kprateek88
September 19th, 2008, 02:42 PM
I have a 1280 x 800 screen, which isn't very big (though quite common in laptops these days). I am quite careful about conserving screen real estate (eg, in Firefox, I've put the menu bar and URL box in the same row). I'm currently using KDE 3.5, and the panel works well. I have a 54 pixel tall auto-hide panel which has a taskbar with 3 rows and a system tray with 2 rows. I installed KDE 4.1 as given here: http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.1.1 . The panel (ok, maybe it's no longer called that, I'm not sure) and taskbar seem to be very space-hungry. I opened many windows, and increased the panel height, but got still only one row in the taskbar. The taskbar configuration window doesn't help. I Googled about this and read that it is possible to have a multi-row taskbar since KDE 4.0.x or 4.1, but no one said _how_ to configure it that way.
Another very annoying thing is that increasing the height of the panel automatically increases the *width* of many things on it, like the clock and the battery applet. How do I disable this? A huge battery indicator is no more useful than a small one, and just wastes space.
I often have a large number of windows open, and I need a compact 3-row taskbar, as is easily possible in KDE 3.5. After having read about how cool Plasma is etc, I was disappointed that there seemed to be no obvious way to configure this.
Also, at moderate panel heights, the font size used by the default clock is HUGE, and the clock occupies a very large amount of space, specially with HH:MM:SS display. In my existing KDE 3.5 panel, I have an easily readable HH:MM:SS clock with significantly less horizontal space usage. Right clicking on the clock and going to the configure menu item did not offer me a choice of font size.
I couldn't find a way to auto-hide the panel either. Rather unfortunate that useful features from KDE 3.5 have been removed (or made hard to find).
Is there a way to use the KDE 3.5 panel in KDE 4? It's much more usable than the KDE 4 one. For me, at least.
Another very annoying thing is that increasing the height of the panel automatically increases the *width* of many things on it, like the clock and the battery applet. How do I disable this? A huge battery indicator is no more useful than a small one, and just wastes space.
I often have a large number of windows open, and I need a compact 3-row taskbar, as is easily possible in KDE 3.5. After having read about how cool Plasma is etc, I was disappointed that there seemed to be no obvious way to configure this.
Also, at moderate panel heights, the font size used by the default clock is HUGE, and the clock occupies a very large amount of space, specially with HH:MM:SS display. In my existing KDE 3.5 panel, I have an easily readable HH:MM:SS clock with significantly less horizontal space usage. Right clicking on the clock and going to the configure menu item did not offer me a choice of font size.
I couldn't find a way to auto-hide the panel either. Rather unfortunate that useful features from KDE 3.5 have been removed (or made hard to find).
Is there a way to use the KDE 3.5 panel in KDE 4? It's much more usable than the KDE 4 one. For me, at least.