GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 95058
The panel should be stacked like any other window
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
"Keep panel below other windows" setting appears to be gone from GNOME-2. I suspect someone has removed it on purpose, but if they have, I think it was a really *bad* decision. The moral: The UI should be there to help me, not get in my way.
hp: This behavior is intentional correct??
It is in metacity anyway, though I think a "keep below" feature would be in the panel not the window manager if it existed. You can actually do "keep panel below" from an external app that isn't the panel or the window manager - Ross Burton was going to add it to his "Devil's Pie" app. Of course, specific consequences of the behavior (such as messing up fullscreen apps) may not be intentional, and I think it's possible that corner panels should be keep below by default, especially if we don't avoid them when placing windows as we do for edge panels. Anyway, it's a lot more complicated than just keep below, keep above, or a preference for that.
It turns out that it is possible to get sawfish to do what I want - you can set "layer" of panel windows to e.g. -3 via "Matched Windows" or by modifying "dock layer" property in lisp init code. Maybe this means telling Sawfish not to display the panel where it's told to (by the panel itself), but I don't really care. I think that *all* panels should be displayed below other windows, though. The area that may be used to place windows etc. is small enough as it is (unless you have a 40-inch monitor or something), and shouldn't be reduced even further by the desktop tools.
well personally for edge panels, i think they should always be on top as this makes using more than one window much easier (ie task list is always visible). However for the other panel types there may be some merit in not having them always on top. lets see what the rest of the usability guys say.
*I* think that panel on top makes it harder to use more than one window, simply because there is less room for the actual windows.
Personally I'd like to just be able to specify 'always on top' or 'always on bottom' for any individual window whether it was a panel or not, and that would end this debate once and for all :)
Yup, the default behavior is broken, let's just add some options! Woot! Got UNIX to the dominant desktop position it currently enjoys. ;-) (Among other things, per-window settings can't be saved/restored because windows are not marked in such a way that you can recognize "the same" window next time it's opened. e.g. you can't tell two different panels apart from the window manager end. So the per-window setting isn't very implementable.) Seriously, I don't think we have much business adding options here until all the main cases work by default; e.g. properly never placing windows under the panel, and properly picking the right above/below default for different kinds of panel.
havoc, is this NOTABUG then?
No its WONTFIX :-)
*** Bug 109969 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I just noticed that the default behaviour in Sawfish 1.3 is to stack the panel just like any other window, which is the best way, really. It essentially means that the panel doesn't get in my way, but I can bring it up anytime I like (and it's not like I don't know where it is.) Again, this is something I feel really strongly about: The panel is supposed to be of service to me, and as such, it should wait quitely in the background until I call for it, and not jump out at me and try to run my life, or occupy space I require for other purposes. Of course, there is "authide", but I find the way the panel slides back and fort in the current implementation slightly annoying, and of course, the preference doesn't exist for menu panels. Also, *raising* a panel is generally easier because you can click anywhere, not just on a special button.
This is a long-since decided issue and I think works well for most people as it is. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 81551 ***