I use xfce without panels at all on a HTPC solution. Xfce 4.4 showed the "Applications"-menu when you right click on the desktop, and this was a nice feature. In 4.6 you get a new top level menu with Application as a submenu, and this has no way of getting configured back. There should be a way to enable the old behaviour of "xfdesktop --menu", to keep "Applications" as top level.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 5054 ***