Dock-style gnome-panel Applet: Does One Exist?

[aaaantoine]

Because Window List from gnome-panel depends on WnckTasklist to create a standard task list, and because I don't want to mess with any libraries, I've created an independent app.

If you want a dock built into your existing gnome panel, this application will do it.

I've attached two screen shots; one of my current implementation, and one of how the dock would appear on a 48px panel using the Human theme.

This marks my first distributed application, so I expect it to be broken for a lot of people. However, this is pretty much stable on my platform.

Installation instructions:
1. Download the attached tar.gz file.
2. Extract it somewhere in your home folder.
3. Make sure you have libpanelapplet-2.0 and libwnck-1.0 installed, along with their -dev packages.
4. In the terminal, go to the folder and type:

make
sudo make install

Note that ./configure is omitted because I have not yet implemented it.

Things I eventually want to add:
- Handle urgent messages for windows.
- Set icon locations for windows (In other words, add support for minimize, restore, and window preview animations)
- Actually add support for launchers, so that the task "dock" lives up to its name.
- Add smooth icon scaling, if possible.
- Add options for grouping windows.
- Add options for only showing current workspace windows.

Change log (will provide last 2-3 versions in the event of a regression):
0.0.2: (Thanks, Eemil!)
- Now brings hidden windows to front when clicking the icon, and only minimizes shown windows.
- Switches to the workspace a window resides in when you click to unminimize / activate a window.

0.0.1: Initial release. Lists windows from all workspaces, without grouping, on the gnome panel.

Original post:

Basically, I want a panel applet that behaves like AWN. Does such an application exist?

If not, which idea do you think is better?

1. Write a fork of the Window List applet that is specialized to behave like AWN.
2. Write and submit patches to the Window List applet to add AWN behavior options for the user.

Actually I would probably do a combination of the two if I went forward with this project. But first, I need to find that source code...

Edit: I use AWN currently. My reasons for wanting to replace it are as follows.
1. It's buggy.
2. It requires compositing, which won't be a problem for me when DRI2 makes it to Ubuntu, but in the mean time...
3. I want to integrate it into my existing gnome panel to save resources.

[aaaantoine]

So I found the source code in gnome-panel.

But I'm having a hard time trying to find the widgets for the window list applet itself.

window-list.c seems to apply to the preferences window more than anything else.

...This thread should probably move to the Programming forum.

[Therion]

Do you mean something like Gnome Do?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7361736...337246/detail/

[aaaantoine]

No. Gnome Do is great, but a window list it is not.

[hanzomon4]

That would be cool.. An applet that turns the panel into a dock right?

[Bölvaður]

if I understand correctly, you are trying to make "Window List 2.24.1" behave the same or similarly to awn?

If Im not going to spain over christmas I would love to participate.

[added]
Send me pm about this when you begin.

[ufugu]

If you mean an applet that behaves like an Apple Dock (for example, clicking the Firefox icon will bring you to the current Firefox window instead of opening a new instance) but runs in the panel, then I am right there with you.

Closest two things I've found:

1) Run the XFCE panel with the xfce panel applet "icon box".

2) Run a bottom panel and AWN concurrently. If you size AWN really small and put your native panel applets far to each end, and then make matching AWN and panel applet backgrounds, you can get a similar result to what you're looking for.

[aaaantoine]

if I understand correctly, you are trying to make "Window List 2.24.1" behave the same or similarly to awn?

If Im not going to spain over christmas I would love to participate.

[added]
Send me pm about this when you begin.

Pretty much.

If I can ever figure out how the code actually works, my short term plans are as follows:

1. Remove the text from the Window List entries (fork). Or, create an option to remove the text (patch).
2. Make icon resize with panel size instead of using multiple rows.
3. When text is removed, the Window List buttons should always fit the icon instead of expanding to fill available space.

That's the "easy" stuff. From there I would like to try figuring out integrating launchers.

[Bölvaður]

I would guess it might be easiest to copy the code from "Window List 2.24.1" and rename it to "Panel Dock 0.0.1"

Then you can use the same code for minimizing the windows and just have an if statement to check if there is instance of that applications already running, if not then we can use bash command to execute the program or look into the code in gnome-menu (not sure)

[PCessna]

You can make one.

Make new panel, Uncheck expand, choose your size, place on screen, check hide buttons, auto-hide if you want, add applets and shortcuts you want and presto!, You got yourself a nice homemade dock from GNOME's Panel.