<sect1 id="panel">
<sect1info>

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

<date>01/02/2001</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 &kicker;) 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 (&ie; functionality you'd find in other
panel applications as well; later we'll come to the more interesting
features).</para>

<para>In the <guilabel>Panel 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,
&ie; 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, small, medium or large. Depending on which
applets you use you may find that some applets work better at different panel
sizes.</para>

<para>Depending on your screen resolution you may find that the panel takes away
too much of your precious screen real estate. To save screen space, the panel
offers an auto hide feature. When this 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>Enable automatic hide</guilabel> option in the
<guilabel>Automatic 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>

<para><guilabel>Preferred terminal application</guilabel> is the default
terminal program to be used by the QuickBrowser when you select <guilabel>Open
in Terminal</guilabel>.  It's very likely you don't need to change this
option.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-looknfeel">
<title>Look & Feel</title>
<para>Using the <guilabel>Look & Feel</guilabel> tab you can configure the
panel's overall appearance.</para>

<para>When the panel's hide buttons are enabled you'll see buttons on both sides
of the panel, with arrows showing to the screen border. If you click on one of
these buttons, the panel will slide away in that direction.  After that, you'll
see a remaining show button in that corner, which will make the panel show
again. Check the <guilabel>Enable hide buttons</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 slider you can change the width of the buttons.</para>

<para>Using the <guilabel>Manual 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>Enable</guilabel> options and you can change the speed of the
animation using the sliders.</para>

<para>The <guilabel>Background Image</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>Enable background image</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 directories and other
menus like the recent documents menu.</para>

<para>The <guilabel>K Menu Layout</guilabel> frame offers you some options to
configure the <guimenu>K</guimenu> menu's functionality. The <guilabel>Show
&quot;Bookmarks&quot; submenu</guilabel> and <guilabel>Show &quot;Recent
Documents&quot; submenu</guilabel> options will enable submenus showing your
<application>konqueror</application> bookmarks and the last documents you've
opened using &kde; applications respectivly. The <guilabel>Show &quot;Quick
Browser&quot; submenu</guilabel> option will enable a browser menu.</para>

<para><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 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 quick start section in the K menu offers quick access to programs you
have used often or recently. In the <guilabel>&quot;Quick Start&quot; section
contains</guilabel> frame you can choose whether this section will show the most
recently or the most frequently used programs. Using the option <guilabel>Max
number of &quot;Quick Start&quot; entries</guilabel> you can configure how many
programs the quick start section will remember.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="panel-buttons">
<title>Buttons</title>
<para>The &kde; panel supports so-called <quote>tiled buttons</quote>. 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 <quote>internal</quote> 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 <quote>trusted</quote>. 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 <quote>trusted</quote> 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 <quote>trusted</quote> or <quote>untrusted</quote> 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>
