Thanks Brandon,
I don't understand this. I use xmonad/xfce myself on two machines, and the only time the panel misbehaves is a known bug in how our strut handling is hooked into desktopConfig (you can correct it yourself in your config; see XMonad.Hooks.ManageDocks.docksEventHook).
I think I've used ManageDocks in the past (without fully knowing what I was doing). I'll look further into ManageDocks. I don't seem to be able to consistently reproduce the problem I described earlier. How do you start xfce4-panel? .xinitrc, .xsession or is it automatic with xfce session? And do you know if I can set the panel hidden by default (as if I pressed mod-b)?
This sounds like you may not actually be running a proper xfce session?
How would I know and what does the session provide?
xfceConfig specifies Xfce's Terminal as the default terminal emulator in place of xterm, and rebinds mod-p (dmenu_run) to Xfce's application run dialog, mod-shift-p (gmrun) to xfce4-appfinder, and mod-shift-q (quit xmonad) to Xfce's session logout dialog. The latter is somewhat important, as the Xfce session manager would simply restart xmonad if it exited in the usual way.
Thanks. Incidentally, whether I use desktopConfig or xfceConfig, both produce the same error when I press mod-shift-Q and I don't seem to be able to logout: Failed to receive a reply from the session manager The name org.xfce.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files Cheers, Alex