This section describes the ways Kicker can be configured. It's only about the basic Kicker settings. Configuration of applets are described in another section.
You can change the settings by either clicking in the context menu of Kicker, or in TDE Control Center by going to Desktop and then selecting the Panels or the Taskbar module.
Panels and panel extensions are configured on the same page. Simply choose one of your extensions (for example, Child Panel) from the Settings for: listbox. You will then be adjust its settings rather than that of the Main Panel.
In the Arrangement tab you can configure some basic functionality of the TDE panel (that is, functionality you'd find in other panel applications as well; later we'll come to the more interesting features).
If you have more than one panel on screen, you can select at the top of the window which panel you wish to configure.
In the Position section you can choose which screen border the panel should be attached. If you want to play around with different settings you can change the panel's position even easier by dragging the panel from one border to the other.
In the section labeled Position is a set of 12 buttons arranged in a square. Each button corresponds to a location for the panel. Click on a button and notice where the panel is located on the preview monitor to the right.
Generally, the available space in kicker is used more efficiently when the panel is aligned horizontally, that is, attached to the top or bottom screen border.
The Length section lets you define how much space a panel will occupy on the side of the screen which it resides. By default this is on the bottom so changing this value will affect a panel's width. The value can be anywhere from 1% to 100%. Use the combo box and slider to adjust the minimum length of the panel. Checking the check box Expand as required to fit contents makes sure that a panel is at least as big as needed to show every icon and applet. The panel will become longer if more space is needed. When less space is required on the panel, the panel will shrink down to the minimum size. If there is no mark in the checkbox, then the panel is fixed to the length specified in this section.
The final section of this dialog is labeled Size, and refers to the height of the panel. The panel's size can be Tiny, Small, Medium, Large or Custom. Choosing Custom mode allows resizing Kicker by specifying a height in the combobox. The default size for the predefined height Tiny is 24 pixels, Small is 30 pixels, Normal is 46 pixels, and Large is 58 pixels.
There are additional hidden options. These hidden options are configured in $TDEHOME/share/config/ktaskbarrc [General]. The MinimumButtonHeight option is the height where taskbar buttons stack into rows. The default value is 18 pixels. To prevent the taskbar buttons from stacking into rows, MinimumButtonHeight must defined explicitly and be at least one pixel larger than the defined panel height.
A second hidden option is MaximumButtonWidth. The default value is 200 pixels. This is the width each taskbar button will use. To override the default value the option must defined explicitly. The setting mostly affects using a Display option with text.
If you have multiple monitors, you can configure the panel for each screen entirely independently. If you are not sure which screen is which, Press the and a number will appear centred on each screen.
Then simply choose the screen you wish to configure from the drop down box labelled Xinerama screen, or choose All Screens to have identical configurations on each.
Depending on your screen resolution you may find that the panel takes away too much of your precious screen real estate. To save screen space, the panel offers manual hiding of the panel, an auto hide feature, and the ability to allow other windows to lay on top of the panel. These features are selected in the section entitled Hide Mode.
When the Hide Mode feature is enabled, the panel will hide when the mouse cursor has not been moved over it for the configured time. If you move the mouse to the panel's screen border it will show up again.
The Hide Mode section has three options:
When this option is selected, the panel will remain visible at the location you defined unless you click on the button at the far right (for horizontally oriented) or bottom (for vertically oriented) button. This button has an arrow on it pointed to the edge of the screen.
Once clicked, the panel will disappear. If the button is clicked again, the panel will re-appear at the same location.
If this option is selected, then the panel will automatically disappear after the number of seconds specified in the combo box below the option. To make the panel reappear, simply move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen where the panel is located, and the panel will reappear immediately.
As this option's label implies, the panel is always on the desktop when this option is selected. It is now possible, however, for application windows to lay on top of the panel.
Once the panel has moved back on top of the application window, it will stay there until an application window becomes active again.
If you place a mark in the checkbox labeled Show panel when switching desktops, the panel will automatically reappear when you switch desktops. (The panel will disappear again after the specified number of seconds.) Otherwise, if there are too many applets and icons on Kicker, two small scroll buttons will be displayed to scroll the whole panel.
To restore the panel, simply move the mouse cursor to the screen location specified in the drop box labeled Raise when the pointer touches the screen's:. You can change this value by selecting one of the choices provided in the drop down box.
When the panel's hide buttons are enabled you'll see buttons on both sides of the panel, with arrows showing to the screen border. If you click on one of these buttons, the panel will slide away in that direction. After that, you'll see a remaining show button in that corner, which will make the panel show again. Check the appropriate checkbox if you want the hide buttons to show up on any side of Kicker. Using the slider you can change the width of the buttons.
The next section down is labeled Panel-Hiding Buttons. It consists of two check boxes: Show left panel-hiding button and Show left panel-hiding button. Use these checkboxes to show and hide the left and right manual panel hiding buttons.
The Panel Animation frame allows you to choose whether the panel will softly slide away or just disappear. Checking the Animate panel hiding will allow you to configure the speed of the animation using the sliders. Unchecking, naturally, disables the panel animations.
In the Menus tab you can configure the panel menu behavior. This affects the menu you will often use to launch applications, the browser menus you can use to access folders and other menus like the recent documents menu.
The first option is the menu style. TDE supports two menu styles: a classic menu familiar to many desktops and operating systems and a Kickoff style.
The TDE Menu section provides many options to configure the menu functionality.
