The Kicker Handbook
Copyright © 2001, 2002 Dirk Doerflinger
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Kicker is the KDE application starter panel and is also capable of some useful applets and extensions. It usually resides on the bottom of the desktop.
Table of Contents
Kicker is the application launcher panel of the K Desktop Environment. Besides the Menu, where you can start applications, Kicker is also capable of running docked applets like the pager, the taskbar or the clock, and extensions, such as child panels.
Kicker usually resides on the bottom of the desktop, but it can also be moved to any other border. Please report any problems or feature requests to the KDE mailing lists.
This is what you see on a freshly installed KDE, assuming that you skipped KPersonaliser. If you are using lower resolution, some of the icons may not appear immediately. To cater for those smaller resolutions, the screenshot below is divided in two parts.
Here's a screenshot of the left side of Kicker
And here's the right side
Of course, this is only one way Kicker might appear on the screen. There are many more configurations available.
If you are experienced with this kind of application launcher, you can ignore this chapter and move on to Kicker basics.
The main use of Kicker is starting applications. This is done by clicking icons, either from the panel or from the Menu. Kicker shows some more things too, so let's see.
Having a look at the screenshots above, there are from left to right:
It is used for launching applications and some other useful things. Refer to The Menu for more information.
Here are some icons of commonly used applications. They can be moved and removed and others can be added. Some of them have a special meaning, which you can read more about in Kicker basics. Resting the mouse over an icon without clicking shows the name and a short description of that application, if you have set that in the Settings Dialogue.
This displays a small view of the virtual desktops. Clicking one section of it will activate that desktop. Please refer to Applets.
All running applications are displayed as buttons in the taskbar. Clicking an application's button will bring this application on top. If it was on top before, it will be iconified. As always, more information in Applets.
This applet contains two small buttons. The one with the luggage lock on it locks your session if you ever leave your KDE unattended and don't want anybody else to have access to it; the other one shuts down KDE and the X-Server.
The system tray is able to swallow some kind of applications like - in this case - Klipper. There are also more useful apps for the system tray. You can click the applications either with the or the mousebutton and see what's happening.
The Clock applet is - of course - a small, useful clock. It can have various styles, have a look at the applets section for more information.
This button lets you fade out Kicker for having more space on the screen. When Kicker is faded out, only the button will remain in order to fade in Kicker again.
This was only the description of Kicker on its initial launch. It can be configured in many ways and styles and more applets can be added. There are even some extensions like the external taskbar you can add. See Kicker basics, Applets and Extensions for more information.
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As mentioned before, there are a lot of things that can be added to Kicker. This section will tell you everything about application starting, folder browsing and adding some kinds of applets and extensions. Lots of things can be done from the or from in the Menu.
There are three different ways to add an application to Kicker:
Simply drag any file from Konqueror into Kicker and it's there. This works also from the Menu with any entry. You can change the attributes like optional command line parameters or the icon by clicking it with the mouse button and choosing from the .
Click the mousebutton on any free space in Kicker and choose and then . There you can choose an application which will be added in the place you clicked.
Non-KDE-applications e.g. xosview or xemacs.
Click the mousebutton on any free space in Kicker and choose , and then . Choose the application you want to add. In the newly appearing window, you can append an optional command line, have the application start from a terminal, and choose the icon which will appear in Kicker by clicking the gear . If you don't choose an icon, the application will use the gear as a default.
Applications can be moved or removed by mouse button click and choosing or . You can also move an icon by clicking mouse button if you have one. Another way to remove an application is by clicking the mouse button on any free space and then choosing , and then the application you want to be removed.
Folders can be added by simply dragging a folder to any free space of Kicker. Quick Browsers can also be added from the or the Menu.
There are two different ways to have a folder in Kicker, you can choose between them in the menu appearing after dropping. Omitting this menu, it will be added as a file manager URL.
Choosing this will add a link to the selected folder. Clicking this folder icon will open Konqueror displaying the contents of this folder.
If you add a folder this way, it will be displayed as a submenu of Kicker. This submenu contains , which does the same as a file manager URL, and , which opens a terminal with this folder as working path. Also, this submenu contains the contents of that folder. Sub-folders are displayed as new submenus like the Quick Browser itself. The maximum number of displayed elements can be set in the Settings Dialogue. Quick Browsers can also be added from the of Kicker and then choosing and .
