Information

The information presented here covers Plasma Desktop 4.5. Versions available: 4.3 - 4.5



Please note, that these examples refer to an old version of the Plasma Desktop. Some things have changed with Plasma 5. The examples on this page may provide you with some clues, but expect some deviation from what You actually see on Your desktop! Please note, that these examples refer to an old version of the Plasma Desktop. Some things have changed with Plasma 5. The examples on this page may provide you with some clues, but expect some deviation from what You actually see on Your desktop!



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

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

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

Desktop Widgets

Panel Widgets

Icons

Desktop

Panel

Extenders

Activities

Further information

For reuse

To link to an animation from another UserBase article, a thumbnail can be posted. Here's an example:

How to unlock your widgets

The code to do that is

{| |[[File:Plasma_howto-thumbnail-45.png|link=Media:Plasma_howto-widget-unlock-45.gif]] |- |align="center"|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/d/df/Plasma_howto-thumbnail-45.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/d/df/Plasma_howto-thumbnail-45.png" /></a>

A description of how to record animated GIF files can be found here. Do you want to help out with making animations? See the Talk page to find out how!



