[HOW-TO] Advanced sidepanel (jgmenu)

[napcok]

How to add more power to sidepanel?

We will add some kinds of cards/tabs to the left sidepanel, to have more space for our own customizations.

If you have never added your own commands to the menus and side panels in Mabox, learn the basics from blog post first …

How to add custom commands to Menu and SidePanels

---

Ready? Let's see how panel looks by default... and how will look after modifications.

Before:

After:

---

Simple example to understand how this works

1. Go to Menu/Sidepanels settings → Left panel and click two items:

• Edit Custom Commands (Top)
• Edit Custom Commands (Bottom)

2. You should now see Geany editor with two files opened:

• places-prepend.csv - for TOP
• places-append.csv- for BOTTOM

Add line:
to places-prepend.csv

<big>󱂪</big>   My commands ,^root(my-commands)

and some more lines to places-append.csv
Important!
Add those lines to the very bottom!!!

^tag(my-commands)
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()
^sep(My commands)
. ~/.config/mabox/my-commands.csv
^sep()
<small>  Edit my commands</small> ,geany ~/.config/mabox/my-commands.csv
^sep()
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()

Save both files and check how this works

Create a file to store your custom commands:

touch ~/.config/mabox/my-commands.csv

---

Copy-paste four tabs sidepanel config

Below a copy-paste example of how to create four cards/tabs… like on screenshots above^^^.

places-prepend.csv :

<big>󱂪</big>   Files &amp; Directories ,^root(files-dirs)
<big>󱂪</big>   Commands ,^root(my-commands)
<big>󱂪</big>   Projects ,^root(my-projects)
<big>󱂪</big>   Links ,^root(my-links)

places-append.csv :

^tag(files-dirs)
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()
^sep(Files & Dirs)
. ~/.config/mabox/places.csv
^sep()
<small>  Edit Files &amp; Dirs</small>,geany ~/.config/mabox/places.csv
^sep()
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()

^tag(my-commands)
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()
^sep(My Commands)
. ~/.config/mabox/my-commands.csv
^sep()
<small>  Edit my commands</small> ,geany ~/.config/mabox/my-commands.csv
^sep()
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()

^tag(my-projects)
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()
^sep(My Projects)
. ~/.config/mabox/my-projects.csv
^sep()
<small>  Edit my projects</small> ,geany ~/.config/mabox/my-projects.csv
^sep()
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()

^tag(my-links)
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()
^sep(My Links)
. ~/.config/mabox/my-links.csv
^sep()
<small>  Edit my links</small> ,geany ~/.config/mabox/my-links.csv
^sep()
󰜱 󰜱 󰜱 ,^back()

First tab Files & Directories utilizes csv file used also by Places menu W-. It is created at first run so hit W-. now if you haven’t used it yet.

Command to create needed files:

touch ~/.config/mabox/my-{commands,projects,links}.csv

You might like to disable the default Quick navigation module…
Run panel C-W-left_arrow → Menu/Sidepanels settings → Left Panel, click Quick Navigation in Modules to disable it.

---

Important

1. ^tag() sections must go to the very bottom of places-append.csv
2. ^tag(id) - must be unique
3. If you like your tabs as submenus, use ^checkout() instead of ^root()

---

Have fun

[muzqs]

Thanks… nice tutorial.