SOLVED - Adding to Main Menu - Am I doing something wrong?

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linwinux

SOLVED - Adding to Main Menu - Am I doing something wrong?

#1 Post by linwinux »

Hi everyone. Getting a bit frustrated because the Whisker Menu isn't being cooperative ... Since last year, when I install Linux with the XFCE Desktop for someone, I always get the new stand-alone Firefox version from Mozilla, since that one is clean without any distro tampering. Later on I have to create a new starter for it. I was able to do this, but it was a somewhat confusing process ... the saving part of it at the end.

I used the context menu on the start button to edit the main menu. From there selected Internet on the left, followed by selecting a new starter at the bottom. Entered the application title, a brief description, actual path to the executable bin, and selected the appropriate icon. Then I wanted to save the starter, but couldn't. :frown:

Granted, I didn't select a category at the end because 1. that was already done when I elected to create a starter within Internet, and 2. none of the available categories even listed Internet. The one that came closest was Network, which isn't really correct. I tried that twice, then went ahead and rebooted figuring that maybe I just messed around with too many things in the past 24 hours, for there to be some quirk with the saving of the settings in a new starter. After the reboot, I tried creating the starter again and it still wouldn't allow me to save it.
Ultimately I did choose a (second?) category ... Network ... which brought about the desired results.

What's really weird about that (to me) is that I have the whisker menu on my Mint 18.3 setup as well. But on the Mint machine I can enter all of the settings without choosing a category, as long as one was selected previously. Another nice feature is that when you try to move from that new starter to another area of the whisker main-menu, a reminder comes up on the screen that the starter first needs to be saved. So two machines with their latest XFCE setups and whisker menus, yet both of those menus appear to save newly created starters differently.

It would be nice if it would be possible to by-pass adding a new topic, as long as one was already selected. Especially since the available topics don't always represent the topics which actually show up in the startup menu. Luckily the Firefox Starter did appear in the topic Internet ... even though Network was selected ... which does not appear in the startup menu. Glitch, or by design? :confused:
Last edited by linwinux on Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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dolphin_oracle
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Re: Adding to Main Menu - Am I doing something wrong?

#2 Post by dolphin_oracle »

Yeah, its one of the great mysteries of the freedesktop implementation that Network=Internet. There are some other differences too. Our menu editor uses the actual freedesktop categories rather than the transposed ones.
http://www.youtube.com/runwiththedolphin
lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 - MX-23
FYI: mx "test" repo is not the same thing as debian testing repo.

linwinux

SOLVED - Re: Adding to Main Menu - Am I doing something wrong?

#3 Post by linwinux »

Yup, so I noticed. I got it figured out though ... :happy:

If you're going to add an app of your own to the main menu, it doesn't really matter which category you choose on the left side initially. All that really does, is to help you find reference points to other categories and applications. I don't even think that the categories on the left side need to be clicked on at all, just for adding something. Instead, go right down to the bottom, click on the + symbol with add new item, followed by entering the appropriate information in the new, small window which opens up.

Apparently at that point it becomes mandatory to select a category or topic within that window. It doesn't seem to matter which topic you select though, as long as it's one that already exists in the whisker (main) menu.

I don't like to have categories with only 1 or 2 apps in the main menu. I consider this a waste of space and more "stuff" that noobs or newcomers to Linux don't need to see. I like to keep things as simple as possible. So I created a duplicate of an educational (Typing Tutor) app with my own descriptive text, followed by selecting the office category. Then I went ahead and set the app symbol which appeared in the educational category to ... hidden ... which then made the entire educational category disappear from the main menu. If everything within a category is hidden or gone, that category doesn't show up anymore. Good to know ...

One Minor problem though: Apparently it's not possible to delete any existing apps from within the main menu, not even ones that you create yourself. I found that out with two apps that I added to the menu, which I later decided to replace with something else. There's no delete option and even if you clear all of the fields and the symbol for an app ... the app comes back persistently anyway. Ah well, live and learn, right? ;)

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dolphin_oracle
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Re: SOLVED - Adding to Main Menu - Am I doing something wrong?

#4 Post by dolphin_oracle »

there is a hide checkbox that will hide items from the main menu.

also, modified desktop files are saved in ./local/share/applications, so I guess if you need to delete one you can do it there. Its worth thinking about adding a remove option but its tricky in case folks want to put something back, which is why we went with "hide". menu editor works directly on desktop files rather than on menu xml files. the advantage of this method is that it works in all freedesktop-menu compliant menuing systems.
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http://www.youtube.com/runwiththedolphin
lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 - MX-23
FYI: mx "test" repo is not the same thing as debian testing repo.

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Stevo
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Re: SOLVED - Adding to Main Menu - Am I doing something wrong?

#5 Post by Stevo »

Our Firefox also just bundles the binaries from Mozilla. We add some bookmarks and the MX home page with a custom distribution.ini file, but that's about the limit of the customization, AFAIK.

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