Saving My Screen and Pixel Saver your XFCE Desktop

STEP 1 :

>> INSTALL WINDOWCK PLUGIN

Windowck is a set of Xfce plugins which allows you to place the maximized window title and window buttons on the panel, somewhat similar to Unity. This is useful for increasing the vertical screen space: the window titlebar and buttons are removed for maximized windows and they are displayed on the Xfce panel instead.

Windowck Plugins features:

• show the title and buttons of the maximized window on the panel (there is an option to control active windows even if they aren't maximized);
• allow window actions on buttons and title clicks (activate, (un)maximize, close);
• allow window action menu on left button click;
• title formatting options;
• xfwm4/unity theming support for buttons;
• the window title / buttons can be placed anywhere on the panel (unlike under Unity for example), the button order can be changed, etc.

Here are a couple of screenshots with the plugin options:

Install Windowck Plugins

To install Windowck Plugins, simply download the deb from HERE, then install it using Ubuntu Software Center, Gdebi or from the command line.

Before that you must Install the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get install autotools-dev pkg-config intltool dh-autoreconf libgtk2.0-dev xfce4-dev-tools xfce4-panel-dev libxfce4util-dev libxfconf-0-dev libxfce4ui-1-dev libwnck-dev wget

Once you install Windowck Plugins, right click the Xfce panel, select Panel > Add New Items and add:

• "Window Header - Buttons" to put the maximized window buttons on the panel
• "Window Header - Title" to put the maximized window title on the panel

Arch Linux users can install Windowck Plugins via AUR.

To grab the source code, report bugs, etc., see the Windowck Plugins GitHub page.

STEP 2 :

>> INSTALL VALA APPMENU PLUGIN

Here's where Vala Panel AppMenu comes in.

Vala Panel AppMenu is a global menu panel applet for Xfce, MATE and Vala panels, which uses unity-gtk-module as its backend, and it works with all the applications supported by Unity's AppMenu.

As a result, Vala Panel AppMenu provides global menu support for GTK2, GTK3, Qt4 and Qt5 applications, as well as applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, Google Chrome / Chromium, and LibreOffice.

For MATE, Vala Panel AppMenu requires MATE Panel built with GTK3 (so for Ubuntu, it requires Ubuntu MATE 16.10 and newer). Its README also mentions that to build Vala Panel AppMenu, you'll need GTK 3.12 or newer, GLib 2.40 or newer, valac 0.24 or newer and libbamf 0.5.0 or newer.

Here's Vala Panel AppMenu in action : 

Vala Panel AppMenu is not perfect though, and I did encounter a few issues in my test:

when no window is focused / the desktop is empty, a menu containing "Desktop" and "Files" is displayed by the Vala AppMenu applet. These menu items don't work, at least in Ubuntu, and using them can cause the Xfce / MATE panel to crash;

Qt5 supports the AppMenu feature by default, without using any additional packages (I'm not sure which version introduced this feature), however, there's a bug with this and Vala AppMenu which causes the global menu for Qt5 applications to be displayed for a few seconds after the app is closed. This doesn't occur if the appmenu-qt5 package is installed though;

MATE only: GTK2 applications have the menu displayed on both the panel and in the application window. If someone can find a way to solve this, please let us know in the comments!;

MATE only: there's no easy way of moving the applet to the desired position, but it can be done using Dconf Editor;

there's no way of changing the global menu font color, and that can be problematic with some themes. For example, the menu font is dark on a dark panel background using the default Xubuntu 16.04 theme (Greybird). This doesn't occur with Numix GTK theme (which is installed by default in Xubuntu) or Greybird in Xubuntu 16.10.

You may also want to check out the Vala Panel AppMenu issues page on GitHub.

Install and set up Vala AppMenu in Ubuntu (MATE/Xubuntu) or Linux Mint (Xfce) via PPA

If you don't use Ubuntu or Linux Mint, you can grab the Vala Panel AppMenu source from GitHub.

Arch Linux users can install Vala Panel AppMenu via AUR.

For Ubuntu or Linux Mint, see the instructions below.

1. Install Vala AppMenu.

Vala AppMenu is available in the WebUpd8 MATE and Xfce PPA.

For Ubuntu MATE, the plugin is only available for Ubuntu 16.10, because it requires MATE Panel built with GTK3, and that is only the case for Ubuntu 16.10 and newer.

For Xfce, the Vala AppMenu plugin is available for Xubuntu 16.10 and 16.04, as well as Linux Mint Xfce 18.x.

To add the WebUpd8 MATE and Xfce PPA and update the software sources, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/mate
sudo apt update

Then, install the Vala AppMenu plugin / applet:

- for Xfce (Xubuntu 16.10, 16.04 / Linux Mint Xfce 18.x):

sudo apt install xfce4-vala-appmenu-plugin unity-gtk3-module unity-gtk2-module appmenu-qt appmenu-qt5

- for MATE (Ubuntu MATE 16.10):

sudo apt install mate-applet-vala-appmenu unity-gtk3-module unity-gtk2-module appmenu-qt appmenu-qt5

2. Disable the menu from being displayed in application windows (so it's only displayed on the panel; without this, you'll get double menus, in both the panel and application windows).

2.A. for Xfce, simply run the command below:

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/ShellShowsMenubar -n -t bool -s true
xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/ShellShowsAppmenu -n -t bool -s true

2.B. for MATE, you'll need to edit the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini file (if this file doesn't exist, create it) and in this file, add the following under "[Settings]":

gtk-shell-shows-app-menu=true
gtk-shell-shows-menubar=true

Here are step by step instructions for doing this. Firstly, create the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ folder in case it doesn't exist, by using the following command:

mkdir -p ~/.config/gtk-3.0/

Then open ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini with Pluma text editor:

pluma ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

If this file has a "[Settings]" section, paste under it the following:

gtk-shell-shows-app-menu=true
gtk-shell-shows-menubar=true

If the file is empty, paste the following in this file:

[Settings]
gtk-shell-shows-app-menu=true
gtk-shell-shows-menubar=true

... and save the file.

Unfortunately, for MATE, this will not disable the menu from being displayed in app windows for GTK2 (I mentioned this in the issues section above).

3. Restart the session (logout, then log back in).

4. Add the Vala AppMenu applet to the panel (and how to change its position on the MATE panel).

4.A. For Xfce, right click the panel on which you want to add Vala AppMenu to, and select Panel > Panel Preferences (I prefer this to directly adding the applet to the panel, because it also allows moving it to the desired position), and on the Items tab, click "+" and add "AppMenu Plugin" to the panel:

You can move Vala AppMenu to the desired position on the panel via the Items tab from the Xfce4 Panel Preferences.

If you have TopMenu installed, make sure you don't mix the two!

ORIGINAL SOURCE

STEP 3 :

>> Remove maximized window borders

Since the window titlebar and/or buttons are now displayed on the top Xfce panel, you'll probably want to remove the window titlebar for maximized windows. You can do this by go to settings manager >> click window manager tweaks >> on accessbility tab.

make sure you check list on hide frame of windows when maximized and hide title of windows when maximized. thats it....

HERE IS MY DESKTOP SCREENSHOT WITH WINDOWCK PLUGIN, VALA APPMENU PLUGIN AND HIDE WINDOW BORDER :

BONUS :

AND HERE THE VIDEO TUTORIAL :