Even if only one application is launched and in the taskbar, the window title is shortened. There would be enough space to the right to expand to make the whole title visible. This is especially annoying if there are several open windows of the same application, all beginning with the same letters. Changing the minimal width in the taskbar options doesn't help. The same bug is in the gnome-panel: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=456820 Screenshots non expanding taskbar in xfce http://www.pic-upload.de/04.07.08/dm156c.png how it should be: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=94761&action=view
Created attachment 1725 screenshot of non expanding taskbar
Created attachment 1726 how it should work
Well the button that expands to the entire width is not good too. But when there is enough space, we should expand the button to show the full label.
The 4.8 panel will provide a gtkrc property max-button-length, when this property is set the -1, the button will expand the entire panel. http://git.xfce.org/nick/xfce4-panel/tree/docs/README.gtkrc-2.0
Devel branch has been merged in master. A 4.7.0 release will follow soon. If you think this bug is not fixed? Feel free to reopen the bug.