I did some more research based on Secipolla's links and it seems that the square icon shape is set in stone. Interestingly, the third of your examples is exactly what I want to achieve and I see from the .pngs included in that d/l, that all the creator has done is to start with a square shape then apply alpha transparency to the top half so the user only sees the bottom half - the desktop background bleeds thru the transparent top half. It appears therefore rectangular. Easy! When someone has shown you how

I'm in search of simplicity and reliability for this little project so I will stick with XFCE panels - they've always been 100pct reliable for me.

I'll mark this as solved. Tks again

Rgds/T

Don't know how well they work with xfce4panel but you can maybe try a dock app (Dreamlinux used 'plank', I think. Maybe it's the one from the elementary project; at least the name is the same).

cheers

Rgds/T

Why? : Because I am designing a very basic custom version of Xubuntu and I’ve found my target users find it much much easier to use if they can read text written on a launcher button instead of an avatar/icon picture for each program. And currently the square shape means limited text without wordwrapping it. Also, text looks much better bcos yu can make it uniform, whereas now every program has a radically different icon style which IMHO looks messy in a panel.

Alternatively - is there another panel that I can use inside XFCE to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance
T