Both kinds of folders can be moved or removed by mouse button click and choosing or . You can also move an icon by clicking mouse button if you have one. Another way to remove a folder is by clicking the mouse button on any free space and then choosing , and then the folder you want to be removed.
File manager URLs can also be configured from the , just like any other folder anywhere in KDE
Some icons in Kicker have a special meaning. They are added by choosing and then of the .
The K Menu icon is one of the most necessary icons in Kicker. As you might guess, it opens the Menu, which you can learn more about in The K Menu.
Clicking this icon will show the . Its first entry, , tries to move the windows on your active desktop in a way to see as many as possible.
puts all windows on the active desktop over each others, the most recently on top and the others sorted by the time they where last used.
Below those entries is a list of all currently running applications, grouped by the desktops on which they are running. Clicking on the name of a desktop will switch to that one, clicking an application will also activate it.
The Bookmarks icon provides fast access to your bookmarks. They appear in the same way as if you click the in Konqueror. Clicking a bookmark in the menu will launch Konqueror with the URL which is behind that bookmark.
This menu shows the most recently used documents (works only with KDE applications for the moment). Clicking the element will remove those entries, what may be useful for privacy reasons.
The Desktop Access icon lets you have quick access to all the things you have on your desktop by minimising all currently open applications. Clicking it once will toggle it to show the desktop. The icon will remain pressed until you either click it again, what will restore your minimised apps, or reactivate an application from the taskbar.
Adding a Quick Browser icon will open a dialogue which will let you choose a path and an icon, which will appear as a . Refer to the Adding Folders section for more information about quick browsers.
The lets you add an application which doesn't appear in the menu to Kicker. Refer to Adding Applications for more information about Non-KDE Applications.
This icon provides a menu of the available Terminal sessions, just as Konsole does when you click and hold its New Session button.
This icon gives you direct access to KDE's printing system. Clicking the mouse button on the icon opens a menu which gives you the following options:
:This will start KDE's Add Printer Wizard which allows you to simply add a new printer to your system.
This item will open the KDE Print Configuration dialogue.
This item starts the Printing Manager, KDE's main printing control centre.
This item will start Konqueror with the print:/ io-slave to browse all kinds of printers.
This item opens a dialogue which lets you easily print one or more files.
Clicking the mouse button on any icon, no means if it's for an application, a folder or a special icon, or clicking the small arrow on the handle, and then choosing from the appearing will remove the icon from Kicker.
Another way of removing icons is clicking the mouse button on any free space in Kicker and choosing and then or . You can then choose the button you want to remove in the submenu.
Please note that removing an icon from Kicker won't remove the application on the disk!
Kicker comes with a set of applets like the taskbar or the mini-pager. Those can be added either from the submenu of the Menu or from the by choosing and then .
Applets can be moved by dragging them on their handle with holding the mouse button mouse button, or the mouse button mouse button, or by choosing from the .
You can learn more about the applets in the section Applets.
Applets can be removed by choosing from the , which appears when the mouse button is clicked on the applet's handle (left or top side of the applet) or in some applets allover the applet. The same appears when clicking the small arrow on the applet's handle.
There is also the possibility to add external extensions to Kicker, like the external taskbar, the Dock Application Bar for WindowMaker dock-applications, Kasbar, an iconic kind of taskbar and even child panels which behave like new instances of Kicker.
All extensions can be moved to any border of the screen by dragging them with the mouse button on the small fade-out handles on the left or top side of the extensions. These fade-out handles can also be used for fading out the extension. The child panel can also be dragged by clicking with the mouse button on any empty space on it.
More about extensions can be read in the extensions section.
Every application starter has some preferences you can set from their . Usually applications and folders have the same preferences as in Konqueror. Only the applications which are located in the Menu (for experienced users: those which have a *.desktop in the applnk dir) have a special kind of config dialogue.
Here you can see some stats about the application link. You can also choose an icon by clicking on the and change the filename of the link file. This may be useful if you want the icon on the panel behave different to the analogue one in the Menu.
Here you can set the permissions of the link file. Please refer to the manuals or handbooks of your operating system for more about permissions.
You can set the behaviour of the application when it's executed on this page.
Usually, there is only the name of the binary that has to be started when clicking on the icon. You can search for another application to be started by clicking the button and/or add special command line parameters to the application.
This feature is not implemented yet.
If this box is checked, the application will be executed in a terminal window. You can also add special Terminal options.
