I am running a brand-new installation of Mint 17.3 with KDE Plasma 4.14.2. The items (icons) on my taskbar go dark (fade out) when that task is not active. There used to be a way to keep these items/fields/tabs/icons (whatever the correct term) visible, but the old way does not seem to work any longer. How can I keep all my taskbar items always visible (not go dark)?

This is a deal-breaker for me. My eyes are getting poorer and now I have to lean up close to the screen every time I look to see what is running. Or, because I can't see the icons, I start another iteration of a program that's already running. Neither of these situations is tolerable for much longer.

Thanks in advance !!

Hm, not quite sure what you mean to be honest. Which task manager are you using? Tried the "Icons only task manager"? It is what I use and it does not display the behaviour you describe.

I am not able to find any reference to task manager in my problem report so I have no idea what you are asking.

Can you please provide screenshots?

I'm starting to worry that I've found the wrong place to ask for help.
"Taskbar" is a universal term (used in Windows, Linux, Apple) that describes the strip across the bottom (or top or side) of the screen and contains icons (or entries) for currently running tasks... things like the Clock, the Speaker volume, the Menu button, etc.

Nevertheless, if anyone does not understand what the taskbar is, here is a screen-cap. This is actually two different caps that have been combined into a single view to keep from having to load two different images.

THE UPPER VIEW shows the currently running items (in the middle of the pic) as greyed/faded out. THIS IS BAD

THE LOWER VIEW shows the currently running tasks in color/high-contrast - NOT GREYED OUT. THIS IS GOOD !!

Please click the thumbnail below to view the full-sized image


I am trying to find out how to keep ALL THE ITEMS ON THE TASKBAR (that strip across the bottom of my screen that has entries/icons for all the currently running tasks) from going dark (fading out).

THANK YOU.

Wow, that looks like KDE4! What have Mint done there?

But great, thank you for posting the screenshots. The widget on the taskbar which is responsible for the graying out and showing active applications is called the task manager. There are a number of task managers to chose from and they all have settings.

If I were you I'd therefore right click on the taskbar right next to an active window. You should now see something that allows you to adjust the settings for your task manager, alternatives to your active task manager and general panel options. Select the settings for your task manager to see whether you can turn the graying out off. If that is not the case select alternatives and chose for example the icons-only task manager (which incidentally is the one that I use and where there is no graying out).

HTH

toad wrote:Wow, that looks like KDE4! What have Mint done there?

Correct. I actually took those caps on a machine running Mint-17.2 because that's where my graphics tools are. But, both machines are running KDE-4.14.2, and the problem I am having is the same on both boxes.

After your suggestions above I started chasing the problem in that direction. After pushing every (damned) button in Linux and Mint and the KDE-GUI 4 or 5 or 10 times I think I'm finally finding the solution. The icon-only task-manager seems to do the job - it just doesn't (as the name states) have the annotating text. That's more than OK since all I really need is to know at a glance which apps are already running.

I've also been "lucky" enough to modify my working screen to a height of about an inch - then recover it to full-size again; I've found the method to open windows where I want them instead of in the lower right-hand corner behind the clock; and I've managed to fix a few other "irregularities".

KDE is real purty, and real powerful, but she ain't easy !!!