Bug 279668

Summary: plasma widgets on screensaver cannot be resized
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma4 Reporter: railmaniac
Component: screensaver overlayAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: minor CC: achilleas.k, bugzilla-kde, chanika, frode, navid.zamani, nexces, siavashserver, simonandric5, sonichedgehog_hyperblast00
Priority: NOR    
Version: 4.8.5   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description railmaniac 2011-08-08 16:35:52 UTC
Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.7.0) 
OS:                Linux

Plasma widgets on the screensaver do not present the resize/properties/close panel on hover. As a result, the widgets cannot be resized. 

Resizing was possible in KDE 4.6.x

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open System settings.

2. Navigate hardware -> Display & Monitor -> Screensavers

3. Select "Blank Screen" for screensaver.

4. Check the checkbox labelled "Allow widgets on screensaver"

5. Click on "Configure widgets"

6. By default, analog clock widget should be present. If not, click the "add widget" button on top right corner and add a widget.

7. Try to resize the widget by hovering mouse over it.

Actual Results:  
On hover, a tooltip with local time and UTC shows up, but no handles to resize the widget.

Expected Results:  
On hover, a tooltip with local time and UTC should show up, and the normal plasma handle to manipulate widgets (unless widgets are locked). pressing on the resize button on this would allow resizing of widgets.

Repeated experiment with desktop widgets lock and unlocked. Removed default analog clock and added it again. Still no resize handles.
Comment 1 Frode Jemtland 2012-08-29 09:15:33 UTC
Confirms this. 

My system is Ubuntu Precise 12.04, with KDE 4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1. 

As a sidenote, if adding for excample a comic strip to the desktop, hover works, and resize is possible. For me this only apply to the widgets on the screensaver.
Comment 2 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-09-08 13:00:58 UTC
Thank you for the feedback.
Comment 3 Mircea Kitsune 2012-09-28 18:08:43 UTC
Confirmed, KDE 4.8.5 in openSUSE 12.2. Normally I think they would be possible to resize and rotate, the issue is that no bar pops up to the side when hovering your mouse over them. I can move them by click-dragging them, as well as change their settings by right-clicking them. I wonder if there's some other shortcut or trick that can be used until the hover bar is fixed.
Comment 4 Stanley Miller 2012-12-30 22:27:30 UTC
This is still an aggravation in 4.9.4, still hoping for a fix but there is a work-around that is pretty awful. Keep a backup because it is easy to make a mess of your file!

Manually editing: 

~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-overlay-appletsrc 

allows you to resize the screensaver's widgets.
Comment 5 Mircea Kitsune 2013-01-28 14:50:20 UTC
Still the case in KDE 4.9.5. And from what I noticed in the openSUSE 12.3 beta 1, also in the current 4.10. I hope this will be fixed before KDE 4.10 is released.
Comment 6 Stanley Miller 2013-03-11 17:50:47 UTC
Still in 4.10 but since you can no longer have widgets on the screensaver (at least in the openSUSE release of 4.10) you have to see this bug from the "screen locker - desktop widgets"  section.

Related, I have several users mad about having to pick widgets on a desktop or a screensaver, they want their widgets on a screensaver back.
Comment 7 Mircea Kitsune 2013-03-11 18:29:20 UTC
(In reply to comment #6)

Yes, since KDE 4.10 you can only have widgets if you use a wallpaper image for the screen locker, no longer with screensaver. Still, I remember giving it a test with one of the openSUSE 12.3 Release Candidates some months ago, and widgets on the lock screen still couldn't be resized.
Comment 8 Stanley Miller 2013-06-21 06:50:19 UTC
Is there a target release for having this fixed?

Is there a better work-around than manually editing: 
~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-overlay-appletsrc
Comment 9 Mircea Kitsune 2013-06-21 10:05:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)

I run KDE 4.10.3 and it's not fixed yet. Still waiting myself, I'd like to be able to resize screen saver widgets properly.
Comment 10 Siavash 2013-10-15 06:41:48 UTC
It's still there on KDE 4.11.2
Comment 11 Mircea Kitsune 2013-10-15 11:08:04 UTC
Totally no harm meant. But although KDE is free and open-source software, I'm surprised how simple and direct issues like this can go unfixed for so many versions.
Comment 12 Christoph Feck 2014-02-09 19:35:43 UTC
If you believe it is simple to fix, please propose a patch. We currently have no maintainer for the screensaver or screenlocker, so help is welcome.
Comment 13 Navid Zamani 2015-06-26 23:33:34 UTC
It is still there. And it’s very clear that nobody cares either. (Me neither.)

I recommend completely removing the whole lock screen / screen saver widget stuff from KDE, as it is broken. If somebody wants it, he can code it himself, IMHO.

Then again, the same can be said for all of Plasma. Especially with multiple screens and a desktop-independent dashboard, where it still is about as stable as with KDE 4.0 (aka “the alpha version”).

Maybe KDE 5 will bring some (not Apple-imitating) sanity.  … /Maybe/…
Comment 14 Nate Graham 2018-06-08 18:29:00 UTC
Hello!

This bug report was filed for KDE Plasma 4, which reached end-of-support status in August 2015. KDE Plasma 5's desktop shell has been almost completely rewritten for better performance and usability, so it is likely that this bug has already been resolved in Plasma 5.

Accordingly, we hope you understand why we must close this bug report. If the issue described  here is still present in KDE Plasma 5.12 or later, please feel free to open a new ticket in the "plasmashell" product after reading https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting

If you would like to get involved in KDE's bug triaging effort so that future mass bug closes like this are less likely, please read https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved#Bug_Triaging

Thanks for your understanding!

Nate Graham