[kde-linux] Desktop widget like Windows Vista sidebar/clock thing?

[Duncan]

david posted on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:03:03 -1000 as excerpted:

> Thomas Olsen wrote:
>> On 5/10-2009 10:51 david wrote:
>>> Windows Vista has a desktop widget thing (I think they call it the
>>> Side Bar?) that shows some news headlines in a vertical list and a big
>>> analog clock. My wife saw that on my parents' Windows Vista PC - and
>>> now she wants that on her desktop. Sigh.
>>>
>>> Anything like it for KDE?
>> 
>> Like this?
>> 
>> http://picasaweb.google.com/tanghus/Screenies#5389043974390891410
>> 
>> Just add a panel, resize it, set it to auto hide, add widgets "Analog
>> Clock" and "RSSNOW". Easy peasy ;-)
> 
> Kolia wrote:
> 
>> I can't check myself right now but you could try this:
>> 
>> Add a panel on a side of your screen
>> Add the "News" (not sure of the english name, the icon is RSS orange
>> icon) and "analogic clock" plasmoids to this panel Set this panel to
>> auto-hide
> 
> Duncan wrote:
> 
>> In addition to the suggestions of the others, there's a plasmoid
>> available for download on kdelook with the purpose of cloning the MS
>> sidebar for KDE.  I was looking for something else and not much
>> interested in it when I came across it, so IDR that much more about it,
>> including the name, but it's there, if you're interested in searching
>> for it.
> 
> Thanks, all. Now I just have to convince my wife to accept changing her
> UI from KDE3 to KDE4 ... or I can just browse around at kdelook.org and
> see if something there works with KDE3.

If you'd have /said/ kde3 (kde4 is the default assumption 'round here)...

That picasaweb url doesn't show anything here, presumably because it 
requires flash or some other proprietary stuff I won't have on my 
computer.  So I'm flying a bit blind, except for the sidebars I've 
happened to see running on other people's computers, and based on the 
description above...

For kde3, for rss, there's the knewsticker application and kicker 
applet.  Of course, there's also the clock kicker applet.  I always used 
digital (tho I have a nice big analog one on my kde4 desktop ATM, 
professional plasma theme off of kde-look, goes very well with the Beach 
reflecting clouds wallpaper from I think the kde4 weather wallpapers pkg, 
they're both black and white with the interior of the clock fully 
transparent lending an extremely effective modern art look and feel to 
that plasma workspace), but IIRC there was an analog applet for it as 
well.  If not by default, I'm sure kdelook has an analog clock kicker 
applet or two "kicking" (<g>) around.

You can of course set a vertical kicker panel on autohide just as you can 
with kde4, and it's possible to set it transparent as well, tho I think 
it's actually "fake" transparency for the panels in kde3.  (There was 
true composite transparency as an effect available for kwin, from kde 
3.5.1 IIRC, if your graphics hardware and X supported it of course, but 
that was only for application windows.  I think the panel transparency 
was all faked for kde3.  But the effect was still very nice.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman