Hi all,

I have installed KDE4 under Ubuntu ibex. Having been a dedicated KDE user for many years, I decided to risk the switch from 3.5 to 4.0.

However, I am getting increasingly frustrated because I cannot do the most elementary things I want. I hope that this is because I don't understand how the system works and hope for your help:

- Task bar

The items for "open windows" on the task bar take far too much space. I would like to have these organised in two rows as this was in KDE 3.5, but don't know how to achieve this.

How do I add "commands" to the task bar? I'd like to be able to start e.g. firefox with a click on a task bar icon, but also shell scripts that run rsync or do a "java -jar xyz"?

- Widgets

Folderview: How do I switch to something smaller than these monster-icons? The icons don't mean much anyway, so that I actually would prefer a "list view" with text only. Is this possible at all?

Thanks for your help

Task bar - multirow taskbar doesn't arrive until kde4.2

Widgets - there's a setting for icon size in the "display tab" of folder view settings - right klick on the widget (not on a file icon) should display a menu (or ctrl+s while hovering over the widget) or clik the wrench icon which displays when hovering

pn2 wrote:The items for "open windows" on the task bar take far too much space. I would like to have these organised in two rows as this was in KDE 3.5, but don't know how to achieve this.

That's because it is not possible yet. It works in what will become 4.2 in a few months though.

pn2 wrote:How do I add "commands" to the task bar? I'd like to be able to start e.g. firefox with a click on a task bar icon, but also shell scripts that run rsync or do a "java -jar xyz"?

As long as the command you want to run is a part of the menu-system, do like this:

Right-click on the desktop and unlock the widgets (if they're locked).
Use the K-menu (known as kickoff), and locate the program you want.
Right-click on it and choose add to panel.

If it's not in the menu, you first need to add it there. Just right-click on the menu-icon in the taskbar and the familiar (to KDE 3.x users that is...) Kmenuedit is available in the context menu. After you've added it, follow the steps above.

pn2 wrote:Folderview: How do I switch to something smaller than these monster-icons? The icons don't mean much anyway, so that I actually would prefer a "list view" with text only. Is this possible at all?

Listview is, AFAIK, not possible yet. I'm not sure if this is something my distro (OpenSUSE) backported or not, but it may be worth checking out.

Right-click somewhere within the folderview, and choose "Folder view settings".
On the right-hand side, click the "Display" heading.

Do you have a "Icon size" slider? I realize that even if it's there in Kubuntu, it won't provide as much details as a listview but at least the sizes of the icons are more manageable and workable in the interim.

Great, your hints already helped a lot.

That's because it is not possible yet. It works in what will become 4.2 in a few months though.

I'm looking forward to it.

Folderview: How do I switch to something smaller than these monster-icons? The icons don't mean much anyway, so that I actually would prefer a "list view" with text only. Is this possible at all?

Listview is, AFAIK, not possible yet. I'm not sure if this is something my distro (OpenSUSE) backported or not, but it may be worth checking out.
Right-click somewhere within the folderview, and choose "Folder view settings". On the right-hand side, click the "Display" heading.

Hmm, I can't find a "Display heading". In the folder view settings, I see two radiobuttons that allow to chose between desktop and custom folder, and a filter textedit, and that's all.

Somehow I managed to choose smaller icons (somewhere in the system or desktop settings), but can't find the place anymore. The result now is that the icons are small, but the text under them (which really is the important part) is not readable anymore because it is truncated after 2-3 characters.

Do you know
1) where I can change the icon size back to something larger again?
2) and whether it is possible to provide more text space for the icon's text, while leaving the icon itself small?

Thanks

pn2 wrote:Somehow I managed to choose smaller icons (somewhere in the system or desktop settings), but can't find the place anymore. The result now is that the icons are small, but the text under them (which really is the important part) is not readable anymore because it is truncated after 2-3 characters.

Do you know
1) where I can change the icon size back to something larger again?
2) and whether it is possible to provide more text space for the icon's text, while leaving the icon itself small?

I can think of two places for 1. First, check system-settings->Appearance-Icons->Advanced. There's a drop-down list for icon-size there.

Secondly, check in dolphin. Settings->View Modes->Icons tab. You can change both the size of the icons as they're used in Dolphin there, as well as how many rows the text can occupy.