Drop down terminal windows

An inner monologue of my geeky self.

Xfce4-terminal has the functionality to have one drop-down window. This mode is inspired by consoles in computer games, such as Quake, in which a terminal slides down from the top of the screen when a key is pressed, and then slides back up when the key is pressed again. The drop-down functionality was added in Xfce4-terminal 0.6.1.

You can start the drop-down mode by running xfce4-terminal --drop-down. Since the application has no keybinding code, it is advised to use Application Shortcuts for this.

The first time xfce4-terminal --drop-down is passed to the application, it will create a drop-down window and show it on top of the active monitor(the monitor that contains the mouse pointer). Each other time the command is executed, the drop-down window will toggle its visibility.

When you start the drop-down window for the first time, the application opens a window on top of other windows at the top of the screen without window borders.

Drop-down Terminal Window with Multiple Tabs
Картинка с сайта: docs.xfce.org

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The drop-down preferences will be shown in the normal preferences dialog if opened from a drop-down window. You can do so by clicking the small Preferences icon in the buttom-right corner of the tab bar, right-click the notification area icon or right-click in the terminal window and choose Preferences….

Drop-down Window Preferences
Картинка с сайта: docs.xfce.org

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Keep window open when it loses focus

This setting is applied during startup only and controls the initial state of the down toggle-button shown in the tab bar. If enabled the window will not close when it loses focus (not the active window anymore).

Always keep window on top

If enabled it asks the window manger to not be overlapped by other windows.

Use shortcut to focus visible window

In case you have the keep-open option enabled, enabling this option will make the app shortcut for xfce4-terminal –drop-down focus the opened window, instead of hiding it.

Show status icon in notification area

Put a terminal icon in the system tray. The icon responds to clicks to toggle the window visibility or with right-click to access the Xfce Terminal preferences.

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Width

Width of the window. The size is the percentage of the monitor the terminal is displayed on. Note that the size is aligned to match the terminal character size, so in some cases 1% does not make a visual difference.

Height

Same as above, but than for the height of the window.

Opacity

If you have compositing enabled, it will control the transparency of the window.

Duration

Animation time for the roll-up and -down effect. To disable this set the time to 0 milliseconds.

Always show tabs

Hide the tabs at the bottom of the window when there is only a single tab opened. Then there are than 1 tab the bar will always be visible.

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Position

Horizontal position of the window on the monitor.

Move to monitor with pointer

If the window should be moved to the monitor containing the mouse pointer when the xfce4-terminal --drop-down option is executed. If disabled, the window will stay on the monitor is was first started on.

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If you set the hidden preference “DropdownParametersOnce” to TRUE, when started the first time the --drop-down option also accepts window and tab xfce4-terminal — Command-line Options parameters. You can use this to start a drop-down with multiple predefined commands. The example below will open three tabs in the drop-down window (with IRC client, music on console and process overview).

xfce4-terminal --drop-down --title "Irssi Client" -e irssi --tab -e mocp --tab --title "System Status" -e top

If the option is set to FALSE xfce4-terminal — Command-line Options parameters are taken into account every time.

Another trick is to open a new tab in an existing drop-down window. You therefore need to start the with --tab parameter, followed by --drop-down. If no drop-down is running a new drop-down will be started.

xfce4-terminal --tab --drop-down --title "Disk Usage" -e df --hold

Note that some of the window options don’t apply to the drop-down window, like —show-borders and —geometry since those are overridden by window specific preferences.

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Return to xfce4-terminal Main Documentation Page

; window title to look for (REQUIRED)
; see http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/SetTitleMatchMode.htm for options
win_title = (Mark )?(bash|.*Console2)
title_match_mode = RegEx

; absolute path to program to start if above title doesn't exist (REQUIRED)
program = C:\Program Files\Console2\Console.exe

; hotkey to open/hide/unhide on (REQUIRED)
hotkey = F12

; hide if the application loses focus (check every this many milliseconds while app is focused)
hide_focus_lost_period := 500 ; set to 0 to disable
hide_focus_toggle_hotkey = F11 ; set to 0 to disable
;hide_focus_toggle_hotkey := false ; uncomment to disable

; one-click copy/paste options
; with yakuake you could highlight text, press the middle mouse button, and have it pasted into the terminal
; hotkey to copy/paste on
copy_paste_button = MButton
copy_command = ^x
paste_command = +{Insert}
;copy_paste_button := false ; uncomment to disable

;#NoTrayIcon ; uncomment this if you don't want the AHK tray icon showing for this script

; window resizing options
win_width_percent  = 80 ; set to 0 to disable
win_height_percent = 60 ; set to 0 to disable
diff_allowed       = 5  ; difference allowed between new and old dimensions to skip resizing window (stops jitter)

; window position options
y_position = top    ; valid values are 'top, bottom, center', anything else doesn't change the y position
x_position = center ; valid values are 'left, right, center', anything else doesn't change the x position

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