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Hi,

Today, when I add an icon to a panel, it goes straight to the left side of the panel. It would be good to allow me to position my icons in other ways.

Here are some thoughts about how to implement this idea:

a) Allow free placement of icons.

Could work, but breaks when we change the resolution. Still, it would be good to have this as an optional setting for the panel.

b) Stick icons either on the left or the right side of the panel

This could work as, if I drag an item to a position up to 50% of the length of the panel, it would stick to the left side. If I drag it to more than 50%, it would stick to the right. This would work the same for vertical bars. The ordering of the items would work the same way as today. This simply tells where the icon goes once you drop it.

c) Custom settings to define how to align items in the panel

An extension of the previous option, would allow the user to choose the number of "alignment sections" inside the panel, the size and alignment for each. This way, the regular panel as it is today would be 1 section aligned to the left. The "left/right" schema would be 2 sections of 50% each, one aligned to the left, and one aligned to the right. One could define 3 sections of 33%, and align the one in the middle to the center. Depending where you drop it, it would stick to that area. There could be an option to freely move items inside the section.

c) Integrate a "panel spacer" in KDE

There was a panel spacer in kde-look, but it breaks every time I get a new version of KDE, has some bugs, and is a problem for people that don't know how to compile plasmoids. I am not sure this would be a good solution, seems to be more of a workaround to this problem.


Although I agree that simply allowing left/right/center alignment of items inside panels would allow us to use multiple panels for that, having a single panel is more intuitive. I tried that and I hated having a lot of cashews between my panels. Also, the division of the panels look very strange depending on the theme.

Since we already have the scenario of the taskbar + system tray, where although we have a single panel, task items appear from left to right and tray icons from right to left, allowing us to set this easily for other items would be a good option.

Thanks.

There is already a panel spacer integrated into the panel in KDE 4.3.

Also I (and Hans too) think that this idea is actually comprised of more than just one idea; So re-write it accordingly to fit the one idea per thread policy.
thank you!

Primoz wrote:Also I (and Hans too) think that this idea is actually comprised of more than just one idea; So re-write it accordingly to fit the one idea per thread policy.
thank you!

Thanks. I didn't know panel spacer was integrated into 4.3.

As for being multiple ideas, I don't think so. The idea is one, as described in the subject. What I have is multiple solutions to implement the same idea.

Anyway, having panel spacer integrated into 4.3 is a good start.
Thanks.

Solutions are ideas. If you have multiple solutions to the same problem, they should each go into separate threads so people can debate and vote on those ideas separately.

With a little bit of stability placing, the spacer in 4.3 will suffice - and I expect it'll work just fine and as expected in 4.3 stable release.
I DO like the idea of the handles showing when you click the toolbox icon so you can resize it from the panel settings - whoever implemented that is a genius

Marked as implemented