Chapter 5.1 LXQt Panel
======================
LXQt Panel is the bar situated at the bottom of your screen by default. The panel contains an application menu, a desktop switcher, a quick-launch bar, a taskbar, a system tray containing applets, and a clock. The panel is highly configurable with a number of settings and plugins.

Usage
------

The application menu allows you to browse and search through available programs; a keyboard shortcut is conveniently available for this and is set to :kbd:`Alt +F1` by default. The menu has many subcategories to launch each application. The leave menu has how to Hibernate, Leave, Logout, Reboot, Shutdown, or Suspend. The desktop switcher allows you to switch to another virtual desktop, allowing you to keep your workspace organized. The quick launch bar allows you to conveniently launch your file explorer (PCManFM) and web browser (Firefox). To add a program to quick launch open the menu and find it there and drag it down onto the panel. 


.. image:: menu_search.png

The taskbar lists the windows you currently have open. To bring one of these windows to focus simply left click the windows on the task bar. If you have multiple of the same window left clicking will open the group, allowing you to select between the different windows. If you want to close a group of multiple windows you can right click the group and click close all. 

.. image:: multiple_tasks.png


On a single window to move it to a different desktop right click to desktop to move the desired desktop. The item to current desktop moves the window to your current virtual desktop. Right clicking move lets you drag the application around to the desired point on the desktop. The resize option from the same window lets you resize the window you right clicked on. Right click and then select maximize on a window to maximize it. Right clicking on window Restore will have a window back to its orginal size. If you right click minimize on the window will minimize your window. Right clicking roll up on a window will make the window only your titlebar. Right clicking to layer will allow you to have move a window always on top, normal, and always on bottom. Finally to close a window with right click on the taskbar and select close will close the window.    

.. image:: menu-right-click.png

The removeable media applet will allow you to manage your remove flash drives and external hard drives and to unmount them without data loss on your system. To unmount such devices left click on the panel that looks like a disk and then click the eject button that is an upward pointing arrow. 

In the system tray there there are multiple widgets. With the volume applet you can change the volume by using the mouse-wheel with the mouse over the speaker icon left click the speaker icon and drag the volume up and down and toggle mute with the button at the bottom or middle click on the volume applet.  To the far right is a clock, you can click the clock to bring up a pop up calendar window.  

.. image:: system_tray.png

As mentioned before, the panel is highly configurable and you can customize it by right clicking at various places.

Customizing
-----------
To change many panel settings right click not on the main taskbar and click the wrench button for panel settings.  

The :guilabel:`Panel` tab has settings for the color and position of the panel. To move the panel their is a drop down menu of position that can move it to the side of the screen you want. The :guilabel:`alignment` drop down menu lets you set the alignment of the panel on your screen if you choose to move it or make it only a portion of the screen. The :guilabel:`size` menu lets you increase or decrease the width of the panel. :guilabel:`Length` has two fields the one is either px or percent is for to change the length of the panel in pixels while  percent is a percent of the entire screen size that changes if you change resolution. The first is the number of pixels or percent of the screen you want the panel to cover. The icon size makes the size of the icons bigger or smaller on the panel. 

If you want to autohide the panel check the :guilabel:`Auto-hide` checkbox in panel settings. To show how long your panel will appear when it comes back after hiding in miliseconds.  

.. image:: lxqt-panel-config.png 

The :guilabel:`Widgets` lets you change the widgets or individual items on the panel and their configuration. To change to a custom font color press the :guilabel:`color button` checkbox. Press the dropper button to bring up a widget to choose the custom color. The checkbox for :guilabel:`background color` sets a background color custom for the background of lxqt-panel and the :guilabel:`dropper` brings up how to select which color. To add an image to your panel background press the checkbox and select your image for the file in the dialog.  

The checkbox for :guilabel:`override icon theme` lets you choose a non system default icon theme for lxqt-panel. The dropdown then lets you see what that icon theme from the dropdown list. If you do not like your changes to the system you can press the reset button to reset changing to before trying to customize the panel. 

To add a new widget click on the widget on the panel configuration screen and press the :guilabel:`+`  button and select the widget you want to add some of which are not on the panel by default. To move an applet down on the order of presentation press the down arrow while the up arrow moves the applet up on the order of presentation. To remove an applet you do not want you can press the :guilabel:`-` button. The wrench button has the settings for certain but not all of the applets in the panel for example the application menu and task manager are customizeable but quick launch and show desktop do not.  

Shipped applets ont enabled by default:
 - Cpu Monitor
 - Color Picker
 - Panel Dom Tree
 - Sensors
 - System Statisitics

.. image:: panel-config-widgets.png

To configure options for your application menu right click on the menu configure application menu or from the panel configuration dialog with the widget selected for application menu click on the wrench button. The checkbox for icon lets you choose a custom icon to use in your menu if you want one and then the use the folder button to browse for the path of the custom file you want for your menu. The checkbox for menu text lets you add text that can be anything you want to your menu. To change the shortcut to open the menu from the default :kbd:`Alt + f1` you can press the button for keyboard shortcut and a countdown will begin a countdown and press the button.

To change options for your task manager or taskbar open the panel configuration dialog select taskmanager taskbar and click the wrench button. The checkbox for show only windows from desktop will only show windows from a certain desktop and will have a drop down that will default to the current desktop but can also be shown. If you want to close windows on a middle click there is a checkbox to turn that on and off. The window grouping button will group multiple windows of the same program into a group of windows. The checkbox for show popup on mouse hover will allow you to hover the mouse over the window group to show them off. Turning the checkbox for window grouping will show each window as its own item on the taskbar.   

To change the look of your taskbar in the same window as above the appearance section the button style will change whetehre to show only the icon or the icon only for only the icons. To show window and the text label of the program press text and icon. Icons only will work best with a panel aligned to the left or right. To have only the text and no icons slecet only text. To change the maximum width of a button change the maximum button width which is measured in pixels to how wide on maximum a button could be.  

The settings for removeable media is able to be opened up is right click the applet Configure Removeable media you can select show info, popup menu, or do nothing. If you want to reset the setting for this press the reset button.

To change the settings on your clock right click on the clock and then configure world clock. The format drop down menu allows you to change how the clock shows. To sleect a short format allows you to have a preselected short format which shows a 12 hour format and am just telling you what time it is. Selecting long from the menu will show you the time with seconds and the time zone. To have a customizeale clock message select custom and then checkboxes to show seconds, pad the hours with zeros or to use a 12 hour format. The time zone checkbox will show your your time zone. The position of says where to put the time zone on the clock.     

Version
-------
Lubuntu ships with version 0.13.0 of lxqt-panel.

How to launch
-------------
lxqt-panel should auto launch by default. If you need to manually start it, run

.. code:: 

    lxqt-panel 
    
from the command line.
