Created attachment 8484 Red bars and gears If i go to panel settings/preferences under Items tab the button to remove an element looks like a red bar. This is also how the seperator look in the list. But if you click the add button the seperator icon in the list in new dialog looks like a stop sign. I suggest having the same icon for seperator in both lists and not have it look the same as the remove button icon. I guess the same could be said for the edit button and the starter icon in the list. They both look like a gear
There are multiple problems you refer to in this report. 1) The icon name of the separator plugin. (Currently: list-remove) 2) Some icon designs in "elementary-xfce" (https://github.com/shimmerproject/elementary-xfce/issues) The icon name hasn't been changed since the separator plugin has been created: 75dfc64b9 (Nick Schermer 2010-02-26 14:08:08 +0100 5) Icon=gtk-remove (Yes, indeed, initially it used to be gtk-remove, but list-remove is simply the more general and up-to-date icon name.) Unless we want to add a unique icon for this plugin (I'm not a huge fan because I guess most people have gotten used to this anyway and icon themes would have to be updated for visual consistency) I guess there aren't many icons we could use instead apart from maybe e.g. list-remove-symbolic, which at least returns a black bar in many icon themes.
Created attachment 8490 list-remove-symbolic icon In this screenshot you'll see what list-remove-symbolic would look like. I guess it's an improvement.
I have no idea what icon would be best but i like it more when it dont look that same at the button like on https://bugzilla.xfce.org/attachment.cgi?id=8490 Guess it can be hard to choose a icon for something that is not visible. So maybe could also just blank/transparent. Or look at what other software use that works good. If the text "Seperator" is always suppose to be there then maybe transparent/no icon would be fine? That way it also looks sort of the same in the list with real space separating the other stuff. I dont have Xfce running right now. Dont recall if its transparent or how you can change the apperance.
Ok i just tested the styles in Xfce. Seems like "separator" is the default style. In Xubuntu the panel is horizontal on the top and then the separator line is vertical. Should it not follow the default style in the list also? Or maybe the panel does not default to being horizontal with vertical separator? Maybe make screenshots with no icon and with vertical line and maybe not so visible. Then people can have a look at have is best. Is it possible to use the same icon/style in the list as on the panel so it looks exactly the same?
One potentially viable option would be to lose the icon completely; as long as the title of the panel item is always shown, this causes no harm. The monochrome look also works for me, in case that gets more love.
(In reply to scootergrisen from comment #4) > Should it not follow the default style in the list also? > Or maybe the panel does not default to being horizontal with vertical separator? That would imply a newly created icon, which I'd rather not do. > Is it possible to use the same icon/style in the list as on the panel so it looks exactly the same? No, not easily, and I'd also consider that overkill (no other plugin has a "live preview" of what it'll look like in the panel). The plugin is loaded as a .desktop file and as such it has to specify a fixed icon name. There's no way of creating the icon dynamically (in a reasonable way, to e.g. show the currently selected separator style) within the panel's "Add item" dialog. (In reply to Pasi Lallinaho from comment #5) > One potentially viable option would be to lose the icon completely; as long > as the title of the panel item is always shown, this causes no harm. I think that would result in bugreports because the current icon has been there forever. Also not sure if Gtk wouldn't show the fallback "broken image" icon in that case, so it'd really have to be a transparent icon (yuck). > The monochrome look also works for me, in case that gets more love. Not sure what you mean by that. It's a standard icon, so it'll have the advantage of being included in practically any icon theme (and being provided as fallback by Gtk itself) and will look consistent with the chosen theme. "Getting more love" would imply we design our own icon, which - as I tried to explain - I'd rather not do because all icon themes would need updates to include it. Personally I see two (reasonable) options, considering the weight/importance of this report. 1) Stick to the current icon. 2) Switch to the symbolic icon.
Simon Steinbeiss referenced this bugreport in commit 1aeeb147f5309b63350f6746278d5090389ea949 separator: Use symbolic icon for more clarity (Bug #15359) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/commit?id=1aeeb147f5309b63350f6746278d5090389ea949
For now I consider this bug fixed. I think it looks better in symbolic style and less misleading. We can reconsider doing something fancier for 4.16.