Hi -

I'm still stuck in KDE 3.5.1 under Kubuntu 8.04 "Hardy" on my desktop. I recently, however, put Kubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" on my laptop. KDE 4.3.2 is very nice. I'm still a little confused about the plasmiods, widgets, and applets, but I'm getting the hang of them.

My biggest problem is that it seems like I'm doing a lot of extra clicking to get applications launched, mostly because there doesn't seem to be a configurable quicklaunch for the taskbar.

Please see this snapshot of my KDE 3.5 desktop: http://www.electricnevada.org/download/snapshot5.jpg

You'll notice in the quicklaunch area on the leftside of the taskbar there is Dolphin, Firefox, Thunderbird, OOffice, Kate, Speedcruch, OpenDict, and Konsole. These are all single click icons that open the application immediately.

In KDE 4.3.2 I'm experiencing two problems:

1.) While I can place icons (applets) in the taskbar I can't seem to put them in any particular order. Can they be organized like I have them in KDE 3.5?

2.) Some of the applets, such as the one for Kate, open a dialog box instead of the application and then I have to choose from four selections to start the application. Is there a way to set the applet to simply open a default session? I see I can right click it to set the applet settings, but only for a keyboard combination, not mouse.

Thanks!

Bob

You can try the Quicklaunch plasmoid. I think it's in kdeplasma-addons (there should be a package for Kubuntu with some extra plasmoids).

Regarding Plasma, there are some useful information on Userbase, e.g. Plasma HowTo. [/shameless advertisement]

Thanks Hans -

Finally figured it out. Doesn't seem very intuitive though.

Here's my results http://electricnevada.org/download/snapshot1.jpeg

The quicklauncher is in the add widget dialog. But getting the icons in it was a real hassle. You couldn't click just anywhere in the quicklaunch widget, but had to click on an icon before you get an "add icon" dialog option. Can't just drag them from the desktop into the quicklaunch either.

Moving stuff around in a panel is wired to. Just can't grab it and move it. You have to open the panel options and then use the "screen edge" arrow thing to grab something and reposition it. It should be labeled 'Move," duh.

But before I figured that out I ended up deleting the whole panel and assembling one from scratch inserting applets in the order I wanted them because I could not figure out how to move them around in the panel.

Anyway, it all looks nice and seems to work so far.

Be well,
Bob

yeah, about the quicklaunch plasmoid/widget whatever its supposed to be called, why doesn't it let me pick an app from the menu? and while i'm at that where are the menu's *.desktop files stored in my user folder? i can't find them at all or i could add them to the quicklauncher that way.

what i really want, is to have exactly the same taskbar and quicklaunch setup in KDE that i have in my windows XP, which is a double height taskbar with quicklaunch icons as the top row and taskswitcher tabs as the bottom row, on the bottom screen edge.

Eternus wrote:yeah, about the quicklaunch plasmoid/widget whatever its supposed to be called, why doesn't it let me pick an app from the menu?

It does in 4.4

Eternus wrote:and while i'm at that where are the menu's *.desktop files stored in my user folder? i can't find them at all or i could add them to the quicklauncher that way.

That would be a lot of work...the .desktop files for installed apps are stored in /usr/share/applications and ~./local/share/applications. However, the apps available from the quicklauncher are not stored in a special place. All icons are stored as one line in your plasma-desktop-appletsrc file like this:

iconUrls=file:///usr/share/applications/kde4/Kontact.desktop,file:///usr/share/applications/kde4/dolphin.desktop

So yeah, it can be manually fixed but probably easier to just use the add-functionality and browse to the two locations mentioned above.

well that's what i meant is browse to them until the menu-picker is finished. i just didn't know where to browse to, because even though i have only uninstalled one or two things that came in my distro (openSUSE 11.2) and installed around a dozen or so things, there is only ONE .desktop file in ~./local/share/applications , the one for KMplayer, and i suspect even it is only there because i had to manually assign an icon to it because when it installed, it appeared in my menu with the default 'question mark' icon. nothing else in my entire menu structure has .desktop files anywhere in my home folder except the recent documents and the few things i have in the Desktop folder. if it makes any difference i am using the classic tree menu not the new kickoff style. but if i am understanding you right, that is expected behavior, and the only .desktop that will be anywhere in my folders are ones that deviate for whatever reason from the 'system' default menu ... such as when i change the icon of one, or its location in the menu, like i did with KMplayer, or if i add something to the menu manually.

Eternus wrote:but if i am understanding you right, that is expected behavior, and the only .desktop that will be anywhere in my folders are ones that deviate for whatever reason from the 'system' default menu ... such as when i change the icon of one, or its location in the menu, like i did with KMplayer, or if i add something to the menu manually.

For the most part, that is indeed what it's like. The only exception I can think of are installed windows-programs with wine. They're, as far as I know, only found in the .local subdirectory. Which makes sense since all windows-software usually is installed in the user's home-dir anyway.

well thats ok, virtualbox runs tons better for me than i could ever get wine to anyway and in my own use case there's pretty much nothing in windows world that doesn't have a native equivalent where penguins roam.

now if kde would just get window tiling added my life would be complete.