--- On Sun, 2/28/10, John Heinen
My screen is full with favored icons and I need more space, when I click on any desktop number I am still looking at the same screen. Still learning. appreciate comment, John
I started out confused by KDE 4.4 too, but now I'm coming to love it. Although pager still functions, and is very useful, the "Activity" now takes the place of the pager "desktop". For this reason, it is better to think of the pager "desktops" as parallel "activity trees". The root of the "Activity Tree" is called a "Desktop Activity", and the branches are called "Folder View Activities". The leaves are the things you place on the "Folder" window. They can be applications or files or URLs -- or "widgets". A widget is button or bar that performs a special system or KDE function. The "Clock", for example, is a widget. There are widgets that monitor system resources, dictionary widgets that look up words, and KDE widgets that do window switching for you. Finally, at the edge of the screen, you have "Panels". The Panels remain fixed, as the Activity changes -- i.e., the Panels are accessible from every activity. The taskbar, for example, is a panel. It's only one of several kinds of panels you can create. pager tree 1: --> Desktop Activity: ----> Folder View Activity (Internet) ------> Browser 1, e.g., opera ------> Browser 2, e.g., firefox ------> URL 1, ------> kconsole ----> Folder View Activity (Preferences) ------> YaST ------> KDE 4 preferences ------> KDE 4 help etc.. To switch between Activities, you need an "Activity Bar" widget. I recommend, at least initially, that you have a separate panel for the "Activity Bar" -- then you can access any Activity from any other Activity. Later, you may want to adopt a more compact approach: Put the Activity Bar on each Folder, and put a little "Show Desktop" widget on your taskbar panel. You can then right-click on the "Show Desktop" widget and add a shortcut key that takes you directly to your current Folder, where you have your Activity Bar To create these Activities and Panels, you right-click on a screen, and select "Unlock Widgets". Then right-click again: You now see additional options, such as "Add Panel", "Add Widget". If you click on "Add Widget", the "Activity Bar" widget is the first widget in the list. The list groups widgets by category -- other window-related widgets are in the last category. If you right-click on a Panel, Unlock Widgets, and right-click again, you will see a "Panel Options" option. If you select this and then click on "Panel Settings", you will get a form that allows you to resize the Panel and move the icons around inside the panel. Panels and Activities have what is called a "Cashew" at the corner of the screen. If you click on the Cashew, you get a list of options that includes the options you get when you simply right-click on the screen. To close the list, click on the Cashew again, once or twice. One additional option the Cashew gives you is "Add Activity". Use this to extend your activities tree. The Activity you add comes up as a "Desktop Activity". Since you already have a Desktop Activity at the root of the tree, you probably don't need another. What you want instead is a Folder View Activity. Right-click on the screen, select "Desktop Activity Options", then select the "Activity" tab in the dialogue box. Open the pulldown list and change to a "Folder View Activity". The dialogue box then changes. You get to specify the "Location" of the folder and the folder name. The "Location" is the directory where the folder items will be stored. The default is "Desktop". You should change this. I use "Desktop" subdirectories as my folder locations, but you can use any directory you want. The dialogue box allows you to set your wallpaper. This is another thing I like about KDE 4: I use paintings as wallpaper, and have a different painting for each Folder. Close the dialogue box and you have a Folder View Activity. The folder shows whatever is in the Location directory. If it's a new directory, the folder is blank. To add things to the folder, right-click and select "Create New". Then select URL or link or whatever. To add applications to the folder, open the kicker application tree (if you're using classic KDE), but instead of opening the application, drag it to the folder -- i.e., press, drag and then release. If you are using pager, with multiple pager trees, each Activity has a separate screen for each tree. When you do the pager switch, you get the same Activity screen, but a whole new set of open applications. That's why I call the pager trees "parallel". I hope this helps. I will repost it later as a reply to my "Making Sense of KDE 4" post. Enjoy! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org