Passive panels?

drasbeck · 2015-03-09 20:10:13

Hi all,

New here, long time xfce user.

I am looking for a way to make a panel passive. It should still update, mind you, but I should be able to click through it.

Think of a dislodged notification area, with low opacity and click through capability, placed near the lower right corner of the screen. Thus I should be able to maximize windows and utilize the full (albeit very small) screen on my netbook, while still getting notifications without having to move the mouse to activate a hidden panel.

I truly hope this is doable, if so how should I proceed?

Thanks in advance!

MountainDewManiac · 2015-03-09 22:35:35

Hello, drasbeck, and welcome to the Xfce Community Web-Forum.

I'm not sure whether or not you're aware (or if your system just behaves differently than mine), but all three of my panels are set to auto-hide - and I still get notifications. I don't believe that the one has anything to do with the other. BtW, even though they auto-hide, I adjusted the "Leave" opacity down quite a bit; that more-or-less fully hides that tiny "activation strip" (IDK what it's actually called, lol) that is left behind when they're hidden. That way I see 100% of my desktop.

As for not needing to use your mouse/touchpad to view a panel... IDK if there is a way to assign a key or key combination to toggle it. If not, that might be a worthy suggestion to make (possibly on one of the email lists that are frequented by the developers?) for a future feature.

Regards,
MDM

drasbeck · 2015-03-09 23:21:39

Hello, MDM, and thank you very much for taking time to welcome and answer me.

I think I might have led you to believe that I wanted my panels to be automatically hidden, that is correct for my main panel, which houses the whiskers menu, window buttons, clock and so on. But for my notification area, I would like for it to always be present (always on top), but passive in the sense, that if I click on that part of the screen, the click will register with whatever lies below the notification area.

In other words: I am looking for a way to make a panel stop responding to mouse events.

Here is an example of the behaviour I am looking for:
Click through in BitMeter II

Is something like this possible in Xfce?

Cheers,

drasbeck

Last edited by drasbeck (2015-03-09 23:22:09)

sixsixfive · 2015-03-10 00:12:24

not with the xfce panel afaik, but you could install tint2 and make it stay on top like here> http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=70048 <described

there are also many other tools that can hold systray icons:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/stalonetray
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Openbox/HO … d_systrays

Last edited by sixsixfive (2015-03-10 00:15:00)

MountainDewManiac · 2015-03-10 01:34:18

Wait... This is on a netbook? (Relatively) tiny screen?

Do you often maximize your applications? If so, you can kind of "pretend" that the panel is on top by making them 100% opaque, always visible (auto-hide option not checked)... And then maximize your application but slide its opacity down a little bit so that it is somewhat translucent. That way, you'd be able to see the panel (which is actually underneath your maximized application) and - hopefully - you're application wouldn't be so faint that it'd be hard to see.

I've been known to start a video in VLC in full-screen mode, then run a web browser or text editor on top of it and make the app on top translucent... when I was only "kind of" working (lol) .

Actually, you could do that with non-maximized windows that just happen to be covering your panel(s), too.

On my system, I place the mouse cursor on the application's title bar and "horizontal scroll" with my touchpad (drag my finger across the bottom of it), leftward to decrease opacity and rightward to increase it. [EDIT: You'll probably have to go to {Menu} / Settings / Mouse and Touchpad and, under Scrolling set your scrolling mode to "edge scrolling," and then check the box for "Enable horizontal scrolling."] Again, it doesn't technically do what you're wanting to (but the result might be similar) but I guess on a netbook you need all the help you can get as far as fully utilizing screen real-estate, so maybe this trick would help? IDK.

Regards,
MDM

Last edited by MountainDewManiac (2015-03-10 01:42:10)

drasbeck · 2015-03-10 15:17:53

@sixsixfive: Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried to bend tint2 to my will before, but iirc I could not get it to ignore mouse events nor only show notification area icons. But I definitely will take a look at some of the alternatives.

@MDM: Interesting approach. Are you using some sort of software to control the opacity of your windows? As I Xfce does not have this functionality per se, when scrolling horizontally . his specific install is a fairly unmodified Xfce 4.10 on Xubuntu 14.04 (i think it is).

EDIT: Oooh, I just tried on a terminal window, and the opacity does indeed change. Not with Chrome though, where horizontal scrolling is used for jumping between tabs (I wonder if this setting could be turned off). I shall definitely look into this solution.

Last edited by drasbeck (2015-03-10 15:20:58)

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#1 2015-03-09 20:10:13

Passive panels?

#2 2015-03-09 22:35:35

Re: Passive panels?

#3 2015-03-09 23:21:39

Re: Passive panels?

#4 2015-03-10 00:12:24

Re: Passive panels?

#5 2015-03-10 01:34:18

Re: Passive panels?

#6 2015-03-10 15:17:53

Re: Passive panels?

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