Xfce Forum

Laurentius

Member

Registered: 2016-09-04

Posts: 55

make window button show icon instead of thumbnails

Hello.
The window button item is showing thumbnails instead of application icons for image files (pdf's and jpeg's) on the panel.

Is it possible to make it show icons?

It would be easier to difference between pdf and other image files. (as thumbnails they all look the same).
For other apps the window button applet is showing icons.

thank you.

I'm using Linux Mint 18.1 . (xfce 4,12)

Laurentius

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,006

Re: make window button show icon instead of thumbnails

The Window Buttons plugin uses libwnck to get and display the icon that is exposed by the application. You can check what icon is being exposed by using the "xprop" utility and selecting the application. Try it with gimp before and after an image is loaded. You will see that the application changes the icon.

Here is a GIMP bug report discussing the same issue. The report clains that this was "fixed" (fixed by overlaying the gimp wilber image on the thumbnail) but I don't see that happening on my install of gimp. I'm not sure what the status of this is.

Anyways, there are a number of options here.

1. Since the window buttons plugin uses libwnck, you would need to communicate with the individual applications to get them to offer an option that allows you to configure the use of thumbnails as icons.

2. You could create an Xfce bug report and ask the developers to change this functionality and use desktop icons instead.

3. You could use a panel replacement like plank (and possibly others) that use the desktop icon as an icon symbol.

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Laurentius

Member

Registered: 2016-09-04

Posts: 55

Re: make window button show icon instead of thumbnails

Thank you Toz for your suggestions.

I can't find anything on the applications that let me tweak that. I don't know yet how could xprop help me on this but i could notice that an application icon is shown at the window button plugin before the image gets fully loaded on Gimp, Evince, etc. After that, a preview replaces the application icon.

I see this issue is also present in the Alt+tab cycling. Despite the fact that there is a option on "Window manager tweaks > Compositor" which lets you choose to "show windows preview instead of icons when cycling", when that option is not selected, icons are shown when cycling for all apps, save for image apps, where it shows a small preview of the files, as if that was an icon. The same as the window buttons.

I have seen the same issue is present on Marco window manager and the Mate Window list plugin (At the Mate DE).