Barpanel is a powerful desktop panel that enables you to have all you want just one-click-far. It is extensible through plugins and is fully themeable. This release 0.6.0 includes a lot of new features, options and configurable settings. A more complete list follows:

• New theme “SolidGrey” (thanks to Bruno Oliveira)
• Launcher plugin now allows icon OR text OR icon + text as configuration
• Enabled tooltips for launcher, clock, battery, searchbox and staticmenu (configurable with desc field in config file)
• Allowed icon and label options for searchbox plugin
• Allowed icon and label options for quickterminal plugin
• Do not require “%s” in browser configuration for searchbox plugin (added automatically if absent)
• Excess spacing between plugins is removed
• Partial width panels are now allowed, the size and anchor position can be configured in config file (via “span” and “align” attributes for panels)
• Enabled “left” and “right” type panels aside from “top” and “bottom”
• Fixed a sizing bug in the panels (no longer allows them to grow uncontrollably)
• Panel height is now configurable (via “size” attribute) and will not automatically adjust from the configured value
• Panels will now react to screen resolution changes and position themselves properly (eg. xrandr activities)
• Icon size and font size can be configured in the config file for each panel separately (via “iconsize” and “font” attributes)
• Enabled autohide option for panels via the “autohide=’yes’” option for panel elements
• All plugins can now be given a “size” parameter to determine an absolute size for the plugin in pixels
• Ability to optionally draw the desktop (root window) background using an image file
• Default configuration includes a “home” button to show the home directory contents

For those upgrading from a previous version, it is recommended that you reset your previously customized configuration file to ensure correct functionality and to immediately take advantage of the new enhancements. This is either by removing the ~/.barpanel/config.xml file, or executing the new version using the –default-config switch.

The default configuration file provided is customized for those using Gnome, and has been tested mainly on Ubuntu desktops. For users of other desktops, some customization here might be necessary. I will also happily receive any customized configuration files and incorporate into future releases as defaults for non-Gnome users.

Downloads are available on the project page. For more information, please see also the Barpanel homepage.

As usual, all comments and feedback are most welcome.

Tags: Announcements, BarPanel