Plasma/HowTo/4.5

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Revision as of 19:58, 3 October 2010 by Hans (talk | contribs) (Remove all (new))

The information presented here covers Plasma Desktop 4.5.
Other versions available: 4.4 - 4.3

The Plasma Workspace is one of the key technologies of KDE SC 4.x (also known as the "Pillars of KDE"), and one of the most visible to users. As Plasma Desktop treats the user interface differently than a traditional desktop, there may be confusion as to what the Plasma Desktop is, what it does, and how to perform common tasks.

The purpose of this document is to show how to perform common tasks in Plasma Desktop. Each HowTo consists of one topic and a short animation, which is reached by clicking on the link.

Information
The animations are encoded in the GIF format and can thus be viewed in most modern web browsers without any additional plugins installed. Note that the animations are looped.


Note
Almost all HowTos assume that the widgets are unlocked. See Unlock widgets for instructions on how to unlock them.
Note
Due to distribution-specific customizations, your desktop might differ from those in the HowTos. In particular, if you miss the top-right toolbox (shown as a yellow icon), you can reach most options by right-clicking on the desktop.


HowTo

Widgets

Desktop Widgets

Panel Widgets

Icons

Desktop

Panel

Extenders

Activities

Further information

For reuse

To link to an animation from another UserBase article, a thumbnail can be posted. Here's an example (edit this page to see the syntax):

How to unlock your widgets

The animations can also be used outside of UserBase. The BBCode (used in most forums) to post a linked thumbnail is:

[url=GIF][img]http://userbase.kde.org/images.userbase/2/20/Plasma_howto-thumbnail-45.png[/img][/url]

Replace GIF with the URL to the GIF file. The corresponding HTML code is:

<a href="GIF"><img src="http://userbase.kde.org/images.userbase/2/20/Plasma_howto-thumbnail-45.png" /></a>

A description of how to record animated GIF files can be found here.

Thanks

  • Anne Wilson - thanks for all the help with UserBase!
  • Ingo Malchow - thanks for moving everything to the right place

Contributors

  • Hans Chen - current maintainer


Do you want to help out with making animations? See the Talk page to find out how!


  1. 1.0 1.1 Note the small green arrow. You can also right click instead of pressing the arrow.
  2. The spacer behaves like other panel widgets with the exception that it can be resized
  3. See How can I change the height and the size of the panel? for more information.
  4. It's also possible to click on "Add Activity" in the toolbox.