Thoughts on KDE 4 Menu Styles

Since I’m just now getting down and dirty with KDE 4 I decided to explore the “Kickoff” menu.

I was initially pleased that Mandriva had set up a traditional menu, but I started to get “Icon Creep” on my panel. There are a few key applications I use often, and I don’t want to dig through menus, and sub-menus to get to them.

In previous versions of KDE, I always added (if not there by default as in Kubuntu) the “Quick Launch Applet” to my panel, which allowed for 2 rows of smaller icons for frequently used applications, and also taking up less real estate than adding full sized icons for each application. While I was able to find a Quick Launch “plasmoid” in the Mandriva repositories, I wasn’t quite successful in getting it working. I decided to go ahead and give Kickoff a try. Here are a few steps for you to do the same if you’d like.

First, here is a quick tip. I have my widgets locked, so if you’ve done this, unlock them now. You should now see a funny little half-circle w/ a “comma” in it to the far right of your panel. This is your key to adjusting anything on your panel (moving Icons around, etc.). Once you get things the way you want them, you can “re-lock” your widgets and that annoying little bugger goes away

To start, right-click your Mandriva menu and click remove. Now right click the panel and “Add Widget” and choose “Application Launcher”. It will probably show up all the way tothe right edge of your panel, so click your little half-circle thingy, and you should see a “target” when your mouse is over the newly placed menu (which [thankfully] looks like the traditional K-Menu icon), and drag it far left. Now, right click and lock widgets again.

Once there, go through your applications menu and add your favorite, most used applications to Favorites, and they are just a mouse-click away!