Checking this option will let the application start with the permission of the user you typed in the field Username. You will be prompted for the user's password on application start. This option may be very useful if you want to start some applications as superuser.
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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 or the submenu of the Menu or in the KControl in the module Look & Feel.
Please note that the settings in the General and the Look & Feel tabs only affect to the main panel while the behaviour of extensions is set in the Extensions tab.
In the General 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 Panel Location 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 Alignment group lets you define, where Kicker is located when the size is set to less than 100%. This can also be done by dragging Kicker with the mouse button to the place you want to have it.
The panel's style can be tiny, small, medium or large. Depending on which applets you use you may find that some applets work better at different panel sizes. You can also change the size by moving the mousepointer over the upper border of Kicker (assuming Kicker is at the bottom of your screen) and dragging it while holding the mouse button. When you do that, the style settings will switch to Custom
Please note, that switching manually to Custom doesn't have any effect and otherwise that you don't need to switch to custom to be able to resize Kicker manually.
Some people may not want to have Kicker take the whole width or height of their screen. The slider Percentage of desktop width/height to be used changes this behaviour. If you decrease the percentage, Kicker will either appear aligned left or top of the screen, depending on its location. Checking the checkbox Expand to fit required size makes sure that Kicker is at least as big as needed to show every icon and applet.
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. Check the Enable automatic hide option in the Automatic Hide frame to enable this feature. Using the Delay in seconds slider you can configure the amount of time the panel will wait before it hides. The checkbox Show panel when switching desktop 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.
Using the Manual Hide Animation (for the hide buttons) and Auto Hide Animation (for the auto hide functionality) options you can configure whether the panel will softly slide away or just disappear. You can enable or disable both animations using the Enable options and you can change the speed of the animation using the sliders.
Using the Look & Feel tab you can configure the panel's overall appearance.
The KDE panel supports so-called “tiled buttons”. This means that the buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images. To enable button tiling, check the Enable background tiles option in the Look & Feel tab. Then you can configure tiles for certain kinds of buttons.
For every kind of panel button there is a frame offering an Enabled option to enable or disable tiled images. If tiles are enabled for this kind of button, you can choose a tile in the combo box below and the box on the right will show a preview of this tile.
The different kinds of buttons are:
The icon for the K Menu will be displayed as a tile
The icons for Quickbrowsers will be displayed as tiles
The icons which start applications will be displayed as tiles
The icons for legacy applications will be displayed as tiles
The Window List icon will be displayed as a tile
The Desktop Access icon will be displayed as a tile
Enabling the switch Enable icon zooming will give you the effect that Kicker's icons will grow bigger when hovering with the mouse. This effect will not appear when the size of Kicker is set bigger than medium.
If Show tooltips is checked, small descriptions of the icons or applets will be shown when the mousepointer rests over an icon for some seconds.
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 line edit box below or choose one by clicking on the button. You'll see a preview of the selected picture on the right.
In the Menus tab you can configure the panel menu's behaviour. 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 Layout frame offers you some options to configure the menu's functionality. The Show "Bookmarks" submenu and Show "Recent Documents" submenu options will enable submenus showing your konqueror bookmarks and the last documents you've opened using KDE applications respectively. The Show "Quick Browser" submenu option will enable a browser menu. Enabling the Show side image checkbox will display a neat image on the left side of the menu. If the option Detailed menu entries is set, th menu will show a small description besides the name of the application.
Within the K Menu Layout you can also define which dynamic menus should be displayed in the menu by moving them from Available Menus to Selected Menus using the . They can be removed the same way by using the .
In the Browser 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 "Quick Start" section contains frame you can choose whether this section will show the most recently or the most frequently used programs. Using the option Max number of "Quick Start" entries you can configure how many programs the quick start section will remember.
Applets are small plugins that extend the panel's functionality. KDE comes with some applets but they may be provided by third parties as well.
Panel applets can be started using two different ways: internally or externally. While “internal” is the preferred way to load applets, this can raise stability or security problems when you are using poorly programmed third-party applets. To address these problems, applets can be marked “trusted”. You might want to configure the panel to treat trusted applets different from untrusted ones. Your options are:
Load only trusted applets internal: All applets but the ones marked “trusted” will be loaded using an external wrapper application.
Load startup config applets internal: The applets shown on KDE startup will be loaded internally, others will be loaded using an external wrapper application.
