Autohide xfce4-panel with a keybinding in Openbox

Since version 4.6, Xfce uses a settings editor, similar to Gnome’s gconf. You can edit the settings in xfconf from the command-line with its command-line utility xfconf-query. This is handy if you want to control certain aspects of Xfce through Openbox’ keybindings. On Loka, my desktop computer, I use Openbox as the window manager in Xfce, and use the xfce4-panel, which is set to be always visible. Occasionally, however, I want to hide the panel, and thanks to xfconf-query I can do that with a simple keybinding.

Here is what I use in the keyboard section of my rc.xml:

<keybind key="W-o">
<!--Autohide xfce4-panel-->
      <keybind key="h">
        <action name="Execute">
          <execute>xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -p /panels/panel-0/autohide -s true</execute>
        </action>
      </keybind>
      <keybind key="S-h">
        <action name="Execute">
          <execute>xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -p /panels/panel-0/autohide -s false</execute>
        </action>
      </keybind>
   </keybind>

This makes the Win+o+h keychain (auto)hide the xfce4-panel and Win+o+Shift+h make the panel visible again. (In my configuration, W-o starts the keychain for all Openbox and DE related keybindings)

Note that if you run more than one xfce4-panel, this keybinding will only hide the first panel (panel-0). If you want to hide a different panel, change /panels/panel-0/ to the appropriate value (/panel/panel-1/ for example). You can find out the panel number in the “Panel preferences” dialog (where “Panel 1” will be named “panel-0” in xfconf, “Panel 2” will be “panel-1”, and so on), or you can check it in xfce4-settings-editor.

Configuring the alt-tab dialog in Openbox 3.5

By default, Openbox 3.5 has a vertical alt-tab dialog. If you prefer the old alt-tab icon dialog, you can revert to it by adding the <dialog>icons</dialog> to the PreviousWindow and NextWindow actions in your Alt-Tab (and, for me, Win-Tab) keybindings in your rc.xml, as follows:

<!-- Keybindings for window switching -->
<keybind key="A-Tab">
      <action name="NextWindow">
      <dialog>icons</dialog>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="A-S-Tab">
      <action name="PreviousWindow">
      <dialog>icons</dialog>
      </action>
    </keybind>
<keybind key="W-Tab">
      <action name="NextWindow">
        <allDesktops>yes</allDesktops>
      <dialog>icons</dialog>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="W-S-Tab">
      <action name="PreviousWindow">
        <allDesktops>yes</allDesktops>
      <dialog>icons</dialog>
      </action>
    </keybind>

Change <dialog>icons</dialog> to <dialog>list</dialog> to get the vertical dialog. Change it to <dialog>none</dialog> to have no dialog.

In the rc.xml there is now also a new setting to configure the font for inactive text in on-screen-displays, like the alt-tab dialog. If you’ve migrated your old configuration to Openbox 3.5, make sure you delete the OnScreenDisplay font settings in the theme section of your rc.xml and replace it with two settings: one ActiveOnScreenDisplay and one InactiveOnScreenDisplay. This section in my configuration file looks as follows:

<font place="ActiveOnScreenDisplay">
    <name>Corbel</name>
    <size>9</size>
    <!-- font size in points -->
    <weight>bold</weight>
    <!-- 'bold' or 'normal' -->
    <slant>normal</slant>
    <!-- 'italic' or 'normal' -->
  </font>
  <font place="InactiveOnScreenDisplay">
    <name>Corbel</name>
    <size>9</size>
    <!-- font size in points -->
    <weight>bold</weight>
    <!-- 'bold' or 'normal' -->
    <slant>normal</slant>
    <!-- 'italic' or 'normal' -->
  </font>