8.10: Konfused by KDE4

[Derek Broughton]

David M wrote:

> There is a big glassy panel on my desktop, entitled "Desktop". Umm,
> what on earth actually is this? What is it supposed to be/do? What am
> I supposed to do with it?

It's confusing, because your "Desktop" folder used to contain everything 
that was on your desktop.  Now, what shows as "Desktop" is just a folder 
view - and you can have any folder (or more than one) there.  And what's 
_on_ your desktop isn't necessarily _in_ your desktop!   Naturally I promptly dragged things from my Desktop folder to my desktop...

> The "titlebar" of this panel and the similar (but more obvious) sticky
> notes 'plasmoid' show to the side. Is there any way to have them show
> to the top, like a normal window?

I think not, and that's probably _specifically_ to differentiate plasmoids 
from windows.
> 
> These "titlebars" contain 4 icons, one of which looks like a close
> gadget, the other 3 are not obvious, and don't have tooltips either.

No they don't, and it ticked me off.  The top one is  "resize - hold the 
mouse down on it, and drag.  The next is "rotate".  The third should be 
obvious - it's the plasmoid's configuration.  And the bottom is "remove 
widget"

> The meaning of the "golden horn" at the end of a panel, and the larger
> one on the desktop are somewhat obscure, to say the least. 

I _think_ that's a Yin-Yang (I'm sure there's a name for that), but you 
could be right.  If it is, the right side is practically invisible.  
It's just the panel configuration button.

> ..which brings me to my next question. How do I adjust the amount of
> panel space that something takes up within a panel? The golden horn
> widgets don't seem to cover this (and having to click the golden horn
> just to move a panel applet is annoying: the old context-menu -> move
> applet routine was much more user-friendly).

You can do that if there's some blank space on the panel - but that was 
always a problem.  If there's no blank space, you get the context menu 
for the widget _on_ the panel - and kicker had the same problem. The 
icon just guarantees there's always somewhere you can get at the panel 
config.
 
> I have a window list embedded in one of my panels, but now it takes up
> all of the otherwise-free space in the panel, which I don't want it to
> do. How do I reduce the width that this window list takes up?   

Not a clue.
 
> Similarly, I have KNewsTicker in my other panel,

It should be possible to just stick that somewhere on the desktop.

> I was never a fan of the bifurcated 'start' menu in Windows XP and,
> sadly, I suspect the new multi-tabbed 'K' menu is going to annoy me
> almost as much (GNOME's use of three entirely separate menus is a much
> better solution to a crowded main menu, in my opinion). Is there any
> way to revert back to the traditional single menu?

Yes - choose the "classic" menu widget or right-click on the existing 
menu button and choose "classic" :-)

> Is there any way to
> switch the side-scrolling to the next menu 'level' back to the
> traditional 'pop-up' next level? The side-scrolling to bring up the
> next menu level seems particularly sluggish: I just want to start an
> app, not waste time watching an animation!

No idea, but I hate this one too.
-- 
derek