Feature Request - Toggle Floating Panel

[AzDayton]

I LOVE that panels can be set to independently float or not! Such great functionality!

One thing that would make it better, IMO, is to put a toggle button in the panel's title bar to toggle whether it's a floating or non-floating panel.

Why? Because I use the panel for a wide variety of things, one of which is using it for various messengers and SMS clients. And as I'm working, switching between tasks and conversations, there are some sites and times when I want a specific pane to float or not, depending on what I'm doing. Being able to switch that on-the-fly, as it were, would be a lot easier than "right-click the tab panel's button, select 'floating panel', click 'this panel'" over and over.

I did look for a hotkey solution, but didn't find one.

Also looked into Command Chains, but couldn't get any of the few "Panel" commands to do anything, so that's no good.

Come to think of it, a better UI implementation might be, instead of on the panel's title bar, to put a small button on the panel button itself. Like a badge on an icon, that one could click to toggle. The other way, anywhere on the panel itself, you'd have to re-open a panel that had collapsed, to change the setting. The little button could even be an on/off indicator so you would know at-a-glance!

Heh. I don't ask for much, do I?

For reference:

[rziiil]

This is a great idea. If I were choosing the icon for it, it would be a pin / thumb tack.

[Pesala]

@AzDayton You can make the setting easier to access by editing the Panel Bar Button menu in Settings, Appearance, Menu Customization.

This Panel, is then available directly on the right-click menu.

[Pesala]

@AzDayton Now that this topic has been moved to Feature Requests, it no longer needs the Feature Request prefix.

I don't like the idea of cluttering the UI with a button for this. Moving the mouse to the top Panel Toolbar would be no more efficient than right-click.

Maybe double-click or long click could toggle the Floating status?

[giaaaacomo]

don't wanna necropost, but i also really think that a dedicated button in the upper right of the panel (near the home and the x button) would be fantastic, similar to what happens in opera.
i get that, as said by @Pesala, cluttering the interface wouldn't be nice, but here i suggest the option to decide what to show in the upper bar of the floating panel. for example, if one only uses that for messaging, the home and the back/forth button become useless.
the best thing about the panel, to me, is that it's basically like an external device that can appear when it's useful, thus everyone uses it differently; allowing more customization would increse its functionality a lot, and make it more flexible

[ihazar]

I think the PIN icon to the upper right side of the panel to pin it or make it floating is a great feature that I would use a lot.
However, as a workaround, now you can set a shortcut for a floating pane:

Note: While the shortcut works great for some panels, it DOES NOT work for panels with the foloowing websites: web.whatsapp.com, messages.google.com, www.youtube.com (looks like a bug!)

[valiowk]

If you hover over the panel toggle button, it already says "Shift click to toggle panel floating" (and has been this way pretty much from the time panel floating was officially introduced).

EDIT: It seems that this toggles the overall panel floating instead of individual panel floating.

[Pesala]

@valiowk The question is not about the Panel Toggle, but about the floating/non-floating status of a panel.

[valiowk]

@Pesala Which is exactly what I addressed in my reply: "Shift click to toggle panel floating".

[ihazar]

@Pesala The question is about Toggle of Floating Panels, and an easy and a swift way to do it instead of the long, cumbersome right click > Floating Panel > This Panel.

[Pesala]

@valiowk If I hover the panel button, I see the name of the panel. Please make a screenshot of where you see this tooltip.

The shortcut seems to be the only way to change the floating status of the active panel.

One can make a Command Chain button, but it toggles floating for all panels.

[valiowk]

@Pesala The tooltip shows up when hovering over the panel toggle button in the status bar. I already edited my first post above to note that this toggles floating for all panels (like the keyboard shortcut), so I guess it doesn't actually solve the OP's request. Although this observation suggests that a command chain button would probably end up being extraneous, as there is already a button that can pretty much do the same thing.

Although, I personally have situations when I would like to toggle panel floating for a specific panel temporarily (for a short enough time that I won't use other panels much), and if that panel normally has the default behaviour, it is easier for me to temporarily toggle overall panel floating using the Shift-Click method. So depending on the user's situation this may or may not be a workable alternative.