Xfce Forum

otamate

Member

Registered: 2016-11-18

Posts: 5

Annoying config setting I'm missing!

I have two XFCE desktops on separate machines and I'm trying to set them up the same. With the first, I've dragged the launchers such as Chrome etc to a bottom panel and when I click them they don't move, nor do any new tabs appear in the bottom panel, but they appear onto a panel each time I open a new tab in the app (Chrome). That's just how I want the second to work, but it creates a new tab in the bottom panel with the documents title in it, and shuffles all the launchers on the bottom bar to the right.

What have I missed please?

Last edited by otamate (2016-11-18 14:11:50)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: Annoying config setting I'm missing!

Hello and welcome.

It sounds like the order of the plugins are different on the two systems. Right-click the panel and select Panel > Panel Preferences and compare the order of the items on the Items tab.

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otamate

Member

Registered: 2016-11-18

Posts: 5

Re: Annoying config setting I'm missing!

Hi Toz - thanks, but no - I probably didn't explain it right. Its a behaviour difference.
On the one which I like, if I click the Chrome icon, chrome launches and the tab for the current chrome page appears in the top XFCE panel, above the Chrome tab bar (yes there are two tab bars at this point - that's OK). I create a new tab in Chrome and the single XFCE tab above updates to show just that page, but now Chrome has 2 tabs. The Lower panel never changed at all.
With the system I can't get right, if I clikc the chrome launcher, immediately to its left a new tab appears with the current chrome page as a title and the original chrome icon itself shifts right - adding new pages just updates this new XFCE tab as in the above description. In fact thinking about it, the problem is really just where these new XFCE tabs go, because in the second situation they are not on the top of the screen above Chrome, but on the bottom panel. I stuck with Chrome just to illustrate it, but this happens to any launcher for any app - its dynamic tab is appearing directly to the left of its launcher icon each time.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: Annoying config setting I'm missing!

Can you post screenshots of the top and bottom panel's "Items" tab for both systems (4 pics)? It still sounds to me like a plugin positioning issue.

In fact thinking about it, the problem is really just where these new XFCE tabs go, because in the second situation they are not on the top of the screen above Chrome, but on the bottom panel. I stuck with Chrome just to illustrate it, but this happens to any launcher for any app - its dynamic tab is appearing directly to the left of its launcher icon each time.

From this description it sounds like you have the Window Buttons plugin added to the bottom panel instead of the top panel.

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otamate

Member

Registered: 2016-11-18

Posts: 5

Re: Annoying config setting I'm missing!

Yay! That was it, the Window Buttons. Sorry for my confusing name for these, all is great now.

Pheeble

Member

Registered: 2015-06-22

Posts: 27

Re: Annoying config setting I'm missing!

I have several computers set up to have the same XFCE desktop configuration, and I found the quickest and easiest way was to configure one system to my preferences, then copy the configuration files to the other computers.

These days I create a tar archive backup of the necessary config files when I get the settings the way I want, and extract them from the archive onto a new system after installation. I used to waste far too much time tinkering with each program/plugin's configuration on each computer.

Most of the required settings (but unfortunately not all, depending on the distro) are in ~/.config/xfce4. For your purpose you'd probably want to look at ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml (specifically the xfce4-panel.xml file) and ~/.config/xfce4/panel (for plugins that store some of their settings here, eg. whiskermenu and weather).