Some more KDE4 questions

[D. R. Evans]

Kishore said the following at 10/31/2008 10:34 PM :
> On Saturday 01 Nov 2008 9:26:38 am D. R. Evans wrote:
>> Still struggling with KDE4 here. I have some more questions.
>>
>> 1. In KDE3 one could have the "most-frequently used" applications
>> appear separately on the menu. This was a great time-saver. How do I
>> get the same behaviour/feature in KDE4?
> 
> Use the favourites. or the recently used tabs. To add an application to the 
> favourites tab, just right click the application of your choice in the menu 
> and select add to favourites.

It wouldn't be "recently used". So presumably it's something to do with
"favourites".

But I don't understand your directions?

As far as I can tell, "favourites" seems to be completely different from
KDE3. In KDE3, I just told KDE to put my N most-used applications on the
menu and there they were, at the top of the menu, one click away. And as my
most frequently used applications changed over time, so the applications
available for use with a single click would change. Which was brilliant,
and extremely useful.

But I can't relate that at all to what you're saying.

In KDE4:

1. the "favourites" item (which seems to be more like a "I'm putting random
stuff here" item seems to require manual population (as you suggest)).

2. To actually get to one of the applications in "favourites" requires me
to find the "favourites" item in the menu, then to expand it, then to find
the application I actually want to run. This doesn't seem to be any
different whatsoever from finding the application in its ordinary location.

Am I not understanding something? You seem to indicate that I am, because
from what you say I deduce that KDE3-like functionality is available (I
sure hope it is; it was a very useful feature on a day-to-day basis: it
saved me looking for stuff all the time); but your description of what to
do, if I interpret it correctly, doesn't seem to be at all KDE3-like.

Hmmm....

I can kind-of see what you mean if I switch away from the "classic view" to
that horrible new scheme that takes up a huge chunk of my desktop. But I
can't see how to change the order of the items in the "Favourites" section
(and frankly I'm not sure I can stand the wasted space in the new-style
menu, although I'm willing to try it for a while to see if I can get used
to it).

> 
>> 2. Similarly, the Quicklaunch panel applet allowed one-click access to
>> most of my commonly-used applications. How do I get the same function
>> in KDE4?
> 
> You should be able to drag any application from the menu into the panel and it 
> would make a quick launch icon. Just make sure that widgets are not locked.

Nope. That doesn't work at all. When I drag an icon from the menu on to the
panel, it gets a red additional marker that shows it can't be dropped
there. I have made sure that widgets are not locked.

Ah....

But in the new "let's pretend our screen has infinite size" K menu, I just
discovered that one can right-click and there's an "add to panel" item.
It's really weird that you can't just drag and drop the application to the
panel, but you can't (well, I can't; maybe it's a 64-bit problem).

The resulting icon in the panel is huge compared to the old quick-launch
applet (why did they make everything huge in KDE4? -- I certainly can't
waste the space to have 10 "quick launch" icons in the panel the way I did
in KDE3), but at least it gives me way to launch applications from the
panel, so the functionality is there, even if it's not very obvious nor as
efficient a use of real estate as it was in KDE3.

> 
>> 3. I am used to seeing little icons on the various desktops in the
>> panel pager applet. How do I get the same behaviour in KDE4? (I find
>> the pager to be essentially useless in KDE4, since every desktop looks
>> the same, regardless of whether windows are open on the desktop or
>> not.)
> 
> The windows are shown in the pager but appears not to show the icons here on 
> 64 bit Ibex. Right click on the pager and in pager settings is an option to 
> display window icons.

Yes, I have that box checked, but there are still no icons.

  Doc (struggling, not liking the spatial inefficiencies in KDE4 at all,
but making progress)

-- 
Web:  http://www.sff.net/people/N7DR
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