Xfce Forum

gnome_refugee

Member

Registered: 2010-01-15

Posts: 169

Open panel launcher from keyboard

I'm running Xfce 4.8 and I have a panel launcher made up as a drop-down menu to launch various commands.

When I click on the launcher icon, the menu drops down and I can then select a menu entry using the keyboard: up and down arrows to highlight an item, Enter to select it.

Is there a way to (a) select the launcher icon on the panel using the keyboard and then (b) open a drop-down launcher menu using the keyboard, or are both of these strictly mouse-controlled?

Suggestions welcome!

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-10-11

Posts: 174

Re: Open panel launcher from keyboard

Maybe you could use zenity to create a popup list in a script (and set a keyboard shortcut for it)… However it’s not perfect currently as just pressing return does not actually return the currently selected item; it looks like it’s selecting cancel instead. I have to press tab tab return to select something with the keyboard.
Of course I suppose someone could submit a patch to zenity; that doesn’t seem hard to fix.

https://help.gnome.org/users/zenity/stable/list.html.en

gnome_refugee

Member

Registered: 2010-01-15

Posts: 169

Re: Open panel launcher from keyboard

Many thanks, stqn. I actually already use zenity for a pop-up list of regularly-used files, so it would be easy enough to set my script up that way. Just wondered if I could use the panel launchers the same way...