Widgets!

Yesterday was spent fooling around with widgets, those mini-programs that run on the KDE desktop and its panels. To start at the beginning, for some reason I unlocked my widgets, and then lost my 'pager' of virtual desktops! Whilst attempting to get them back I deleted the panel that they sat on! So first job was to get a new panel which was easily done, then look through all the available widgets for my system tray, digital clock and pager, and install them as I found them to the new panel. But, they were all bunched together at the left hand side of the panel, and there was no way that I could position them correctly, with the digital clock and the system tray being on the right of the panel, and the pager being on the left of the panel, which is the default for KDE.

So I went on IRC¹ and asked how to do it in #kde, #gllug², #debian, and my local lug #klug³. Nobody appeared to know how to reset the default panel up, until after a couple of hours and fiddling around, somebody on #kde suggested adding the 'task manager' widget. And it worked, problem solved! But from now on I'm keeping them all locked down and secure, once bitten twice shy :).

And I've found out that on KDE, if the bottom panel has a circular bit extending slightly onto the desktop on the right hand side on the screen, then the widgets are not locked. and when they're locked and secure that circular bit disappears.

Footnotes