Panel disappears when locked

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bobity
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Panel disappears when locked

Post by bobity »

Hi there,
Dell Precision M6400 with 16GB RAM. Dual boot with Win7-64. Straightforward installation of Mint 19-64 Tara. No problems for several weeks, then the panel bar along the bottom of the screen disappeared. After some reboots and stuffing around, found that if it was set to 'locked' in Applications>Settings>Panel then no panel bar, but if not 'locked' then panel appears. Anyone any ideas what might be the problem?
Bob Harvey.
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MrEen
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by MrEen »

Is "Automatically hide the panel" set to Never?
bobity
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by bobity »

Apologies, should have said, Automatically Hide Panel is set to Never.
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LinWinux
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by LinWinux »

Transparency settings within the panel perhaps? The XFCE panel can be set to hide/unhide depending on how they're set up when the cursor touches or is removed from the panel location. That works regardless if the panel is locked or not. To my knowledge the locked function is just there to make sure that nothing on the panel can get scrambled by accident.
Double-check all of your panel settings again.

Greetings from Overseas ...

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bobity
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by bobity »

Thank you for your response. I am not certain what you mean by 'transparency settings within the Panel' in that I cannot find any way of changing transparency in the Panel controls.

Settings: there's just a single Panel, 1; Mode is Horizontal; Lock Panel is unchecked; Automatically hide is Never; Don't reserve space on borders is unchecked; Row Size is 32; Number of rows is 1; Length is 100; and Automatically increase the length is checked.

If I rollover the Lock Panel checkbox the popup says "Select this option to hide the handles of the panel and lock its position". Now it occurs to me, what are the 'handles of the panel' that they are talking about? Could this be a factor in my problem?

Thanks again. I don't have any anxiety over this -- things seem to work fine with the panel unlocked. But you know how even minor bugs can niggle away ... :{

Cheers, Bob.
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LinWinux
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by LinWinux »

Sorry, the images have German text on them since I'm using the German language version of XFCE, but I'll explain. The settings are obviously the same in either language. The locked function should always be enabled when you're not making adjustments to the panel. That's the whole purpose of the locked function ... to keep everything locked in place when you're finished with editing the panel ... provided that you're happy with the results of course.

When you view the second part of the panel, that's the one that deals with colors & transparency. Transparency itself is activated in the control panel, in items related to the look & feel of your XFCE desktop. Assuming that transparency is enabled, the panel settings enable you to select the color of the panel (if desired) as well as the actual visible transparency level of the panel that's currently being edited. Alpha set to 0 would be completely transparent while Alpha set to 100 would be no transparency in the panel at all.

But ... you can also set the transparency level for entering or leaving the panel with your mouse cursor. That's what I was referring to in an earlier response. If one or both of those are set to 0 (slider all the way to the left), then guess what? Your panel will become invisible at some or possibly even all of the time. When you uncheck the locked setting of the panel, the panel is automatically forced to become visible, since the assumption is that you're wanting to edit the panel ... thus requiring for it to become visible for the editing.
Hopefully this clarifies things a bit. XFCE panels are IMO the best of all panels in all Linux DEs. :D

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xfce_mint_panel01.jpg
xfce_mint_panel02.jpg
xfce_mint_2ndwallpaper.jpg
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bobity
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by bobity »

Dear LinWinux,
Thank you for this most useful response. I have checked the settings you describe and found them to be as you show them -- the Alpha was set to 95, which seemed OK, and both Opacities set to 100.. So I tried locking the panel, and surprise, surprise, the panel stays visible! So somewhere along the line since I raised this issue it seems that (unknown to myself) I managed to set the panel to stay visible all the time, or one of the updates I installed over the intervening weeks has fixed the setting. Either way it is all sorted, and I now know a bit more about XFCE, which is gratifying. Thank you for your patience on this. I will now close this issue.
Regards, Bob Harvey.
PS: love your backgrounds.
bobity
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Re: [SOLVED] Panel disappears when locked

Post by bobity »

[SOLVED] Panel disappears when locked
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LinWinux
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by LinWinux »

Glad to be of help. When you have a moment, please go back to your starting post, use the editing function, and mark that one SOLVED in the beginnng of your post title. That way it's easier for others to find the entire thread of the post. Thanks.
BTW: I have 100 free wallpapers for anyone who wants them, right here: :wink:
www.drachenbeere.de/100walls_1800.tar.gz

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PLEASE ... Don't respond to questions with meaningless or thoughtless comments!
PLEASE ... Help others, don't be lazy! Take a moment to mark your post SOLVED if you received a solution.
MtnDewManiac
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Re: Panel disappears when locked

Post by MtnDewManiac »

LinWinux wrote: Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:25 amBTW: I have 100 free wallpapers for anyone who wants them, right here: :wink:
www.drachenbeere.de/100walls_1800.tar.gz
For some reason, the forum causes that link to end up being:

Code: Select all

https://forums.linuxmint.com/www.drachenbeere.de/100walls_1800.tar.gz
...on my system. The proper link is, of course:

Code: Select all

www.drachenbeere.de/100walls_1800.tar.gz
Oh, and thank you!

Regards,
MDM
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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