Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Xubuntu: How To Put Maximized Windows Buttons And Title On The Panel

`Windowck` is a set of Xfce plugins which allows you to place the maximized window title and window buttons on the panel, somewhat similar to Unity. This is useful for increasing the vertical screen space: the window titlebar and buttons are removed for maximized windows and they are displayed on the Xfce panel instead.


Windowck Plugins features:
  • show the title and buttons of the maximized window on the panel (there is an option to control active windows even if they aren't maximized);
  • allow window actions on buttons and title clicks (activate, (un)maximize, close);
  • allow window action menu on left button click;
  • title formatting options;
  • xfwm4/unity theming support for buttons;
  • the window title / buttons can be placed anywhere on the panel (unlike under Unity for example), the button order can be changed, etc.
Here are a couple of screenshots with the plugin options:




Install Windowck Plugins in Xubuntu


Xubuntu 14.04 and 14.10 only: to install Windowck Plugins, simply download the deb from HERE, then install it using Ubuntu Software Center, Gdebi or from the command line.

Xubuntu 13.10, 12.04: For older Xubuntu versions, you'll have to build it from source (important: you need Xfce 4.10 or newer, which isn't in the official repositories for Ubuntu 12.04 so you'll need to use a PPA for it, or else it won't work!):

1. Install the required dependencies:
sudo apt-get install autotools-dev pkg-config intltool dh-autoreconf libgtk2.0-dev xfce4-dev-tools xfce4-panel-dev libxfce4util-dev libxfconf-0-dev libxfce4ui-1-dev libwnck-dev wget

2. Download and extract xfce4-windowck-plugin:
cd
wget https://github.com/cedl38/xfce4-windowck-plugin/archive/v0.3.0.tar.gz
tar -xvf v0.3.0.tar.gz

3. Compile xfce4-windowck-plugin:
cd ~/xfce4-windowck-plugin-0.3.0
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install


Once you install Windowck Plugins, right click the Xfce panel, select Panel > Add New Items and add:
  • "Window Header - Buttons" to put the maximized window buttons on the panel
  • "Window Header - Title" to put the maximized window title on the panel

Arch Linux users can install Windowck Plugins via AUR.

To grab the source code, report bugs, etc., see the Windowck Plugins GitHub page.


Remove maximized window borders


Since the window titlebar and/or buttons are now displayed on the top Xfce panel, you'll probably want to remove the window titlebar for maximized windows. You can do this using Maximus. To install it in Xubuntu, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install maximus

By default, Maximus maximizes all new windows but you can disable this behavior by running the following command:
gconftool-2 --set /apps/maximus/no_maximize --type=bool true

And finally, log out and log back in. That's it!

Update: instead of Maximus, you can use xfwm4-titleless, which should work better on Xfce, but you'll have to compile it from source (thanks to Rober for the tip!). Arch Linux users can grab it via AUR.
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