The current way that the XFCE desktop works is OK, but not being able to align your 'widgets' in any arbitrary position is something that I'd love to have inside of XFCE. The only way to do it even remotely similar, is to attempt to use lots of random little 'separators' so that they're sort of aligned. This leads to a really really ugly looking desktop. Since XFCE is about a 'light weight' desktop but has been slowly growing in memory to add pretty things. The only one I've seen(since 2007 and my few moments using it) was the 'transparent selection rectangle' as most people call it which greatly improved it's usability. Since a lot of people are likely to be moving from gnome2 to xfce 4.8+ due to the sweeping changes in gnome 3 not including the fact that it's slow and buggy, being able to do the the widgets as I stated them would be a really nice enhancement to the UI. Also on a similar note, consolidating the 'themes' so that you pick them like the gnome's theme picker would be a great addition to xfce also. Since the current one is spread across a few different menus instead of just picking one simply. The final thing is being able to do a 'drop shadow' on desktop icon names. Finally, I want to say that the xfce team has made a ton of great strides in making the de feel better rather than just being extremely fast. It's a really solid platform and I hope that you do not go on a gnome/ubuntu camp ideal where you completely destroy all of the basic paradigms.
I think the free positioning is horrible, the way we handle it allows a much better alignment. Also a path we've chosen in the past, supporting both alignment types will be much more complicated.
(In reply to comment #1) > I think the free positioning is horrible, the way we handle it allows a much > better alignment. Also a path we've chosen in the past, supporting both > alignment types will be much more complicated. But you cannot do anything but on both extremes. That's _all_ that you can do. If you want to put something in the exact middle? Good luck, how would one do that? I don't know of an easy way beyond using two "separator"s and then putting it at both sides of it and saying to "expand" it. How's that easier than just draging an icon or clicking "add to panel" andn putting it right there in the middle? I won't say that it's probably not more complicated, but I refuse to think that it's better to not be able to put things on the panel besides 'left and right'. If that's your idea of alignment, then I guess it is a lot better. But I'd like to be able to put it in the middle or somewhere else. I have my things 'aligned' so to speak but not perfectly aligned. I have my sensors aligned to the 3/4 mark of the free space, and i have the cpu frequency monitors at the 1/4 free space mark. So that there is 1/4 before them and 1/4 after. Then at 3/4 across I have it there. How would I do that in XFCE with the "better positioning"? It feels like the XFCE panels just have flexible space in the middle and that's all that it does,(I'm likely wrong) but that is how it _feels_ to me. Since it's only left/right aligned. Putting things in the middle requires lots of work around, so that you can align them to it's position a bit better. The final thing is, what about the rest of the things that were listed. The "drop shadow" for icons, and the consolidation of theme picking. Wherein you apply a 'system wide' theme to everything(unless the themes that come with xfce 4.8 aren't insanely different). By manually changing each and every thing I was able to make sweeping changes but it wasn't as simple as I would like.
Xfce is not Gnome. We prefer the positioning like it is now, if it more work for you to align it, well then so be it. The other items are not related to the panel, but I can give you a few clues: the drop shadow has a high chance to be implemented for 4.10 because of the desktop rewrite we're planning and the merged theme settings is against the modular design of Xfce.
(In reply to comment #3) > Xfce is not Gnome. We prefer the positioning like it is now, if it more work > for you to align it, well then so be it. > > The other items are not related to the panel, but I can give you a few clues: > the drop shadow has a high chance to be implemented for 4.10 because of the > desktop rewrite we're planning and the merged theme settings is against the > modular design of Xfce. I know that it's not GNOME, but GNOME is not GNOME anymore. And I like the idea of simple paradigms since it is less fuss to work with. GNOME 3, is more of a tablet UI than 2 was and that's why I was even going to try to go back to XFCE(after using it for awhile and then requiring a bit more 'prettiness'). Ah OK, well I didn't know how best to put it in a "wishlist" thing in case it wasn't yet talked about. That's why I chose to put it all in the "panel" since I wasn't able to find a simple 'general xfce' section. I'll probably stick with GNOME2 until the point when it's phased out of Debian's Testing, and then I'll make the full switch to XFCE.
It wasn't suggested before, because previously most Xfce users were around a long time. Now Gnome made such a radical move a lot of Gnome2 users move to Xfce, which is fine, but that doesn't mean we need to work toward making Xfce the old Gnome2. For that reason I (and hopefully all Xfce devs) are going to stick with the philosophies we have (because that's how we like our software). The topic you've mentioned is one of them.