Re: panel notification area -- not many apps (and suggestions for the panel)

[Darryl Rees <rees netnam vn>]

Ben Davis wrote:

> Alan wrote:
>
> > What should be avoided of course is the syndrom of windows, where every
> > program has it's own tray icon, and eventually your tray gets to be half
> > the width of the screen :)
> >  
>
> I can definitely agree with that.  I guess the true difference between 
> notification icons and panel applets is that the notifaction area 
> provides a common space for an application to communicate with the 
> user.  I personally think this is a good idea, but they need to be 
> careful not to make it too wieldy, and it's also up to developers to 
> use good judgement when to use the notification area, and to give 
> users the option to disable it if it is present (as gaim does). The 
> problem with Windows was that not every icon offered a "do not show in 
> system tray" option.  The user should have ultimate control over what 
> he sees in the panel.
>
> I guess maybe my issue isn't with the notification area, but with the 
> overall management of applets on the panel. Like I said earlier, It's 
> a pain in the butt to have to constantly be moving my launchers and 
> applets around just b/c one thing has changed.. .  Does anyone agree 
> that keeping your applets where you want them is a frusterating task? 
> I mean it seems like every day for some reason my applets/launchers 
> get moved where I don't want them.   Here's what I would like to have 
> done to the panel:  Give the user the option to devide the panel into 
> segments, and give those segments certain properties that tell them 
> how much of the panel they can use, similar to laying out elements in 
> an html table.
>
> For instance, in my situation I would have a left section where I put 
> my menu and some launchers,  a middle section where I put my 
> window-list, and a right section where I put my other applets...  I 
> would like to be able to set up the panel so that my middle section 
> would take up any empty space, and the left and right sections would 
> shrink to the smallest possible size (with a user-defined padding, 
> maybe) making it so that there is NO wasted space on the taskbar.. 
> Again, the best thing about this would be that I could customize it 
> any way I want, or maybe not use it at all.  I think gnome needs to 
> think about giving its users more customizability options... but 
> that's another story...
>
> -Ben Davis
>
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Ben,

You could try quick-lounge on sourceforge.

Cheers,
Darryl.