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Human Interface Guidelines for Panel Plugins

Find below the HIGs for the panel plugins. Keep in mind that those are here for reference and most probably for new plugins. There is a secondary page with proposed HIGs where you are free to add any HIGs you find useful to be noted.

For information about strings style please refer to this page.

General

Context Menu

The right click context menu provides items with default actions like “Move”, “Delete”, and “Configure the panel”. It is possible to add predefined items like “About” and “Properties”.

The About item is seldomly used, which makes it recommended to not include it at all. But that option is left open to the plugin writer.

Some plugins add a custom Help item inside this menu, but it is more common to put a Help button inside the properties dialog. Usually the user will want to open the properties dialog to have a better idea of the plugin. If you don't provide a properties dialog, you can have a reason to add a custom item.

Properties Dialog

In all Xfce applications it is common to apply the settings as they are changed in the dialog. Unless you are making more complex changes, avoid removing the sensitivity or to set the properties dialog modal.

If you are using a RC file to store the settings, you will need to save the settings when the dialog closes. This makes sure the user gets his settings back at any time when he has to restart the panel.

With Xfce 4.6+ you can use Xfconf, in which case the settings are saved as soon as they change. The Xfce 4.8+ Panel provides the macro xfce_panel_plugin_xfconf_channel_new() to acquire the Xfconf channel.

Main UIs

The main UIs that are often reused between the plugins are described as close as possible below. So far there are 3 main UIs for a plugin: the button, the input and the monitor. Currently each plugin is written with custom Gtk+ widgets, and to make this more common it will be good to write GObjects at least for a common button and monitor.

Button

Example of plugins using a button as their main UI: menu, places, notes, launcher, window list, mount, …

The main purpose of the button is to open an external window or to display a menu. In the case of a menu, it must be a toggle button and keep the state pressed as long as the menu is displayed.

Usually an image is put inside the button but it can have a label put besides it. The label has to be short to conserve space and it must be properly capitalized (e.g. “My Button”).

The button has to display the image at the left or at the top given the panel's orientation.

Input

There are not many plugins using an input field for their main UI (for example verve and the dictionary).

The main UI is composed of an optional button (refer to the button class above) with only an image, and an input field (usually a GtkEntry widget).

Monitor

Many plugins display a monitor and give the user the option of showing a label with a value reading, or both. The more “complete” plugin displaying as a monitor is the FS Guard plugin, it can display up to an image, a label with a value and a meter.

Plugin examples: system load monitor, battery monitor, sensors plugin, …

The different elements are contained inside a box, the border width of the box is 0, and the spacing between the children is 2 pixels. For the comments about the labels refer to the button class.

Given the panel orientation is horizontal and vertical, the progress bar has to be either vertical and horizontal.