It seems (to me at least) that there has been a regression in the implementation of the taskbar (as far as the end-user is concerned) in KDE 4.2.

Taskbar buttons have a 1-pixel unclickable/inactive border at the bottom edge. This is quite annoying, especially when considering that it was not like this before. Please make taskbar buttons extend all the way to the bottom edge of the screen.

The 1-pixel border is unecessary and only makes the taskbar awkward to use.

Works for me with the Oxygen theme, what theme do you use?

I'm just using default settings on kubuntu, with Oxygen theme.

Because of what you said, I removed the .kde/ directory to see if anything will change after a restart, but nothing did.

Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean. The buttons I am referring to are the task-switcher buttons (the buttons that represent open programs). The taskbar does work, but I cannot click on the buttons when the mouse pointer is resting at the very bottom of the screen, because there is a 1-pixel tall inactive border at the bottom of the button. This has never been the case before.

Of course, I CAN click on a taskbar button, but I have to avoid the 1-pixel border at the bottom.

Same thing happened to me, also screws with autohiding panels and firefox status bar, disable active desktop borders and it'll be fine.

Right click on a window border > configure window border > advanced > set active desktop borders to disabled.

Active desktop borders are disable by default on my system. I tried to enable then disable it but there was no effect on taskbar buttons.

Works fine for me (OpenSuse factory, default settings)

Please forgive my english. By "works fine" do you mean it's okay with you to have the 1-pixel frame around the task buttons, or that you do NOT have the 1-pixel frame?

Okay, I'm sorry for troubling you guys, I just realized that the border is clickable but I have to wait for about five seconds for the app to switch. During those five seconds I need to keep the mouse pointer at the bottom edge after clicking on the button.

My applications switch instantly after clicking on the very bottom.

Backspace wrote:Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean.

Nope, I understand exactly what you meant--Fitts's Law and stuff. I also use the very bottom pixel to select the window I want from the taskbar.

(First of all, sorry about my English. It's not my first language...)

I have the same problem but surprisingly not on both screens!

I have a dual monitor setup. My graphics card is a nVidia GeForce 7300, and I'm using the proprietary drivers, version 180.22. My primary monitor is connected to the DVI output, the secondary one to the VGA output.

On my primary monitor the taskbar buttons can be activated with the mouse cursor on the border of the screen. However, on the secondary monitor (after I added a new panel) buttons can't be activated on that manner but ONLY if the panel is on the bottom of the screen. If the panel is on top or on the side, the cursor activates the buttons from the edge of the screen.

Looking carefully, it seems that my secondary monitor has a "dead zone" below the panel. That is, you can move the mouse several pixels below the screen, into an "undisplayed" area. You can notice this because doing a right click while on that area the panel menu it is not shown, and also because when the mouse is on the bottom on the primary monitor you can always see the top pixel of the mouse cursor whereas on the secondary you can completely hide the cursor.

So, maybe this problem is related to the graphic drivers or something? Or should we (me?) fill a bug report?

Well, I have more information... My work partner also has an (older) nVidia card with the same setup as me. He uses Gnome (on another distro) and it has the same problem! The mouse cursor can move further below the screen on the secondary monitor making the taskbar buttons harder to use, so I guess this problem is caused by the graphic drivers (TwinView option, I presume).

Naproxeno: Do both screens have the same resolution or are the different?

Zarin: No, they don't. Primary has a resolution of 1680 X 1050 and secondary has 1280 X 1024.

Problem is that this machine is at work and I won't have access to it until Monday, and also I'm not going to have access to the Internet this weekend. Next Monday I will be able to give you more details about my configuration.

It's worth noting that KDE (and X I suppose) thinks that there is only one big screen that encompasses both monitors. I can't remember what is the vertical resolution of that single screen but it may be that what causes this strange behaviour.

I would speculate that X (and consequently KDE) thinks there is one big 2960x1050 desktop. On your secondary screen, you are able to go 26 pixels lower than the physical screen. You should be able to confirm this by looking through your Xorg.0.log and look for the line that describe the size of the virtual desktop.

Can be annoying. I would call it a bug, but I'm sure others would disagree to that designation.