How do I reorder buttons in the window-list (taskbar) via drag and drop?

Question

I switched from GNOME2 to XFCE and miss the feature to re-arrange the window buttons in the taskbar (window list).

How can I make it working?

I use Xubuntu 12.10.

Solution 1

According to a bug report this feature was introduced in XFCE 4.6, but removed again in XFCE 4.8 for the sake of code simplicity.

Anyways - after some long discussion it was reintroduced and is available in XFCE 4.10 which comes with Ubuntu 12.10 - it just has to be enabled:

• Rightclick on an empty space of the task bar (or at the corner)
• Choose "properties" in the "Window Buttons" context menu
• Choose "Sorting order": "None, allow drag-and-drop"

Solution 2

xfce4-panel 4.12.0:

Right click on the panel -> Panel -> Panel Preferences -> Items tab -> Window Buttons

Press [Edit] button. Go to [Appearance] tab so you can change the sorting order to

None, allow drag-and-drop

Comments

[Alexander Rechsteiner]

Thanks. It was really confusing that you can drag the items by default but not reorder. I don't even know what the dragging is good for if reordering is not enabled.

[mxmlnkn]

I don't know if this can be classified as a bug, but I still can't reorder grouped windows, only single ones.

[Svilen]

These instructions are generally correct but it is very hard to select Window button properties as generally empty space on taskbar is a "Separator" entry (Xubuntu 16.04). I've managed to invoke it just by right clicking on the small empty area between Whisker menu and the first taskbar window entry. So Marcelo's answer is also working alternative.