<sect1 id="panel">
<sect1info>

<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Mike</firstname>
<surname>McBride</surname>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>Jost</firstname>
<surname>Schenck</surname>
</author>
</authorgroup>

<date>25/11/2000</date>
<releaseinfo>1.00.00</releaseinfo>

<keywordset>
<keyword>KDE</keyword>
<keyword>KControl</keyword>
<keyword>panel</keyword>
</keywordset>
</sect1info>
<title>Panel</title>

<sect2 id="panel-intro">
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>
The KDE panel (often referred to as <application>kicker</application>) is
the bar that you'll usually find at the bottom of the screen when you start
up KDE for the first time. <!-- FIXME: reference to the kicker manual -->
The panel gives you quick access to applications and makes it easier for
you to organize your desktop. Using the KDE panel you can for example
</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>launch applications using the <guimenu>K</guimenu> menu or
the application buttons</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>switch desktops using the panel's pager applet</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>switch active windows, and minimize or maximize them</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>browse directory using the browser menu functionality
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>access panel applets that extend the panel's functionality,
offering for example mixers, clocks or a system monitor</para> </listitem>
</itemizedlist>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-general">
<title>General</title>
<para>In the <guilabel>General</guilabel> tab you can configure some basic
functionality of the KDE panel (<abbrev>i.e.</abbrev> functionality you'd find in other
panel applications as well; later we'll come to the more interesting
features).</para>

<sect3 id="panel-general-locsize">
<title>Location and Size</title>

<para>In the <guilabel>Location</guilabel> frame you can choose which screen
border the panel should be attached to. Please note that usually the available
space is used more efficiently if the panel is aligned horizontally,
<abbrev>i.e.</abbrev> attached to the top or bottom screen border. If you want
to play around with different settings you can change the panel's position even
easier by dragging the panel from one border to the other.</para>

<para>The panel's size can be tiny, normal or large. Depending on which applets
you use you may find that some applets work better at different panel
sizes.</para>

</sect3>

<sect3 id="panel-hiding">
<title>Hide Buttons and Auto Hide</title>
<para>Depending on your screen resolution you may find that the panel takes
away too much of your precious screen real estate. The KDE panel offers two
ways of saving screen space: you can either use hide buttons to manually
hide the panel when you don't need it or you can configure the panel to
automatically hide when it's not needed.</para>

<para>When the panel's hide buttons are enabled you'll see buttons on
either side of the panel, with arrows showing to the screen borders. If you
click on one of these buttons, the panel will slide away to the desired
direction. After that, you'll only see a remaining show button that will
make the panel show again. Check the <guilabel>Enabled</guilabel> option to
enable this feature. If <guilabel>Highlight on mouse over</guilabel> option
is enabled, the hide buttons will be highlighted when the mouse cursor is
moved over them. Using the <guilabel>Size</guilabel> slider you can change
the width of the buttons.</para>

<para>When the auto hide feature is enabled, the panel will hide when the
mouse cursor has not been moved over it for a configurable amount of time.
If you move the mouse to the panel's screen border it will show up again.
Check the <guilabel>Enabled</guilabel> option in the <guilabel>Auto Hide
</guilabel> frame to enable this feature. Using the <guilabel>Delay in
seconds</guilabel> slider you can configure the amount of time the
panel will wait before it hides.</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-looknfeel">
<title>Look & Feel</title>
<para>Using the <guilabel>Look & Feel</guilabel> tab you can configure some
options that will not alter the panel's functionality but its overall
appearance.</para>

<para>Using the <guilabel>Hide Animation</guilabel> (for the hide buttons)
and <guilabel>Auto Hide Animation</guilabel> (for the auto hide
functionality) options you can configure whether the panel will softly
slide away or just disappear. You can enable or disable both animations
using the <guilabel>Enabled</guilabel> options and you can change the speed
of the animation using the <guilabel>Speed</guilabel> sliders.</para>

<para>A <guilabel>Background Theme</guilabel> is a picture that will be
used to draw the panel's background, just like you can use a picture for
the desktop background. Check the <guilabel>Use background theme</guilabel>
option to enable this feature. You can specify an image file in the line
edit box below or choose one by clicking on the
<guibutton>Browse</guibutton> button. You'll see a preview of the selected
picture on the right.</para>

