This section describes the ways Kicker can be configured. It's only about the basic Kicker settings, configuration of the applets are described in their sections
You can change the settings by either clicking in the context menu of Kicker, or in KDE 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 (e.g. 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 KDE panel (i.e. functionality you'd find in other panel applications as well; later we'll come to the more interesting features).
In the Position frame you can choose which screen border the panel should be attached to. Please note that usually the available space is used more efficiently if the panel is aligned horizontally, i.e. attached to the top or bottom screen border. 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.
The Length frame 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%. 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 Size frame lets you define how large a panel will be. The panel's size can be tiny, small, medium, large or custom. Depending on which applets you use you may find that some applets work better at different panel sizes.
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 an auto hide feature. When this feature is enabled, the panel will hide when the mouse cursor has not been moved over it for a configurable amount of time. If you move the mouse to the panel's screen border it will show up again. Select the Hide automatically option in the Hide Mode frame to enable this feature. You can also configure the amount of time the panel will wait before it hides here. The check box Show panel when switching desktops makes sure that the panel will be shown on the new chosen desktop. Otherwise, if there are too many applets and icons on Kicker, two small scroll buttons will be displayed to scroll the whole panel.
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.
You can toggle which hide buttons the chosen panel should have with the check boxes in the group 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's 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 K Menu frame offers you some options to configure the menu's functionality. The Bookmarks and Recent Documents options will enable submenus showing your konqueror bookmarks and the last documents you've opened using KDE applications respectively. The Quick Browser option will enable a browser menu. Enabling the Show side image check box will display a neat image on the left side of the menu. The Menu item format entry allows you to set how detailed the menu entries will be. 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 KMenu.
In the QuickBrowser Menus frame you can configure whether the panel's browser menus will show hidden files or not (hidden files on UNIX® systems are those whose filenames begin with a dot) as well as how many files at most will be shown in a browser menu; the latter option may be especially useful if you have a rather small screen resolution, as the browser menus would otherwise quickly fill up your screen when you browse folders containing many files.
The quick start section in the menu offers quick access to programs you have used often or recently. In the QuickStart Menu Items frame you can choose whether this section will show the most recently or the most frequently used programs. Using the option Maximum number of entries you can configure how many programs the quick start section will remember.
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.
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 KDE panel supports so-called “tiled buttons”. This means that the buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images/colors.
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 K 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.
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