Switched from ubuntu 11.10 to Mint 12 to escape the unity/gnome3 desktop. I like m12, although didn't care for not being able to add and rearrange launcher applets to panel. Have switched to Cinnamon desktop in Mint 12 and so far I love it. I've chosen the Cinnamon option of top and bottom panels like gnome 2 like I had in ubuntu 10.10. However to date I have not been able to slightly increase the thickness in the size of the panels and to enlarge and rearrange the menu applets and my custom launcher applets in the panels, to make them more visible and far easier to select. Is there a way to enlarge / rearrange these applets? Other than this I am finding Cinnamon in its early stages to be quite a slick desktop. cheers

Cinnamon is Gnome 3 (Gnome-Shell) with a bottom panel and typical Mint features such as Mint Menu etc. The same things you dislike about Gnome Shell you will dislike about Cinnamon for that very reason. Mint has now had 5 different desktops, Gnome 2.x, Gnome 3, MATE (which they apparently took an active part in developing), Gnome 3 with MGSE (MGSE is a a Mint development), and now Cinnamon which is Gnome 3 (Cinnamon is a Mint fork of Gnome 3). One must wonder how many more DEs they are going to try to develop in order to find one that will last more than 1 or 2 releases.

The things you will need to modify are the Mint additions, namely the new bottom panel and its applets etc. The Mint site probably has tutorials on how to do this.

Thanks for reply. I wasn't happy with not being able to add my launchers to Mint's panel with gnome 3. I do like Cinnamon though. I'll see if I can find a tutorial, as you alluded to. I have seen other postings on other sites, asking if there's any way to customize the panels. Seems like others are having the same concerns. cheers

Yes Mint and Cinnamon are customizable. Very in fact. You just need to locate the file that pertains to the aspect you want to change. There are ways to modify the file directly or you can also create your own extension to "monkey patch" the extension or aspect of choice. For you this would be the top menu. Rearranging the applets im sure can be done by this as well. Please read on.

Out of everything I have been researching this past week there is a blog that has some of the best articles on the net on the subject.

Most of Mints "front-end" if you will is Javascript its based on spidermonkey, but uses in gnome3 what is called gjs for the engine and bindings. There is not much documentation on javascript in gnome3 for learning purposes. So if you are not familiar with javascript for application development I would start with learning spidermonkey.

Here is some starters to getting to know gjs javascript: Or as I call Gscript (Gnome Javascript):

http://townx.org/blog/elliot/introdu...js-and-clutter

https://live.gnome.org/Gjs

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/SpiderMonkey

Ok sorry if you did not need any of that. But if it helps, great. Now to the point. the blog is: http://blog.fpmurphy.com

http://blog.fpmurphy.com/2011/05/mor...omization.html (This is a good starting point)

In the archives list on the left, in February there is a couple posts about Cinnamon.

This is another great post that teaches the reader how to add things by making there own scripts:

http://blog.fpmurphy.com/2012/01/dua...-2-button.html

If you read most of his posts about javascript, gnome, gnome shell. You will quickly learn how to modify many aspects of gnome, Whether you are working in Mint,Cinnamon,Ubuntu,Fedora,etc.

I hope this helps.

Neqtan

Thanks Neqtan! Looks like lots to look at. I'll see, what I can find. cheers

I was not sure what you meant by "enlarge top menu". I thought you meant making the whole top panel bigger? Is that correct?

I hope the info I sent you helps. Lots of cool stuff to learn and try.

Neq

Yes Neqtan. I wanted to make the icons in the panel a bit larger, which would require, that I first slightly enlarge the top-to-bottom "width" of the panel itself. Then I wanted to be able to make the icons/applets larger, have a bit more space between them and be able to arrange the order of those applets. I'm a bit jammed up with work tonight, but I intend to get to your links as soon as I can. Thanks. Thane

If you are trying to modify the .css file for the menu you should be on the right track. If it is the activities menu you want to mod it should be the gnome-shell.css in file path /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme.

You will have to keep playing with it till you get the results you want. If you keep trying things and your are not getting results see if you are running compiz.

Good luck. Post back when you get time.

Neq