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Kethinov
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Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 166
Location: ESU, Student Teaching 5th Grade
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 Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:07 am Post subject: XFce4 questions |
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1, how do you get desktop icons?
2, how do you create a menu of programs like KDE's or GNOME's?
3, is there a better looking terminal for it?  |
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metallikop
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Joined: 06 Jan 2004
Posts: 259
Location: Detroit, MI
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:52 am Post subject: |
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1, how do you get desktop icons?
Don't think you can.
2, how do you create a menu of programs like KDE's or GNOME's?
Right click on your bar, and there's a make widget option or drawer or some such.
3, is there a better looking terminal for it?
Nope, emerge gnome-terminal, eterm, or aterm. |
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foosh
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Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 231
Location: STL
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:14 am Post subject: |
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anyone know how to make the auto-hidden taskbar thinner??? it is wayyy too "fat" while autohidden. if possible i'd like it to disappear from the screen completely until the mouse is rolled over the bottom edge.
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Kethinov
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Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 166
Location: ESU, Student Teaching 5th Grade
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 7:28 am Post subject: |
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| metallikop wrote: | 1, how do you get desktop icons?
Don't think you can. |
I sware I've seen screenshots with them...
| metallikop wrote: | 2, how do you create a menu of programs like KDE's or GNOME's?
Right click on your bar, and there's a make widget option or drawer or some such. |
You can add a launcher then add a menu to the launcher but then you end up with a totally useless icon with a menu button that's too small to access efficiently. Ideally, I'd like to make a new laucher that when clicked opens a menu and not a program. |
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caffeine_junkie
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Jan 2004
Posts: 133
Location: Vienna, Austria
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 8:07 am Post subject: |
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| if you want to use desktop icons, you need to use additional applications. like rox, nautilus, ... |
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jmz2
Guru
Joined: 13 Jan 2004
Posts: 421
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| Kethinov wrote: | | Ideally, I'd like to make a new laucher that when clicked opens a menu and not a program. |
You can achieve something like this by opening the button properties and checking the submenu option. The icon will still launch your application, but clicking on the arrow will bring you the menu.
Once you get used to it, it's pretty simple and efficient; Place the most commonly used apps on the toolbar, and less often used apps into submenus. |
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> /dev/null
n00b
Joined: 21 Dec 2003
Posts: 7
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 10:36 am Post subject: |
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[/quote]
1, how do you get desktop icons? [/quote]
Hi there!
I use Nautilus with XFCE. Nautilus handles my desktop and background. This is fairly easy, you just edit /etc/xfce/xinitrc, comment line where it starts xfcebackround (don't remember what it's called), then add something like
nautilus -no--desktop& (check nautilus --help for correct syntax)
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foosh
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Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 231
Location: STL
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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it seems to me that using the behemoth nautilus to draw your desktop and manage your files sorta defeats the (lightweight, fast and efficient) purpose of xfce4
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Kethinov
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Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 166
Location: ESU, Student Teaching 5th Grade
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| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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I agree, using Nautilus is not a good idea. However, can rox be used to draw desktop icons? Also I'm not sure what I'm looking for but I found this in that file you specified: /etc/xfce4/xinitrc
| Code: | xftaskbar4&
xfdesktop&
panel=`which xfce4-panel` |
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ozonator
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Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Posts: 591
Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 12:53 am Post subject: |
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For desktop icons, rox will do it -- check out the 'pinboard' feature. Never used that feature myself, though, so I can't tell you much more than it's in the feature list, and definitely visible in the screenshots on the rox site.
Another option for icons, not yet mentioned here: iDesk. This seems to be fairly widely used by people running 'minimal' window managers. |
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HighOnBonsai
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Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 260
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 9:33 am Post subject: |
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I use Xfce4 with ROX as file-manager and rox-pinboard for desktop-icons. Just replace your xfdesktop& - line with
| Code: |
# xfdesktop&
# Instead of launching the xfce-desktop start the pinboard of ROX
rox --pinboard=PIN &
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it works great and feels very comfortable! And ROX ist a great file-manager (with acceleration-keys enabled).
Christopher
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_dan_
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Joined: 20 Jan 2004
Posts: 19
Location: Aylesbury
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 11:05 am Post subject: |
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can you use your xfce desktop menu when you use Rox? if this is possible i'll give it a try, but i don't think this works 
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IWBCMAN
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Joined: 25 Jun 2002
Posts: 474
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 11:23 am Post subject: |
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as for generating a menu for XFCE4 try
I use it to automatically generate DYNAMIC! menus for XFCE4-includes most all of KDE and GNOME menu entries...works flawlessly for me. You have two files -one in your home directory for you as this particular user and one in /etc/xfce4/ for default. Rename /etc/xfce4/menu.xml to /etc/xfce4/menu.xml.old prior to running menumaker in case something gets botched-although I have never had this problem, prudence is advised.
Once you have renamed your original menu.xml file do the following:
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mmaker -vA -o /etc/xfce4/menu.xml XFce4
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As for icons- if you use another program to draw your desktop, ie. nautilus/rox you loose your right-click context menu-ie. the menu with all of your applications.......
You can also simply edit the panel launcher for the terminal to point it at gnome-terminal or you can set the environment variable XFTERM4 to point to gnome-terminal, unfortunately I can't remember where you do this...ie. where its sourced....but editing the launcher is simple enough.... |
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HighOnBonsai
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Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 260
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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I guess its possible to use the xfcedesktop with rox: In ROX there is a option called: "Delegate root-mouseevents to underlying blabla" or something like that. But I never tried this. Just give it a try.
I also tried menumaker - its really a cool-tool!
Christopher
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Roguelazer
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Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Posts: 1233
Location: San Francisco, CA
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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Try iDesk before nautilus or rox. Much less overhead.
