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KDE3 had a very nice option to make the toolbar have a transparent background. KDE4 should do the same thing.

Thank you for your idea, however I am sure that the Plasma team has previously stated that this is under the control of the theme author.

Toolbar? Plasma? I am not sure you are both talking about the same thing. Or I am totally lost.

I think the OP meant 'panel', often also referred as 'taskbar' (which is incorrect).

I agree that's upon the plasma theme creators to do transparent themes.
I did one my self based upon Naked theme.
Here's the result:

OP: By "toolbar" do you mean the toolbar usually below the menu bar in all applications?

I Think he means the panel. It is possible to have it transparent, but only with compositing enabled. Then it's up to the plasma theme author to set the transparency. If you haven't enabled compositing yet, this is not possible.

Something I would like to see: not a setting as to whether it's translucent or not, but a setting for HOW translucent it should be. Opaque would look as it does without desktop effects on, and transparent would make the background completely invisible.

It is possible with activated Komposite. But it makes your desktop slow and the system-tray-icons look ugly. There should be a better way.

The User wrote:It is possible with activated Komposite. But it makes your desktop slow and the system-tray-icons look ugly. There should be a better way.

My system try doesn't look ugly.
Do you use KDE4.2.1 with Qt4.5. But even without Qt4.5 it looked like everything else eg. completely transparent. (Look at my printscreen few posts above, take a long look at system tray, you'll see that it and the icons are normal looking.)

The User wrote:It is possible with activated Komposite. But it makes your desktop slow and the system-tray-icons look ugly. There should be a better way.

And my desktop isn't slow :P
Effects enabled FTW

"under the control of the theme author"

So the theme author has control of what my desktop background is too... ??

I agree with jpezaris original post in KDE3 the user had the options (control) to change the look and feel of default menu bar / taskbar panel.... and they should still have this option even without Komposite enabled.

hdaz wrote:"under the control of the theme author"

So the theme author has control of what my desktop background is too... ??

I agree with jpezaris original post in KDE3 the user had the options (control) to change the look and feel of default menu bar / taskbar panel.... and they should still have this option even without Komposite enabled.

I would agree, but I don't know if it's possible. And making your own theme is quite easy. You can make it from existent themes or start from one theme and add what you like or start from scratch.
I'm no dev, so I'm not sure how true this is, but I think that transparency is enabled with ARGB and somehow this doesn't work without compositing.

KDE 4.3 (last update this night) with Qt 4.5 and Oxyglass.
@Pol, what is ftw? Where can I get it? Any Homepage?

Primoz - everything is possible