Thanks, man. I started with XFCE, and so far have not found anything that works better for me.
-Custom panels that can look like any other environment. Plugins support.
-Themes, Workspaces with different backgrounds for each workspace.
-Thunar - Custom actions to run custom scripts based on file type
-Clipman - custom actions based on regex rules
-Keyboard shortcuts to custom scripts
xfce4 worked for me for a long time. I still think it's a fantastic environment. I deal with a lot of code, and a lot of open windows (I have to run 3 programs at once to test code, and they each have their own GUI and console output) so tiling has been a lifesaver.
Now that I've started to grok tmux, I'm really getting spoiled to that and not having to ever take my hands off the keyboard.
If I was going to pick a DE for my laptop that I didn't code on, I'd probably use xfce and set up some sort of tiling addon because I'm pretty sure I can't live without that now.
Fair enough
