One other small thing we did in 4.7 on the panel is make the default launchers in the taskbar for file manager and web browser follow your prefered applications as set in the system settings. Which means we have one configuration that we ship, but it matches what you want. Including if you change your mind later. Since they share space intelligently with the tasks, it means less space used: when the app is running, the launcher goes away. (Btw, a bug in 4.7.0 around that feature has been fixed for 4.7.1, so if that isn't working for you properly, the fix is just a patch level update away.)