KDE 4 brought some big changes to the desktop, including time-saving widgets that do everything from popping you into Twitter, to keeping tabs on your servers, to providing on-the-fly spell-checking. Jack Wallen runs through 10 of these handy little labour-saving apps.
Many feel these changes have made the KDE desktop less user-friendly, and that is certainly the case. But with KDE 4 comes one addition that will help it out significantly — widgets or the tiny applications that reside on the desktop and serve one or more functions. Most new KDE 4 users have yet to experience what these widgets have to offer. But if you are not taking advantage of these added tools, you are not getting the full KDE 4 experience.
Quite a few widgets are available for the KDE 4 desktop. Some serve little to no function. However, others can make your day-to-day computing life much easier. Here are 10 widgets that will make you more productive.
Folder view
This is one of the default widgets. You will find it on your desktop after installation.
There is a reason the KDE 4 team has placed this widget on your desktop by default: it makes browsing folders easy. Imagine being able to have your home neatly displayed on your desktop so that all of your files and directories are available.
Having such easy access that does not get in the way of normal usage is a boon to power users. The Folder view widget stays in the background of your desktop, never obstructing your work, and allows you quick access to all of your directories and files. You can configure the widget to display whatever directory you want. You can also set up filters that can keep the window from displaying certain types of files. In addition, Folder view will display previews of files, such as images.
Konqueror profiles
If you have not fully accepted Dolphin as your KDE 4 file management tool, then every time you open Konqueror, it opens in web browser mode. There are ways around this, of course, and one is to use the Konqueror profiles widget.
This widget sits on your desktop and lists five profiles — file manager, KDE development, midnight conqueror, tabbed browsing and web browsing. Clicking on any one of these will open Konqueror in that particular profile. You can even have more than one instance of Konqueror open in a different profiles. Each profile is managed in the Konqueror configure view profiles on the Settings menu. If you add a new profile to Konqueror, it will automatically be added to this widget.
So, if you have a number of sites you use for your job, you can create a profile to launch Konqueror with tabs containing all of them.
News
RSS newsfeeds are crucial to many types of industries. Seeing feeds at a glance can make your work life that much easier; instead of having to open another application or having feeds fed to you by your browser, why not have them on your desktop?
With the News widget, this is exactly what you get. You can add as many feeds as you want, set News to update as quickly as you like, and can configure it to display only the title or a full description of the news entry. By default, if you click on a news entry, Konqueror will open to the full page.
Pager
Linux's Pager allows you to keep your desktop organised in ways you may have never experienced before. The difference between the pager widget and the standard KDE pager is that it is not tethered to the panel. Instead, you can place the pager widget anywhere on the desktop. You can configure it in the same way that you can the standard KDE pager.
Twitter Microblog
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