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Dugan
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Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 49
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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Hint. Set the $TERMCMD environment variable to the terminal you want.
By default, the terminal icon on XFce4's panel lauches $TERMCMD. So if you like aterms, then set $TERMCMD to 'aterm'.
Last edited by Dugan on Mon Jan 26, 2004 3:04 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Kethinov
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Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 166
Location: ESU, Student Teaching 5th Grade
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| IWBCMAN wrote: | as for generating a menu for XFCE4 try
I use it to automatically generate DYNAMIC! menus for XFCE4-includes most all of KDE and GNOME menu entries...works flawlessly for me. You have two files -one in your home directory for you as this particular user and one in /etc/xfce4/ for default. Rename /etc/xfce4/menu.xml to /etc/xfce4/menu.xml.old prior to running menumaker in case something gets botched-although I have never had this problem, prudence is advised.
Once you have renamed your original menu.xml file do the following:
| Code: |
mmaker -vA -o /etc/xfce4/menu.xml XFce4
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As for icons- if you use another program to draw your desktop, ie. nautilus/rox you loose your right-click context menu-ie. the menu with all of your applications.......
You can also simply edit the panel launcher for the terminal to point it at gnome-terminal or you can set the environment variable XFTERM4 to point to gnome-terminal, unfortunately I can't remember where you do this...ie. where its sourced....but editing the launcher is simple enough.... |
Fantastic program, but how do I edit the menu entries short of manually editing the XML file? |
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IWBCMAN
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Joined: 25 Jun 2002
Posts: 474
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| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 11:34 am Post subject: |
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Kethinov,
| Quote: |
Fantastic program, but how do I edit the menu entries short of manually editing the XML file?
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Unfortunately if you need or want to edit the menu you must edit the /etc/fxcf4/menu.xml file. Luckily the format is fairly simple so it is not overly difficult to edit. If you use kate or gedit you can alos get syntax highlighting to make sure you have "crossed all your t's and dotted all your i's"-ie. followed the syntax conventions. I find it ok to edit an already rather complete menu-it is just a major pain creating a totally new menu manually-deleting a few entries, adding a couple or moving some around is usually no biggy-15-20 minutes of time.....
Dugan,
Thanks for correcting my post regarding the environment variable set to determine which x-terminal is used by default in XFCE4. It was a long time ago, back in the XFCE-beta days that I played around with that.
HighOnBonsai,
Yup, I think you are right on that one-If that option in ROX does pass the (root-mouseevents) mouse clicks to the (underlying) window/desktop manger then it one should still be able to use their right-click application menu when using ROX for putting icons on the desktop.......Haven't actually tried it, but it does make sense.....
---edit------
HihhOnBonsai,
I tried this out but to no avail- the option in ROX does not work-if you comment out xfdesktop in /etc/xfce4/xinitrc there *is* no desktop menu from xfce4, and if you attempt to run both xfdesktop and ROX, xfdesktop comes up and ROX never gets run...... |
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foosh
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Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 231
Location: STL
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| Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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so, no word on how to change the pixel height of an auto-hidden toolbar, for example??
the default is just too fat/tall for my taste
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koubiak
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 17 Dec 2003
Posts: 92
Location: paris
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| Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:50 am Post subject: |
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Just a question ...
Does it normal to put the menu config file in etc ? one for all users it sucks ...
How can we specify one for each users ?
thanks
koubiak who digs up ! |
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Ricky
Guru
Joined: 30 May 2003
Posts: 341
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| Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:40 am Post subject: |
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| koubiak wrote: | Just a question ...
Does it normal to put the menu config file in etc ? one for all users it sucks ...
How can we specify one for each users ?
thanks
koubiak who digs up ! |
Mine's in ~/.xfce4/menu.xml my /etc/xfce4/menu.xml is left untouched |
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koubiak
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 17 Dec 2003
Posts: 92
Location: paris
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| Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:58 pm Post subject: |
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thanks I will see with erase the menu.xml from /etc ...
Koubiak |
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Flammie
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 633
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 9:40 pm Post subject: Re: XFce4 questions |
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| Kethinov wrote: | 1, how do you get desktop icons?
2, how do you create a menu of programs like KDE's or GNOME's?
3, is there a better looking terminal for it? |
- launch some desktop program like gnome's nautilus
- launch gnome-panel
- xfterm is wrapper script to launch terminal of your choice, select TERMCMD=gnome-terminal
...
- Why do you insist on using XFCE when you clearly want KDE or Gnome
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mc_barron
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Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Posts: 230
Location: Chicago, IL
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| Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:53 pm Post subject: |
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| foosh wrote: | so, no word on how to change the pixel height of an auto-hidden toolbar, for example??
the default is just too fat/tall for my taste |
Are you talking about the main toolbar that is normally at the bottom center of the screen? Just right click one of the dimpled side areas and choose "Properties". You'll find autohide and size options there. |
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foosh
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Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 231
Location: STL
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| Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 7:51 am Post subject: |
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| mc_barron wrote: | | Are you talking about the main toolbar that is normally at the bottom center of the screen? Just right click one of the dimpled side areas and choose "Properties". You'll find autohide and size options there. |
yeah, you find the generic, easily accessed options there...but that's not what i'm talkin about.
what I'm wondering is if there's some config file I could edit to cause the "auto-hidden size" i.e., the height of the autohidden toolbar or task switcher, to be smaller. the default auto-hidden height of each of these is much too "thick" for my taste... ideally I would like to not see ANY of either toolbar while autohidden, and am wondering if i can edit this somewhere so that an autohidden toolbar will basically "disappear" or show only a very very thin strip rather than the rather fat and obtrusive default width.
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