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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Some notes on configuring Konqueror
From:       "Hisham Muhammad" <hisham.hm () gmail ! com>
Date:       2006-07-31 20:03:39
Message-ID: 5e7d91620607311303t109e8bfmfb7cfaf4357d8c67 () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hello,

I'm a happy KDE user, and I have it tweaked and tuned for my personal
tastes for a long time now. Today, however, I had the unusual
experience of having to use an user account at the uni lab that was
based on a default Fedora setup. Since it's been a long time since I
last configured KDE (even though I use it every day), I decided to
take notes on the sequence of steps I took (the mis-steps, especially,
may be interesting from an usability standpoint) and share the
experience. Here are my notes:

---
* The account first logged into its default session mode, the
BlueCurved Gnome. I started it, gave it a few clicks, but decided to
try to log into my usual KDE instead.

* Logged out, clicked on the discreet Session menu at the bottom of
the screen, picked KDE. As I proceeded to log in, the session manager
asked if I wanted to make that change permanent. (Nice touch.)

* KDE was also pretty much BlueCurved. First thing I noticed: the same
generic browser icon that was in the Gnome top panel was in KDE's
bottom panel. I removed it, deciding to put Konqueror there instead.
As I went to find the icon in the K menu (that featured a red hat
instead, by the way), I learned that the browser that was there was
already Konqueror! The same-looking icon launched different apps in
KDE and Gnome.

* Next step, Control Center. Going through each entry of the
Appearance section, it was pretty fast to give KDE its default look
again (plus my minor personal tweaks).

* "Fixing" Konqueror was a bit more troublesome. During my brief visit
in Gnome, the only customization I made was to revert the default page
of Firefox back to about:blank. My first reaction in Konqueror was to
go to "Configure Konqueror" and run through the setup screens looking
for a similar option. Fortunately, I remembered that in Konqueror this
is controlled through "view profiles". If I didn't know this already,
I would probably spend a long time until I figured this out, because
it's different than basically every other browser out there (and even
though I use Konqueror every day, it took me some time to remember it,
because it's the kind of setting you tweak only once and then never
think about it again).

* Now, changing the fonts. I had already changed font settings from
Fedora's "Sans" to "Bitstram Vera Sans" in the Control Center (using
the 'Adjust All Fonts' button), but Konqueror did not inherit those
settings. Opened "Configure Konqueror" again. First reaction was to go
to "Appearance" (thinking back, probably because that's where font
settings were under, in the Control Center). But there all I found was
settings for configuring "how Konqueror looks as a file manager",
including setting the font (which was still Sans too). There's a
separate setup section called Fonts.

* Next, getting rid of the "Search toolbar", added (in Fedora? maybe
it's a KDE 3.5 thing, my main machine still runs 3.4) to make
Konqueror look more like Firefox. I'm already used to the enhanced
URLs (gg:, wp:, dict:, etc.), so I don't need two input fields. First
try: "Settings -> Toolbars". Not there. So maybe that's an item added
to the Location toolbar. Went to "Configure Toolbars", picked
"Location Toolbar" in the combo. Nothing there, the items list ends at
the Go button. So it's a separate toolbar, really. Then I notice
there's a "Search toolbar" item in the combo (even though it does not
show up in the "Settings -> Toolbars" menu). Removed the sole item
from the toolbar and it worked. It feels weird to think I have a
mystery empty toolbar beside my Location bar, but I can live with
that.

* Noticed that links are not underlined. Don't remember which is the
KDE default, but in my workstation they're not set like this, so I
went to fix that. "Configure Konqueror". Again the reflex was to click
on Appearance. There's just an unchecked box saying "Underline
filenames" there, but that's not what I need. I had no idea where the
setting could be, so I just went screen by screen looking for
something familiar. Found it at "Web Behavior". There's a combo called
"Underline links", set to "Only on hover". Changed it to "Enabled".

* Some cosmetic tweaking in the panel. Made it transparent. Took a
while to convince the clock to have a transparent background, too
(setting "default color" didn't work at first -- I think I had the
clock setup screen opened while I changed the panel background. In my
second attempt now, it worked.)

* Changed the taskbar buttons back to Classic. But the buttons are
roundish in the Plastik theme, revealing some of the background in the
corners, which is not properly transparent like the rest of the panel.
Kinda ugly, but I find the Elegant mode too subdued, I like more
visual feedback in the taskbar.
---

Hope this feedback is of some use. Overall I think it was pretty fast
to go from the Fedora looks to my preferred setup (much closer to KDE
defaults), though one or two steps in the way could have taken longer
if I wasn't a seasoned KDE user already.

Thanks for the excellent work of the KDE team. :)

-- Hisham
(I'm not subscribed to the list, so please CC: me in case of replies.)
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