KDE How-To - Adding To The Panel

Adding items to the KDE Panel is really quite simple once you see how.  There are two ways to do it, but since one way has many drawbacks, I'm not going to go into it extensively.  We'll call the two different ways - Drag N Drop (preferred), and Through The Menu (non-preferred)

Drag N Drop

The drag and drop method is the preferred way of adding items to the panel.  At the very least it is a three step process, at the most there is seven steps.
  1. Open a graphical file manager (kfmclient).
  2. In the graphical file manager, go to the directory where your program is at.
  3. Drag and Drop your program onto the panel. (See below)

    4. 3. Drag N Drop to the Panel

    3. Drag N Drop to the Panel

    There are some times that you will want change the panel icon, or perhaps you always want certain parameters passed to the program when it starts. After the icon is on your panel, you can then go in and change parameters.

  4. Right click on the icon and select 'Properties'.
  5. Edit whatever properties you want. (See below) (To change the icon, click on the icon)
  6. Click on 'OK'
  7. Restart the panel. (See below) (Note: restarting the panel doesn't restart your X-Windows or any of your processes, only the panel)

    8. 5. Edit the Panel Icon's properties

    5. Edit the Panel Icon's properties

    7. Restart the panel

    7. Restart the panel

Through The Menu

Through The Menu is not the preferred way of adding items to the panel. There is only one step to do this.
  1. At the KMenu select Panel - Add Application - (select application)
Advantages

DisAdvantages

The disadvantages might not seem like much, but after a short time, you'll find that doing the extra steps of Drag N Drop save more time in the long run.


dawson@fnal.gov
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August 22, 2000