Xfce Forum

mikeym

Member

From: Glasgow, Scotland

Registered: 2007-01-07

Posts: 27

Website

Customizing the Panel in xfce

Hi,

I've just been looking at your forum to find out how to customise the xfce panel. My computer's getting a bit old these days and it's not up to any fancy transparencies or anything but I thought I might try to brighten it up a bit by softening the edges on the panel a bit and giving it a background or something.

However I don't realy know where to go to find out the trick needed to do it. I've managed to get a background onto it by combining my favoroute theme clearlooks with one I downloaded and mucking about with the images. That gave me this:

but as you can see there are bits that don't work as you'd expect. The tray icons down on the right hand side. Also I was trying to put a rounded image on the sides of the pannel but because it uses the start of the image for every icon it looked a mess. I mean how do you pick a colour for the mini desktop view? Can you change the spacer icon? Can you actualy make the corners of the pannel round like on the title bars on clear looks?

Anyway I can't imagine anyone will be able to anwer all of those but some advice and maybe a point in the direction of a website that explains these kind of things would be appreciated. (I wasn't able to find one.)

mikeym

Member

From: Glasgow, Scotland

Registered: 2007-01-07

Posts: 27

Website

Re: Customizing the Panel in xfce

Just realised I posted this in the wrong section of the forum. If anyone who has the priveleges feels it's needed they could move this into the Themes section.

mikeym

Member

From: Glasgow, Scotland

Registered: 2007-01-07

Posts: 27

Website

Re: Customizing the Panel in xfce

OK, I'm completely stuck.

How do themes work in xfce? they seem to run some GTK themes but most I try look weird with boxes round the icons in the panel including some of hte ones that came with xfce. This is the case even if I install one and it's engine.

Does xfce not support engines or does it support GTK+2 in some kind of reduced fassion or is it just that these themes wern't tested in xfce. If so how can you make changes to it?

PS My origonal questions about making a curvy panel stand.

Nick

Dev

From: ~

Registered: 2005-02-17

Posts: 1,144

Website

Re: Customizing the Panel in xfce

The panel (and all other Xfce components) use gtk widgets. Those widgets are drawn by the theme engine you use, which could be the Xfce theme engine. The problem you're seeing with the panel is because of multiple windows above each other, this is the way system tray icons are exposed and I don't think that can be changed.

I don't know what you mean with the spacer icon, but if you're referring to the separator plugin: this is also something that is drawn by the theme engine...

Round corder are possible using an panel plugin, I've never tried it, but you can find it here.

You can find more info about themes here.

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accunta

Member

Registered: 2007-08-18

Posts: 3

Re: Customizing the Panel in xfce

mikeym,

Wondered if you could help me out. I see in your screenshot you have your system tray icons using the same background image as the panel background. I've been searching how to do this everywhere. Could you please post the snippet of you gtkrc code? I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

EDIT

Solved! My section below only had the "bg[NORMAL] ..." (draws a solid colour) instead of "bg_pixmap[NORMAL]..." (uses an image).

Modified code:

style "panelbgcolor"
{
  bg_pixmap[NORMAL]        ="panel-bg.png"
  bg_pixmap[ACTIVE]        ="panel-bg.png"
  bg_pixmap[SELECTED]        ="panel-bg.png"
  bg_pixmap[PRELIGHT]        ="panel-bg.png"
  bg_pixmap[INSENSITIVE]    ="panel-bg.png"
}
widget_class "*Panel*" style "panelbgcolor"

As it appears:

http://testing.designlegion.com/prototype-gtk.jpg