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Plasma/HOWTO

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Plasma is one of the key technologies of KDE 4 (also known as the "Pillars of KDE"), and one of the most visible to users. As Plasma treats the user interface differently than a traditional desktop, there may be confusion as to what Plasma is, what it does, and how to perform common tasks.

The purpose of this document is to show how to preform common tasks in Plasma. Each HOWTO consists of one topic and a short animation, which is reached by clicking on the link.

The animation is encoded in the GIF format and can thus be viewed in most modern web browsers without any additional plugins installed. Note that the animation is looped.

Note

Almost all HOWTOs assume that the widgets are unlocked. See Unlock widgets for instructions on how to unlock them.

Note

Due to distribution-specific customizations, your desktop might differ from those in the HOWTOs. In particular, if you miss the top-right toolbox (shown as a yellow icon), you can reach most options by right-clicking on the desktop.

HOWTO

Widgets

• Unlock widgets
• Lock widgets

Desktop Widgets

• Add widget to desktop
• Configure widget
• Move widget
• Resize widget
• Rotate widget
• Remove widget
• Drag widget from desktop to panel

Panel Widgets

• Add widget to panel
• Configure widget
• Move widget
• Remove widget
• Add spacer
• Drag widget from panel to desktop

Desktop

• Change wallpaper
• Change theme
• Change to traditional desktop

Panel

• Change panel height
• Change panel width
• Move panel
• Change panel alignment
• Make panel autohide
• Add new panel
• Remove panel

Extenders

• Drag extender to desktop
• Restore extender
• Stack extenders

Activities

• Create new activity
• Switch activities
• Rename activity
• Remove activity
• Link activities to virtual desktops
• Use separate activity for dashboard

Further information

• The Plasma FAQ
• Glossary

For reuse

To link to an animation from another UserBase article, a thumbnail can be posted. Here's an example (edit this page to see the syntax):

How to unlock your widgets

The animations can also be used outside of UserBase. The BBCode (used in most forums) to post a linked thumbnail is: [url=GIF][img]http://userbase.kde.org/images.userbase/e/e8/Plasma_howto-thumbnail.png[/img][/url]

Replace GIF with the URL to the GIF file. The corresponding HTML code is: <a href="GIF"><img src="http://userbase.kde.org/images.userbase/e/e8/Plasma_howto-thumbnail.png" /></a>

Thanks

• Anne Wilson - thanks for all the help with UserBase!

Contributors

• Hans Chen - current maintainer

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