Load all applets internal: will load all applets internally, regardless of whether they're trusted or not.
For stability and security reasons, we recommend using one of the first two options and that you mark only those applets as 'trusted' that come with the KDE base packages.
To mark applets “trusted” or “untrusted” you can move them from one of the shown listboxes to the other. Just try selecting an applet in the list of trusted applets and click the button. This will move the selected applet to the other list, while clicking the button will move the selected applet of the list of available applets to the list of trusted ones.
In this section you can change the behaviour of the Chapter 7, Extensions. Simply choose one of your extensions (e.g. Child Panel) from the listbox on the left side and adjust its settings. Those are very similar to the settings on the the section called “General” and the the section called “Look & Feel” tabs.
The Panel Location group sets the location of the chosen extension. If the option Enable automatic hide is checked, the extension will be faded out automatically after the time in seconds set with the slider Delay in seconds. Marking the checkbox Show panel when switching desktop lets the extension show up after a desktop change.
You can toggle which hide buttons the chosen extension should have with the checkboxes in the group Hide Buttons. The slider Hide Button Size sets the size of the appearing hide buttons.
This section changes the settings of the taskbar. Changes affect the external taskbar and also taskbar applets on Kicker or child-panels.
If this box is checked, the taskbar will show all running apps of every desktop. Otherwise, only the applications of the current desktop are shown.
Checking this box will show the small .
This is a feature introduced in KDE version 2.2. If the option Group similar tasks is set, several instances of the same application are grouped together in one taskbar button.
You can define the mouse actions of the taskbar buttons with the settings in the Actions. Each action can be one of the following:
Clicking with the mouse button will open a menu displaying all tasks in that group. If you click an entry of that menu with any mouse button, the corresponding application will become active.
Clicking with the mousebutton will open a menu with all applications of that group, where every application has its window menu as a submenu and there are some group specific entries like which closes all applications of that group, which lets you define on which desktop the whole group appears and , and which appends those actions to all applications of that group.
If this action is chosen, each click with the mousebutton on the will activate one of that group's applications, one after each others.
Activate Task: Clicking with the mousebutton will activate the first application in that group without opening the group menu.
The first application of that group will be put in the foreground without giving focus to it.
The first application of that group will be put in the background. It won't lose the focus.
The first application of that group will be minimised. If it is already minimised, it will be restored again.
Please note that some of these settings only have effect if a taskbar button contains more than one application.
Checking this box will sort all in a group for each desktop, otherwise they are sorted by the order they are started. This will not affect grouped tasks if they are spread over more than one desktop.
If this box is checked, every will have the icon of the running application beside its title.
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The Menu is one of the central elements of Kicker.
There are five main groups in the Menu which will be described now from bottom to top.
This group is for the common KDE things in the Menu.
This entry is used to finish the KDE session. It also shuts down the X Window System® session.
With this entry you can lock your session if you don't want anybody else to access your desktop. If you have set a screensaver, it will appear when locked, otherwise the screen will turn black. If you hit any key, you will be prompted for your user password. This is independent from the screensaver's password settings.
In this submenu you can change the settings of Kicker, described in the Configuring Kicker section, add things to Kicker (see in Kicker Basics for more) and start the Menu Editor. You can also reach the Menu, but as you are reading this, you probably found it yourself.
This will bring up a small but powerful application start dialogue.
In the standard case, you just type in a command and press Enter or click . But there is also an button which will bring up some starting options to the command window.
Checking this box will let the application start in a terminal which means that you will be able to see any command-line messages the application may give.
If this box is checked, you can specify a user with whose permission the application should run in the Username textfield. If you specify another user, you will have to give a password at the box below.
Check this option to run with a different priority. A higher priority will tell the operating system to give more processing time to the applications. You can use the slider to change the priority. If you want to give your app a higher priority than the default one (middle position), you will need to enter the root password below.
The Scheduler is the part of the operating system which processes will run and which have to wait. Usually, an application will run with normal schedule, which means it can use the processing time it gets from the operating system, but you can also set it to Realtime. This means that the application has all the process time until it gives it away. You will need to enter the root password to use Realtime.
This can be dangerous. If the application hangs and can't give up the processor, the complete system might hang.
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This group contains some very useful browsers. It can also contain dynamic menus as described in the Menus section of Kicker's settings.
This submenu contains quick browsers for three very useful folders: home, root, and system configuration.
