Xfce4 Panel Menu 0.3.1 review

Xfce4 Panel Menu is a plugin for the Xfce4 panel that provides a menu similar to the start menu in Windows XP

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Radoslaw Pociecha

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Xfce4 Panel Menu is a plugin for the Xfce4 panel that provides a menu similar to the start menu in Windows XP. It contains an applications menu, a menu of recently opened apps and user-defined shortcuts and some other additions.

Menu:

Menu is divided into three parts:

1. first with applications menu and most often used apps is placed in the first column, apps menu uses menu file placed in "$HOME/.config/xfce4/menustart/menu.xml" whuch has the same format as root menu from Xfdesktop.

By now including menus from external file and system menu are not supported. In Properities dialog it is possible to set up number of items to show in "most often used apps" menu.

2. second labeled as "Extensions" gives access to files browser and device mounter (see below) and is placed at bottom of the second column

3. third labeled as "User shortcuts" contains shortcuts for applications that you want start fast without looking for it in menu.

This part is placed in columns from 2 to 6. You can edit it from Properities dialog or by editing "$HOME/.config/xfce4/menustart/userapps.xml" directly. Configuration file has the same format:

1 Column--+
+-- app
+-- app
+-- app
+-- app
2 Column--+
+-- app
+-- app
+-- app
+-- app
...
5 Column--+
+-- app
+-- app
+-- app
+-- app

all entries other then "menu" on the first level are ignored and all entries other then "app" on the second level are ignored (if you were using earlier versions of this panel you will have to redefine this menu, otherwise you will see blank columns in menu)

Number of columns can be set in Properites dialog as number in 2..6, 3, 4, 5, 6 columns are used for "User shortcuts". If the column is to small to show all entries in "recent apps"
or in "User shortcuts" you can scroll it with mouse wheel.

Mounter:

Mounter lets you mount and unmount devices listed in your /etc/fstab. /etc/mtab or -p option in your mount command is reqired for this component to work properly.

Files Browser:

Files browser lets you open files quickly with desired application, for determination which app to run it uses Xfce4 mime modules or application defined by user (e.g. rox). For determination mime-types Xfce4 mime module is used.

This component give also possibility to look in the list of recently opend files. For this file "$HOME/.recently-used" is used as described in freedesktop.org standard.

Installation:

./configure
make
make install (as root)

Requirements:
Gtk+ 2.6.x,
Xfce-4.2,
libxml2