xfce - drag application to panel

So you have a fresh desktop install with Xfce

Perhaps you wanted the default panel setup, or maybe not.

With a single blank panel, you need to use panel preferences by right clicking on any panel to add some more.

But blank panels are no use - drag and drop applications?

You probably already have xfce4-appfinder installed as part of Xfce desktop

Running xfce4-appfinder (Alt+F3) will bring up a selection menu from which you can drag and drop items to the panel.

The drag and drop process is not flawless and if when you get your item to the panel it does not have a '+' symbol, then it will drop into the ether rather than fixing to the panel.

( If you do not see '+' symbol then have the item drag off the panel and then move it back on before dropping )

Successful drop onto the panel results in a brief dialogue box confirmation and selecting 'Create Launcher' will complete the job.

Once you have setup a few panels on a home desktop it is pretty quick to repeat the process.
You should be able to do similar on your laptop with less than 5 minutes extra work.

You desktop might stay unchanged for a couple of years and so investing 15 minutes total in a couple of setups is worthwhile.

screenshooter - 'Open With' and 'Copy to Clipboard'

When taking screen shots, I tend to want to postprocess them immediately.

Maybe a quick crop, or if the screenshot is to end up on blogger, choosing the jpeg output format (see notes at foot of this posting)

This is why xfce4-screenshooter is my preferred screenshot tool

...as 'Open with' GIMP Image Editor is usually how I go about things.

Here is the menu option for xfce4-screenshooter on Ubuntu Lucid:

If you run Gnome rather than Xfce then, you will maybe, by default have Gnome screenshooter tool.

...which has 'Copy to Clipboard' in the dialog window, popping up, when you have clicked 'Take Screenshot'

Using 'Copy to Clipboard', then from within GIMP, Edit -> Paste As -> New Image ... would also get your screenshot into GIMP for post processing. Just seems a slightly roundabout way when xfce4-screenshooter does it directly.

Note: If you have both screenshot tools on your system, then you might want to 'Edit Menus' to adjust your Applications/Accessories menu to only display your favourite of the two :)


Png and Jpeg for Blogger posting and resizing:

When using blogger, i have little control over how the image is embedded in the page, other than selecting small, large, x-large, etc.

I may be that google resizing process is less than ideal for .png files. Experience suggests
to me that when using blogger jpeg images are not as badly affected by google resizing process.

Having images appearing as grainy due to prepublication resizing just looks a little sloppy, and
so until I understand more, it looks like I'll be using jpeg when posting to blogger. From the little bit
of reading that I have done, it seems that Google really does have a leaning towards jpeg rather than png when you interact with Picassa and Blogger.


Image viewers versus Image editors:

I really am in the keep image viewers as image viewers only camp, when it comes to things like Eye of Gnome, or the feature creep that makes an image viewer into an image editor/photo manager.

I recognise the desire to make things easy for the end user, but I tend to avoid Gthumb and F-Spot and things that supposedly 'manage' images, and instead select my own tools to get the job done.