<para>The <guilabel>Fade out applet handles</guilabel> option will hide the
small handles used to move panel applets. The handles will only show when
the mouse cursor is moved over them.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-menus">
<title>Menus</title>
<para>In the <guilabel>Menus</guilabel> tab you can configure the panel
menu's behavior. This affects the K menu you will often use to launch
applications, the browser menus you can use to access directory and other
menus like the recent documents menu.</para>

<para>The menu cache is a feature that can make the panel's menus appear
faster on screen: instead of reading the menu information from disk every
time you access a menu, the panel will remember menu entries after
accessing the menus for the first time. However, depending on the amount of
memory available to your system, you might want this cache to be cleared
after some time. Check the <guilabel>Clear menu cache</guilabel> option if
you want the cache to be cleared after some time. You can configure the
amount of time after which the cache will be cleared using the slider
below.</para>

<para>
In the <guilabel>Browser Menus</guilabel> frame you can configure whether
the panel's browser menus will show hidden files or not (hidden files on
unix systems are those whose filenames begin with a dot) as well as how
many files at most will be shown in a browser menu. The latter option may
be especially useful if you have a rather small screen resolution, as then
the browser menus will quickly fill up your screen when you browse
directories containing many files.</para>

<para>The <guilabel>K menu</guilabel> frame offers you some options to
configure the K menu's functionality. <guilabel>Merge different menu
locations</guilabel> will show all applications in the same directories,
regardless of where the corresponding configuration files are stored: for
example, enabling this option will show system wide applications in your
<guilabel>Applications</guilabel> menu as well as you own ones. If you'd
disable this option, there would be one applications menu for the whole
system and one in a submenu containing only your personal entries.</para>
<para>The <guilabel>Show bookmarks submenu</guilabel> and <guilabel>Show recent documents submenu</guilabel> option will
enable submenus showing your <application>konqueror</application> bookmarks and 
the last documents you've opened using
KDE applications respectivly.</para>
<para>The <guilabel>Show quick browser submenu</guilabel>
option will enable a browser menu.</para>



</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-buttons">
<title>Buttons</title>
<para>The KDE panel supports so-called "tiled buttons". This means that the
buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images. To
enable button tiling, check the <guilabel>Enable background
tiles</guilabel> option in the <guilabel>Buttons</guilabel> tab.
Then you can configure tiles for certain kinds of buttons.</para>

<para>For every kind of panel button there's a frame offering an
<guilabel>Enabled</guilabel> option to enable or disable tiled
images. If tiles are enabled for this kind of button, you can choose
a tile in the combo box below and the box on the right will show a
preview of this tile.</para>
<!-- Don't understand all of those. Maybe add this later or maybe it's not
all that important, as users will just try.

<para>The different kinds of buttons are:</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para></para></listitem>
<listitem><para></para></listitem>
<listitem><para></para></listitem>
<listitem><para></para></listitem>
<listitem><para></para></listitem>
<listitem><para></para></listitem>
</itemizedlist> -->


</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-applets">
<title>Applets</title>
<para>Applets are small plugins that extend the pager's functionality. KDE
comes with some applets but they may be provided by third parties as well.
Panel applets can be started using two different ways: internal or
externally. While 'internal' is the preferred way to load applets,
this can raise stability or security problems when you are using
poorly programmed third-party applets. To address these problems, applets
can be marked 'trusted'. You might want to configure the panel to
treat trusted applets different from untrusted ones. Your options
are:</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><guilabel>Load only trusted applets internal</guilabel>:
All applets but the ones marked 'trusted' will be loaded using an external
wrapper application.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><guilabel>Load startup config applets internal</guilabel>:
The applets shown on KDE startup will be loaded internally, others
will be loaded using an external wrapper application.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><guilabel>Load all applets internal</guilabel>: will load
all applets internally, regardless of whether they're trusted or not.
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para>For stability and security reasons, we recommend using one of the
first two options and that you mark only those applets as 'trusted' that
come with the KDE base packages.</para>

<para>To mark applets 'trusted' or 'untrusted' you can move them from one
of the shown listboxes to the other. Just try selecting an applet in
the list of trusted applets and click the <guibutton>&gt;&gt;</guibutton>
button. This will move the selected applet to the other list, while
clicking the <guibutton>&lt;&lt;</guibutton> button will move the
selected applet of the list of available applets to the list of
trusted ones.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-author">
<title>Section Author</title>
<para>This section written by: Jost Schenck <email>jost@schenck.de</email></para>
<para>Minor update by Mike McBride <email>mpmcbride7@yahoo.com</email></para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
