Arch Linux

alexirsi

Member

Registered: 2014-07-17

Posts: 15

Fully customizeable panel

Hello,

I am looking for a good panel for my Xfce desktop. It has to be fully customizeable, preferably with plain text config files.
- task list (of course)
- notification panel
- set icons, fonts, colors, ...
- show output of custom commands

I don't need fancy widgets that show me a launcher menu, battery status etc. because it all is fetched from custom scripts.

At the moment I am using xfce4-panel + genmon, but it has some disadvantages:
- requires relatively much performance
- GTK-theme affects panel appearance

Thanks in advance.

Steef435

Member

Registered: 2013-08-29

Posts: 577

Website

Re: Fully customizeable panel

I don't know what you mean with "task list" but here are some panels you could look into:
(Lemonboy's) bar
dzen2
i3bar

Some people also prefer to use conky, or pipe conky output to one of the bars above.

Note that you can also make xfce4-panel not to follow the Gtk theme settings, see Appearance->Style in the Panel Preferences menu.

Last edited by Steef435 (2014-07-17 12:27:47)

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 13,721

Website

Re: Fully customizeable panel

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … _.2F_docks

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Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,545

Website

Re: Fully customizeable panel

Please do some searching of your own.  A large portion of the entries here fit your criteria.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

alexirsi

Member

Registered: 2014-07-17

Posts: 15

Re: Fully customizeable panel

I know the wiki and the list of panels. Unfortunately none of them provides all what I am looking for, so I thought you had some personal tip.

Steef435

Member

Registered: 2013-08-29

Posts: 577

Website

Re: Fully customizeable panel

Perhaps we have, if you tell us what you have looked into and why it didn't suit your needs.

Last edited by Steef435 (2014-07-17 12:51:15)

alexirsi

Member

Registered: 2014-07-17

Posts: 15

Re: Fully customizeable panel

I tried: tint2, qtpanel, pypanel, perlpanel, lxpanel, fbpanel, bmpanel2.
The rest in the wiki are either not panels in my understanding (more docks, like AWN) or only provide systrays.

What I was missing from every panel:
I can't use my own scripts to execute and display on the panel. With xfce4-panel + genmon I can e.g. show the output of my script net.sh on the panel:

Panel:

I only know this from a few tiling window managers, but I would like to have it in Xfce. Guess I have to stay with xfce4-panel then.

EDIT: I saw your first reply just now, Steef435. I will look into these as well then. With this xfce4-panel setting e.g. the task bar is still themed unfortunately:

Last edited by alexirsi (2014-07-17 13:05:15)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,545

Website

Re: Fully customizeable panel

If xfce4-panel + genmon do what you want, why not use those?

If you've found something that works in tiling WMs, but want it in Xfce, why not use the panel you used in the tiler in XFCE??

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

alexirsi

Member

Registered: 2014-07-17

Posts: 15

Re: Fully customizeable panel

I knew it from Awesome WM, but its panel can't be used stand-alone.

I will try the suggestions from Steef435, dzen2 looks good.

Last edited by alexirsi (2014-07-17 13:09:37)

Steef435

Member

Registered: 2013-08-29

Posts: 577

Website

Re: Fully customizeable panel

Regarding the xfce4-panel, out of the top of my head:
Right click on a panel->Panel->Panel Preferences->tab "Appearance"->Style property(a drop-down button). It defaults to "None", which means it will use the Gtk theme settings. You can either set it to a color or a background image.

EDIT: So don't access the general Panel settings from the Xfce settings menu, but access the properties of a specific panel by accessing its context menu.

Last edited by Steef435 (2014-07-17 13:24:02)

alexirsi

Member

Registered: 2014-07-17

Posts: 15

Re: Fully customizeable panel

Yeah but that setting only applies to the background. The buttons are still themed according to the currently used GTK style.

bar and dzen2 are almost what I was looking for, thanks
Unfortunately they don't have a window switcher/task list/whatever you want to call it and no notification tray. So I'm staying with xfce4-panel now I guess.

DisposableHero

Member

Registered: 2013-11-21

Posts: 19

Re: Fully customizeable panel

You could probably achieve clickable window switcher/task list with dzen2 and xtitle. Dzen2 can have clickable areas with ^ca(1, COMMAND/SCRIPT) .... ^ca()