Which tricks do you guys use to make Xfce more touch friendly?

Support Xfce
1

Hi guys,

I am using Manjaro Xfce on a Thinkpad L13 Yoga. It can be folded in such a way that it resembles a tablet, the screen supports finger and pen input. I hardly use this mode though, because some actions are not easy to perform without using a keyboard and/or a mouse.

For example, I’m using Cairo-Dock as a starter and window list. It is set to autohide to save vertical space. It reappears if I move the cursor to the bottom screen edge. This works nicely with a mouse, but very badly with the pen or finger. If I manage to show the dock, I cannot hover the icons because finger touch doesn’t support hovering…

Mostly I prefer using Alt+Tab for switching to a different window anyway, but… this cannot be used without a keyboard as well.

Most probably there are further actions besides of switching windows which are tough in tablet mode, but currently this is the deal breaker which leads me to not using it at all, so I don’t know what further problems might pop up.

So, I wonder, how do you guys handle this? Is Xfce, in particular with a dock, just not the right choice for a machine which has a touch screen?

Thanks for any input,
Photon

2

Yes, indeed. It is not. Use Gnome3 or KDE.

3

Thanks! How would I do the window switching in tablet mode on KDE?

4

There is no “tablet mode” and is not optimized for it, while it should still work.

Gnome3 is by design optimized for touchscreens and tablets etc. Therefore I would recommend trying it.

:notebook: I never used Gnome3 with a Touchscreen, so no idea how good it works.