This menu shows the most recently used documents (works only with KDE applications for the moment). Clicking the element will remove those entries, what may be useful for privacy reasons.
This submenu shows your personal bookmarks just like Konqueror does. Refer to the Konqueror Handbook for more help on this.
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The submenus for application starting are located in this group. You can use KMenuEdit to add, remove or move the entries. Applications will have a short description if the option Detailed menu entries is enabled in the settings.
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This group holds either the most recently or the most frequently used applications. See the Menus Configuration section for more about that.
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Applets are small applications running inside of Kicker. Almost everything besides the application starter buttons are applets. They can be added from the or from the submenu by choosing and the . Every applet contains a small arrow in its handle. Clicking it will bring up a menu which lets you move or remove it, set the Preferences, if there are any and set the preferences of Kicker.
The taskbar applet shows buttons for the running applications. The application, which has the focus, is shown as a pressed button. If an application is minimised, the title displayed in the taskbar will fade to grey.
If you click on the button of the active application, it will be minimised. This means also that if you click twice on an inactive application, it will also be minimised.
A click with the mouse button on a button will show the standard application menu. Only the entry differs: if you have set the taskbar to show the applications of all desktops, you can move this app to the current desktop.
There is also a small icon on the left or top side of the taskbar, which opens a menu. This is called the . The menu's first entry, , tries to move the windows on your active desktop in a way to see as many as possible. puts all windows on the active desktop over each others, the most recently on top and the others sorted by the time they where last used.
Below those entries is a list of all currently running applications, grouped by the desktops on which they are running. Clicking on the name of a desktop will switch to that one, clicking an application will also activate it. You can specify the mouse behaviour. Please refer to Taskbar settings for more about that.
You can configure the taskbar by clicking the mouse button on the small move handle.
Please refer to the section called “The Taskbar Section” for details about the preferences of the taskbar.
This little applet shows a preview of the desktops and lets you also choose by a click with the mouse button which desktop you want to use.
There is also a very useful :
This option lets the mini pager appear as a tiny preview of the desktops with symbolic rectangles for the running applications.
If this option is chosen, the pager will show the numbers of the desktops
This will let the pager show the names of the desktops, which can be set in the preferences or from Control Centre.
If this option is checked, a small button will be shown which shows a bigger preview of the running desktops. If you click an application in that preview, it will be activated.
Here you can set the number of desktops you want to have and the names of them.
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As you might already guess, the clock applet is a small clock which resides in Kicker.
A click with the mouse button on the clock will show a small calendar. You can use the to switch the months or the for switching years. This won't have any effect of your date settings, it's just for your information.
There are some things you can do with the clock applet. This can be done from the .
There are four ways the clock can appear:
This lets the clock appear as a simple text that shows the time in plain text.
This lets the clock appear as a digital clock showing the time in the well known seven segment style.
If this is set, the clock will be displayed as an old styled analogue clock.
This may only be useful if you set Kicker to normal or large size.
This is a very unorthodox style of time display. Try it out, it is really funny!
Here you can set some general preferences of the clock applet.
In the Clock Type settings you can choose between the clock styles like in the .
The Date group lets you pick font and colour of the date, which is shown when activated for the specific clock type.
In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date and/or the seconds shown. In Colours you can choose if you want the common KDE look or your own custom colours and font.
In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date, the seconds and/or blinking dots shown. In Colours you can choose if you want the common LCD-Look or your own custom colours.
In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date and/or seconds shown. In Colours you can choose if you want the common LCD-Look or your own custom colours. You can also set the level of antialiasing, which means that lines will get blurred a little bit to prevent steps in the drawing. High quality antialiasing may catch some system load on low-end systems. Draw Frame will display the clock a little bit sunken in the panel.
In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date shown. There is also a slider to set the Fuzziness. This cannot be described in the documents, just do your own experiments. In Colours you can choose the colours and the font of the fuzzy clock.
This option starts the Country & Language configuration module of the KControl.
You will need the super user password for adjusting date and time.
This will open the Date and Time module of KControl where you can set your formats. There aren't any special permissions needed for that.
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This is a compressed application launcher. It is very useful especially if the panel is set to normal or large size. You can add applications by drag and drop or from the . The is also used to remove an application.
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The System Tray is used to dock some special applications like e.g. Klipper or KTeaTime.
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This little applet contains two buttons. The is used to lock the session if you ever want to leave your KDE unattended and don't want anybody to access it. The is used to close your KDE session.
