--- On Fri, 2/26/10, Anton Aylward <anton.aylward@rogers.com> wrote:
Charles Obler said the following on 02/26/2010 02:55 AM:
This suggests that there may be a simple way to add icons to the folder -- just copy the property files from
/usr/share/applications
to
~/Desktop.
However, I doubt that it is really that simple. What if I have several different "Folder" activities, each with a different "opera"? Because there is only one "Desktop" directory, all of these opera property files would have to have unique names. What am I missing?
You are missing the purpose of the property files. I think this is because you are still hung up on icons from 3.5
The property files are not icons. Icons are just a visual prompt.
The folder should contain "data", not programs. The attribute of the data should tell how it should be used - "*.odt" uses OpenOffice - and so on. That's an association you set up separately.
What you are doing is putting things that directly invoke programs. This is the wrong approach. They don't belong on your desktop or in any of the folders in "My Documents" that you may put on your desktop.
Let me show you something that uses the contents of /user/share/applications more sensibly and in a more focused and usable manner. Maybe someone will take this, clean it up, add some more graphics, and put it in blog or wiki ...
First, create a new panel. (See the KDE4 documentation and examples on-line, I'm not going to repeat such fundamentals.)
Right click somewhere on the blank desktop background and select "Add Panel".
Put this new panel on the right and set its width to about 32 pixels - which gives you room to play in - centre it, and for now don't set the autohide. That comes when you're finished. Add one and only one widget - "quicklaunch" In the quicklaunch settings, set the number of visible icons to 30.
Now go into the quicklaunch with a right click and take the menu option "Add launcher".
This takes you to a dialogue where you can add items from /usr/share/applications
Add two dozen or so of your favourites. :-)
You can now adjust the width/size to suit. Finally, I set the panel to autohide.
The last image of full screen shot with the panel visible I'll send separately because of size limitations.
This is using the applets and "icons" in a way that doesn't fight KDE4, frees up screen real-estate and give a great deal of functionality.
It makes it clear that these are application launchers - not 'icons' - and focuses them.
It means the folders I do have on my 'desktop' contain data, documents, not programs.
Personally I think this gets closer to the real desktop analogy.
Thanks for the suggestion. I now have a presentable quicklaunch panel. My initial attempt did not go well, however. I created the panel, I added quicklaunch, and I added a few applications. The result did not come out looking like your screenshot, however. Some of the applications I added were on the panel; others were collected at the corner of the screen, off the panel, and some were overlaying others there. There seems to be no way to drag these stray applications back to the panel. Time to delete and start over. Here is where the problems started. Since I already have my taskbar panel on the right, and did not want to overwrite it, I created the new panel on the left. Then I added quicklaunch. But the quicklaunch widgets were not properly aligned -- they were at the extreme right edge of the panel, and were partially cut off by the panel edge. I tried to grab the launcher and move it, but it had no handle. The individual applications were also unmoveable. Finally, in desperation, I moved the panel to the top edge of the screen. Some of the quicklaunch icons went with the panel, and others gathered in the top right corner of the screen, some sitting atop others. I think the initial problem occurred because quicklaunch insists on creating two rows or columns of application icons. I wanted to keep the panel width to a minimum, since panels monopolize screen real-estate -- they appear on every screen. I would increase the width to see all of the quicklaunch icons, then decrease it, expecting the icons to flow into a single column. Could I put quicklaunch in a folder? Do I need to have a panel? Maybe I should explore autohide or something like that. - I like the quicklaunch capability. However, I'm not sure that I agree with your philosophy. At the risk of being flippant, I would say that programs ARE data -- e.g., "*.desktop" uses the launcher or kicker or whatever. The nice thing about programs is that they remain relatively constant, whereas my *.html files, for example, change every day and every hour. Once I add the program "opera" to the folder, I can access a vast range of html files without having to change the folder. On a real desktop, one has a mixture of data and tools. One has a stapler, a pencil, a pen, a ruler, a typewriter (remember those?), an in-box, an out-box, a blotter, etc., along with a few documents. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org