The Menu item format section allows you to adjust the details of the menu entries. There are four buttons. Each button option determines how the application Name (that is, Konqueror, KWord, etc.) and the Description (that is, Web Browser, Word Processor, etc.) are displayed on the menu. The Name only option simply shows the application's name in the menu. The Name (Description) option will show a small description besides the name of the application. The Description (Name) and Name (Description) options will show both name and description in the menu.
Below the Menu item format section is a button to Edit TDE Menu. Then menu editor is a tool to customize the menu layout and add or delete menu items.
The Optional Menus checkboxes allow you to determine which special menu items appear in the menu.
The Bookmarks menu allows you to quickly select from the same bookmarks that are available in Konqueror.
The Find menu offers access to the KFind application to search for local files, and a quick link to a search engine to search for things on the Internet.
The Kate Session Menu allows you to open any of your Kate sessions.
The Konqueror Profiles menu allows you to launch Konqueror with any of your configured profiles.
The Network Folders menu can launch a Konqueror file manager window displaying any of your configured network folders.
The Print System menu provides several menu entries to help manage the printer(s) attached to your system.
The Quick Browser menu gives you quick links to locations on your hard drive.
The Recent Documents menu lists the most recently edited documents and will automatically launch the application to edit or view this document.
The Settings menu allows you to launch each KControl module directly from the TDE menu.
The System Menu allows you quick access to some commonly visited places, including your Home folder, and the Trash. You may find this useful instead of having a separate entry for each of these in the menu
The Terminal Sessions menu provides menu items to launch several different types of terminal programs (command line interfaces).
Other options in the Menu item format section include:
Open menu on mouse hover: This option affects only the Kickoff menu style. When enabled, hovering the mouse pointer over the menu buttons will atuomatically open that menu without clicking the mouse button.
Show Tooltip: When enabled a tooltip appears when hovering the mouse pointer over menu items. Using this option requires that tooltips ar enabled in Panels Appearance.
Show side image: Enabling this option displays a nice image on the left side of the menu.
Display text in menu button: When enabled the text enter into the associated text box will be displayed in the menu button.
Font: This option allows you to select the font and size for all items in the menu.
Change TDE Menu icon: This option allows you to change the menu icon.
In the QuickBrowser Menus section you can configure whether the panel's browser menus will show hidden files or not (hidden files on Unix-like systems are those whose filenames begin with a dot) as well as how many files at most will be shown in a quick browser menu. The latter option might be useful when you have a rather small screen resolution, because the browser menus would otherwise quickly fill up your screen when you browse folders containing many files.
The QuickStart Menu Items section provides quick access to programs you have used often or recently. You can choose whether to show the most recently programs or the most frequently used programs. Use the option Maximum number of entries to configure how many programs the quick start section will remember.
The Recent Documents Menu section includes an option to enable a submenu showing the most recent documents opened using TDE applications. This option does not show recent documents opened with non TDE applications.
The TDE Menu Search section includes an option to show a search box in the menu to help find items in the menu.
Using the Appearance tab you can configure the panel's overall appearance.
The check box Enable icon mouseover effects toggles the large animated tooltips of Kicker. They show name and description of the icons and applets the mousepointer is positioned on.
When Enable icon activation effects is enabled, the icons in the panel (not the taskbar) activate or "blink" when selected.
If Show tooltips is checked, the classical small tooltips with descriptions of the icons and applets will be shown if the mousepointer rests over an icon for some seconds. Note that this has no effect as long as the option to Enable icon mouseover effects is enabled.
The TDE panel supports so-called Button Backgrounds. This means that the buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images. To enable button backgrounds, simply choose the button type from the list, and change the drop down box to the color image you would like to use. Choose Default to return to an unstyled button. If you choose Custom color, the color button next to the drop down list will be enabled. Click on it to select a custom color to use.
For every kind of panel button there is a combo box offering a custom color option and tiled images. When the value is changed from "Default", tiles are enabled for this kind of button. You can also see a preview of a tile before use via the combo box.
The different kinds of buttons are:
The icon for the TDE Menu will be displayed as a tile
The icons which start applications will be displayed as tiles
The Desktop Access icon will be displayed as a tile
The icons for Quickbrowsers will be displayed as tiles
The Window List icon will be displayed as a tile
The Enable transparency option, when checked, allows the panel to appear transparent.
The background image is a picture that will be used to draw the panel's background, just like you can use a picture for the desktop background. Check the Enable background image option to enable this feature. You can specify an image file in the edit box below or choose one by clicking on the Open file dialog button. You may also check the Colorize to match the desktop color scheme box to modify the background image's colors. You'll see a preview of the selected picture on the right.
The Hide button size: option allows you to choose a width in pixels for the hide buttons, if they are visible.
The panel itself has several default sizes set, which you can switch between by simply dragging the edge of it, or by and selecting the desired size from the submenu. If you enable Allow Drag and Drop resizing of panels then by choosing in the panel menu, you can drag the panel edge to any size you like.
mouse button clicking on an empty space in the panel, choosingApplet handles are normally visible beside each applet on the panel, so that it is clear where to click to configure them, or to get to the panel menu. You can instead have them Fade out, or hide unless you hover the mouse over them, or you can choose to Hide them completely.
Finally, if the panel is transparent, you can tint it with a color of your choice. The slider allows you to choose how opaque the tint is. At the lowest end, there is no tint visible, while at the highest, the panel is not transparent at all.
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