BarPanel v0.4.0
Posted on June 13th, 2008
BarPanel is a powerful desktop panel that enables you to have all you want just one-click-far. It is extensible through plugins and fully is themeable. Barpanel is a continuation of the work done in the Foopanel project.
BarPanel v0.4.0 adds a number of new features and fixes to the panel:
New features/plugins:
- staticmenu: A static menu of launchers (customizable via the config file)
- windowmenu: An experimental window menu plugin: requires a recent libwnck-python
- battery: A battery status plugin (requires HAL)
Fixes and adjustments:
- New default configuration to reflect some of the new features
- If available, provide an easy way to start the Alacarte menu editor
- Ability to reload configuration on request (SIGHUP)
- Fixed popups that overflow from right side of the screen
- The web search textbox was made white
- Added a “search” button in the web search popup window
- Now handles ‘%u’ and ‘%f’ handling in desktop files properly
- Allow reloading of configuration (and menus) through the GUI
- Sticky flag set properly to (hopefully) keep the panel visible on all virtual desktops
Known (big) issues:
- The embedder plugin is not completely implemented
- Should provide graphical feedback when reloading config
- No graphical configuration interface is yet available
Initial testing of this has been done on Ubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu 8.04 and Igelle (git head). Please post any further testing results as comments below as necessary.
For downloads and more information, please proceed to the BarPanel project page.
I installed barpanel on my Ubuntu 8.04 box and at first, this thing totally frustrated me.
How to change themes? How to configure plugins? What plugins were available?
I almost fired off an angry comment on lack of documentation, but then I stopped and decided to take a deep breath and look a little closer.
Eventually I found the config.xml file that I put in ~/.barpanel and took a long hard look at. I changed the theme, re-arranged some plugins, etc.
Not too shabby for no man page, I thought.
Then I found that ‘locate barpanel | grep plugins’ gave me a list of the plugins available and I thought I’d try a few.
I figured out the ‘Launcher’ plugin by digging through launcher.py and reminded myself of the importance of open source software.
On that note, I figure I’ve learned enough to help with some documentation (for barpanel, at least). Let me know how I can contribute and I’ll do what I can.
-Eddy
Hey there Eddy,
thanks for the note, and thanks for not firing off the angry comment
True enough, there’s no documentation, and that’s a major minus with Barpanel at the moment.
Not too long ago, there were no users either, so the need for documentation also is a little bit
new
Anyhow, if you are able, then I think documenting the things that you have already learned would
probably be most helpful. This would be some sort of “Configuring and customizing Barpanel”
type of document.
Another thing worth documenting might be something that describes how to write new plugins.
It’s actually dumbingly easy, but as there’s no document about it, most people probably don’t know about it.
Ultimately, the configuration and customization issue should also be resolved with a GUI configuration
tool (which already existed in one form in the ancestor Foopanel project). But even with this, documenting the
“manual method” would still be needed, I think.
Feel free to shoot me emails also to discuss and so that I can do what I can to help.
M