2010-06-14

Major changes in the Xfce Task Manager going 1.0

It's done. The task manager application available in Xfce for quite some years is now available with major changes. It has been rewritten from scratch, with GtkBuilder UI definitions and GObjects, everything is fresh and clean. The application has support for Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and OpenSolaris.

Let's start by visual changes:
  • The buttons at the bottom are gone, the progress bars at the top are vanished, say hello to a toolbar with buttons and monitors.
  • You read well, monitors are in, they show a graph of the CPU and memory usage by time.
  • A status bar is visible at the bottom, it displays a general information about the system usage.
  • Icons are displayed beneath the task names.

Let's continue with less visual:
  • Tasks that start are displayed with a green background for a short delay and tasks that terminate with a red background.
  • Tasks which state is changing are temporarily displayed with a yellow background. This covers tasks changing their state from idle to running, vice versa and etc.
  • The tree views context menu contains the same actions as before, sending signals to the task and changing the priority. They have been polished however, for example the continue and stop signals aren't shown altogether anymore, and there are only five priorities to set ranging from Very low to Very high.
  • The tree view columns can be reordered as you wish.
  • An optional status icon can be activated allowing you to hide the application.
  • It is possible to display percentage values with more precision.
  • And finally, the default refresh rate is 750ms and it can be switched from 500ms up to 10s.

And the result is as follows:


The application is fully translated into fifteen languages!

Go to project webpage.
Posted by at
Labels:

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous14/6/10 7:34 PM

    The coloured state backgrounds are totally awesome. Plus the default icon + name display makes it very easy to spot the right process. Being able to adjust the update frequency is also nice, so it can actually stay open without eating up all battery and still be useful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous15/6/10 6:23 PM

    This is very nice, thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown15/6/10 10:45 PM

    yes, that's thing works good on my unity-linux with XFCE-4.6.2

    THANKS for your work on XFCE! I like it!

    onkelho@unity-linux.org

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous16/6/10 9:08 AM

    nice but it has the same ugly fat borders....

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mike Massonnet16/6/10 10:53 AM

    So you are the borders-hatter. If they were present in first place, it was to be consistent with an existing application of the Xfce stask, notably Thunar. Despit the fact that you sound harsh, you are right. Patches welcome.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous20/6/10 8:00 PM

    thats not true...

    have a look at midori, xfburn or xarchiver they dont hav any borders.

    have a look at thunar and bulk-renane they have diffrent borders.

    so you can see xfce is a very inconsistent desktop

    btw. sorry for my poor english

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mike Massonnet20/6/10 10:39 PM

    In fact it was like this before and I only had a look at Thunar, thanks for listing the other applications. As said you are right, and your poor English explains why you are so “direct” :)

    This is effectively only a choice of taste and color.

    I committed a patch to remove the borders. It would be indeed great to have them removed in Thunar too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous7/7/10 10:38 PM

    1. Toolbar buttons should not be used as menus.

    2. The toolbar buttons should obey the toolbar settings. The new Xfce Task Manager always has icons and text labels underneath, regardless of the user's settings.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Mike Massonnet7/7/10 11:24 PM

    Why is this so? There is no standard for this, nor is there a HIG relating this point. I mocked the application, if you have a further ideas please send them to me. I already asked for feedback while releasing the betas, I'm always open for new suggestions. What can be added is a small arrow within the tool items that show a menu to avoid this confusion.

    Regarding the labels, I forced them in order to cheat on the default height of the toolbar for the monitors. It's right that the system behavior is wished in place, I have updated the roadmap file to have an option for it. In fact a settings dialog will likely appear in the future. Remember that this first stable version is a rewrite from scratch.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Miro Hrončok14/7/10 9:15 PM

    Hi Mike,
    I like this version 300% more then the old one.
    I have a few hints:
    1. (As was said) the toolbar buttons should obey the toolbar setting.
    2. I would like to see a little arrow near Execute and Preferences button, so it would be clear, they are menus.
    3. I would like an option for not using taskbar icon and to end the application while pressing the Close button - I see no reason for keeping it running.

    Not as good witch patches, sending just ideas instead.

    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Mike Massonnet15/7/10 4:28 PM

    @Miro The status icon can be hidden (Preferences > Show status icon) in which case clicking the close button will quit the application.

    I updated the roadmap file for an application icons option.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Miro Hrončok16/7/10 12:03 AM

    @Mike Sorry, haven't found that option. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)