Xfdashboard 0.9.2 Is Released
xfdashboard is a nice switcher and launcher primarily for the Xfce desktop environment. It looks a bit similar to the GNOME and macOS launchers. The latest release adds support for linear gradients, the algorithm for detecting what programs are running in open windows is improved and a bug that would cause xfdashboard to immediately crash in some cases, introduced in xfdashboard 0.9.1, is fixed.
written by 권유리 (Kwon Yu-ri) 2021-03-29 - last edited 2021-04-08. © CC BY
Xfdashboard 0.9.2 with the default theme.
xfdashboard is a nice application switcher and launcher that lets you type to search for applications, switch between open windows using a nice GNOME-style grid overview and switch between virtual desktops using thumbnail previews. It is primarily written for Xfce. It can be used with other fully featured desktops as well as common window mangers as long as you have a few Xfce libraries installed.
We were going to review xfdashboard 0.9.1 when it was released, but it wouldn't even launch so we didn't. All we got was a very sad and depressing message upon startup that said:
"Failed to create texture 2d due to size/format constraints
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)"
We filed a written complaint with the xfdashboard customer service over at gitlab.xfce.org/apps/xfdashboard/-/issues/ were we raised our dissatisfaction with the latest xfdashboard release and demanded our money back. xfdashboard customer service representative and developer Stephan Haller got all over it within hours. There was some back and forth, and then he offered us a new and improved xfdashboard model as a replacement for our broken model. Filing written complains with free software projects customer services does work - as long as you include a detailed description outlining why you are dissatisfied, logs if there are any, debug messages printed in the console and a gdb backtrace. The new and improved xfdashboard is now available as xfdashboard 0.9.2.
The latest release has a lot more than bug-fixes. The XfdashboardGradientColor color class has gained support for linear gradients in addition to the existing support for linear gradients and path gradients. Color schemes for XfdashboardGradientColor can be added to themes using CSS. XfdashboardBackground and XfdashboardOutlineEffect can be set to use any color scheme XfdashboardGradientColor supports.
The algorithm for detecting what system application file (.desktop) corresponds to open windows on GNU/Linux has been greatly improved. xfdashboard will now check the X property _GTK_APPLICATION_ID and also check the /proc filesystem to determine what executable file it should look-up. Developer Stephan Haller notes that he would very much like help from any *BSD developers with implementing similar functionality for *BSD.
The type-to-search functionality works fine in this release. That is not the case if you compile the current git master branch, type-to-search there is broken if the default theme is used. We will probably file another complaint with the xfdashboard customer service about that new and very unfortunate bug. We recommend using the source for the stable 0.9.2 release instead of git if you want to compile from source.
You can acquire the source code for the latest xfdashboard release from https://archive.xfce.org/src/apps/xfdashboard/0.9/. The official website is at https://docs.xfce.org/apps/xfdashboard/
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