Xfce Forum

kbtidwell

Member

Registered: 2023-05-21

Posts: 6

Position of hover messages on the taskbar

Hello, everyone.

When I hover the mouse pointer over any item on the taskbar, the message that pops up displays toward the bottom of the taskbar no matter if the taskbar is situated at the top of the display or the bottom. This is fine if the taskbar is at the top, but none of the messages can be seen if the bar is at the bottom because the messages display below the display bottom edge, UNLESS I'm using a two-level taskbar. Items on the top taskbar level will display messages upward, but the bottom level displays downward, blocking their view behind the display bezel.

Currently this is happening on my single-level taskbar on RebornOS, but it has happened on every distro I've used with XFCE in at least the last two years...and I've distrohopped a LOT...probably 40 or so distros. These distros have been a mixture of Debian-, Arch-, and Fedora-based, so the problem seems to be distro-agnostic, which makes sense because XFCE is XFCE. It's also device-agnostic because I've experienced this problem consistently on an Acer E15, an Acer E11, a repurposed Acer C710 Chromebook, a Dell 3189, an HP 15, and even a Chinese Chuwi converted Windows tablet. And oh, yes, my home-built desktop.

I always use several system monitoring items on the taskbar like the CPU Frequency Monitor, Disk Performance Monitor, etc., because most small-form laptops don't have adequate activity indicator LED's to let me know that program builds or other lengthy processes haven't locked up. So to get the maximum use of them I'm forced to locate my taskbar at the top so that I can read the hover messages, even though I much prefer it at the bottom, being previously Windows-centric since version 3.1.

Is there any command line adjustment I can make to fix this, or is there a panel setting I've overlooked for two years now? It's a relatively small nit to pick, but I'm sure I'm not alone in liking a bottom taskbar with messages I can easily read, so I can't really understand why this hasn't already been addressed.

Thank you for reading and have a great Sunday.

kbtidwell

Member

Registered: 2023-05-21

Posts: 6

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

Ok, I've been experimenting, and if I uncheck the "Reserve space on screen edges for the panel" selection in Panel Preferences, the messages display correctly with the taskbar at the bottom. That means I have to manually adjust each window to border correctly with the taskbar, else they extend behind it. If the taskbar is at the top this checkbox can be on or off and the messages display correctly. It feels like the XFCE folks don't want me to use a bottom taskbar lol.

Maybe this behavior is an issue in xfwm4. Maybe it's in xfce4-panel. Maybe it's in xfdesktop. I don't know how to test that or figure it out, but I hope someone does.

Tamaranch

Member

Registered: 2020-12-31

Posts: 321

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

It's actually a GTK issue:
* https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/-/issues/303
* https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2784

I've tried to raise the merge request that would solve the problem recently, without success so far: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/me … te_1749253

As a workaround you can set margins in addition to disabling struts ("Reserve space on screen edges for the panel"), see https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-pane … note_38435

kbtidwell

Member

Registered: 2023-05-21

Posts: 6

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

It's actually a GTK issue:
* https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/-/issues/303
* https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2784

I've tried to raise the merge request that would solve the problem recently, without success so far: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/me … te_1749253

As a workaround you can set margins in addition to disabling struts ("Reserve space on screen edges for the panel"), see https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-pane … note_38435

Ok, thanks for that. I'll consider this an ANSWER, as far as it can be without a resolution from XFCE proper, but if you see any progress I'd appreciate it if you'd reply again here. Thank you again!

Hmmm, I can't see a way to mark this thread as answered.

Last edited by kbtidwell (2023-05-21 14:53:33)

Tamaranch

Member

Registered: 2020-12-31

Posts: 321

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

It's up to you to follow the issues I mentioned if you're interested

kbtidwell

Member

Registered: 2023-05-21

Posts: 6

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

After examining the link: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-pane … note_38435, I thought I'd post the very helpful comment from there:

Nikolas Spiridakis
@1nikolas
· 1 year ago
Okay here is a workaround I ended up using. Use Don't reserve space on borders to make the panel "floating" and then go to Workspaces -> Margins and set the appropriate margins the same as the panel size (so maximized windows don't go behind the panel)

This method solved the problem for me, though I can't understand the low priority XFCE has placed on solving this issue in code.

Thank you for the direction!

Last edited by kbtidwell (2023-05-21 15:07:59)

Tamaranch

Member

Registered: 2020-12-31

Posts: 321

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

But... I didn't make it clear above that this is a GTK issue that Xfce can't solve at its level?

kbtidwell

Member

Registered: 2023-05-21

Posts: 6

Re: Position of hover messages on the taskbar

Ok, yeah, you did. Since I'm not a coder, only a user, I often don't clearly see the difference in the system components. So I'll say then that it still should have been fixed long ago since it affects everyone everywhere all of the time unless these manual adjustments are made. The XFCE team is off the hook, so I'll stop riding them.

Thanks again.