line python script):

https://github.com/ali1234/panel-switch

> 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.

This is not the default panel configuration, so we should not tweak 
other defaults to fit it.

> 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.

I disagree. Current design is familiar to anyone coming from Gnome 2, 
Windows XP, KDE, LXDE. This is plenty for a good *default*. Also, I am 
not aware of any distributions making your proposal a default, and if 
the downstream does not need it, why should we force them.

> 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.

I have changed many options but never this one. So I guess it indeed 
does come down to a personal preference.

BTW, are you aware of the xfce4-tasklist-plugin? It is a bit rough 
around edges but it should be closer to Windows 7 behaviour than the 
default tasklist plugin.

Best regards,

Andrzej