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This applet provides a simple command line embedded in Kicker. Nothing more, nothing less.
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This applet shows a smiley which will get angry when any process catches up too much system resources. If an application uses too much, a messagebox will appear and ask you how to handle that application.
Clicking it with the mouse button will show a configuration dialogue. Here you can set the Update interval, which is set in seconds, and the CPU load threshold. At the moment, there is no real advice for setting this up, you will have to do some experimenting. These settings will probably change in a future release. There is also a section Programs to ignore where you can add applications that use many resources naturally, e.g. compilers or 3D renderers.
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This applet does exactly the same like the Klipper residing in the system tray. It has the advantage, that it consumes a little bit less system resources, which only matters on really slow systems, but has the disadvantage, that it uses more space than Klipper in the system tray. You can read more about that in the manual for Klipper
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There are also some features that run outside of Kicker, the extensions. They are added from the submenu of the Menu or the by choosing and then . You can move them to any screenborder by dragging them at the small on their side and remove it by right clicking on that button and choose . Clicking these buttons with the mouse button fades the extension out or in, just like the main Kicker.
The style of the extensions can be configured in the the section called “Extensions” section of Kicker's preferences.
The external taskbar is just the same as the taskbar applet with the only difference that it provides its own panel. Refer to the taskbar applet section for help about it.
This is just a panel like Kicker itself, where you can add all the stuff Kicker is also capable. So you can have as many Kickers as you want. Just add a child panel and add applications and applets to it.
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The KasBar is an iconic replacement of the taskbar. It always shows the icons of all currently running applications on any desktop, they can be chosen by clicking with the mouse button. The active window is highlighted, minimised windows will show a little triangle pointing downwards instead of the square in the lower right of the icons. A triangle pointing to the right indicates that the application is shaded.
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The Dock Application Bar is an external bar which lets WindowMaker applications be docked. Just run your dockable WindowMaker programs, if the Dock Application Bar is running, they will be automatically docked.
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| 9.1. | How can I add applications, applets or anything else to the panel? |
Click the mouse button on any free space in Kicker and choose . From appearing submenu you can choose, what you want to add. See in Kicker Basics for more about that. | |
| 9.2. | Can I have an external Taskbar just like in KDE 1? |
Yes, you can just click the mouse button on any empty space in Kicker and then choose , and the . | |
| 9.3. | How can I move Kicker to another screen border? |
Simply drag it by holding the mouse button on any empty space in Kicker to any screen border. | |
| 9.4. | How can I move extensions to another screen border? |
Just drag it by holding the mouse button on the small on the left or the top of the extension. | |
| 9.5. | I want the taskbar to show all applications I'm running, independent on which desktop it is. Is that possible? |
Yes, click the mouse button on the small of the taskbar, then choose and check Show all windows in the appearing dialogue. | |
| 9.6. | How can I access the Menu without using the mouse? |
Simply press Alt+F1 and it will appear. | |
| 9.7. | Is there a way to add a menu containing all desktop icons to Kicker? |
Just fire up Konqueror, go to your home folder and drag the KDesktop icon to any free space of Kicker, then choose from the appearing menu. | |
| 9.8. | How can I change the colour and style of Kicker? |
You can change the colours of the panel with the global colour module of the Control Centre or you can style the panel itself, see in the section called “Look & Feel” for more about that. | |
| 9.9. | Why is the clock showing the wrong time? |
On some Red Hat®systems, the clock always shows the time in GMT. This is a bug in the system setup, and not directly related to Kicker. However, to solve it, just create this symbolic link: | |
| 9.10. | Is it possible to change the K button of the panel to another picture? |
Look for | |
| 9.11. | Why is my menu not working? |
Your menu entries may be mixed up for some reason. Simply run kbuildsycoca on a commandline. |
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Kicker
Program copyright 1999-2000 The KDE Team (www.kde.org).
Matthias Elter (elter AT kde.org)
Matthias Ettrich (ettrich AT kde.org)
Wilco Greven (greven AT kde.org)
Rik Hemsley (rik AT kde.org)
Daniel M. Duley (dan.duley AT verizon.net)
Preston Brown (pbrown AT kde.org)
Documentation copyright 2001, 2002 Dirk Doerflinger (ddoerflinger AT web.de)
This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
This program is licensed under the terms of the BSD License.
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