[Panel-devel] Allow TaskBar Context Menus

[Sven Burmeister]

On Freitag, 19. Oktober 2007, Mike Evans wrote:
> Up until now, the taskbar would eat all right clicks in non-item areas,
> because the task group eats up all unused area

Why does it do so? If I have one task open it is not displayed across the 
whole panel so the taskbar should not use the whole panel either. If this is 
fixed the user does have access to the panel on those areas that are not 
used.

Of course it can happen that there are that many tasks that the taskbar needs 
all of the space, in that case there is no space to click on the taskbar. The 
user should still be able to add applets via d&d though.

Since the taskbar must know whether it reached its limits, i.e. shrinks the 
max width per task, would it not be possible to not only let it show the 
taskbar's context-menu as sub-menu but also a sub-menu for the panel?

Having just a tiny space next to the taskbar-apllet is what users are used to 
from 3.5 yet I always found it hard to explain to people where to look and 
click exactly, i.e. they often clicked just a tiny bit next to it and did not 
get the menu I was refering to. So the bigger the area to access the panel's 
and applet's area is the better.

In fact I think this is true for other applets too. If one wants to change the 
settings of the news-applet one has to click on the border instead of 
anywhere on the main area.

Sven