(*** This bug was imported into bugs.kde.org ***) Package: kicker Version: 1.93 Severity: wishlist Hi I recently upgraded my monitor to a 19-inch one that can handle 1600x1200 (yay!) and after updating a whole bunch of settings to make my font sizes bigger I found a problem with kicker's taskbar: the buttons seem to have a fixed maximum width in _pixels_ and on my screen (with a larger readable font size) that width is too small. I would suggest either making the max width configurable or choosing one based on the X-Windows DPI setting or multiplying the _height_ of the taskbar buttons by a constant. I increased my kicker panel icons to a larger size which makes the taskbar taller and it would be nice if the taskbuttons scaled themselves proportionately. Otherwise kicker's awesome! Have fun Avery
Still valid with 3.2.3.
With KDE 3.2, the *vertical* height of the taskbar buttons seems to have shrunk; now the taskbar is three buttons high when the panel is set to "Large." On my screen (1600x1200) I find these very hard to click on and I wish I could force the taskbar to only be two buttons high.
you can change the size of the taskbar buttons by putting MaximumButtonWidth=<some #> and in 3.4 MinimumButtonHeight=<some #> in your `kde-config --localprefix`/share/config/taskbarrc file in the [General] group. putting ConserveSpace=true in your kickerrc has the affect of providing a single row of buttons
While manual tweaks to the config file are nice, it doesn't really solve the real problem, which is that every single person using 1600x1200 will experience the same bad effects. As more and more people start running at higher resolutions, you'll get more and more people complaining about this - or simply not complaining about it and abandoning KDE. This sounds overly strongly worded, but something as serious as "the taskbar is completely unusable for me" does not leave a good first impression. I propose you take my original advice: either calculate the maximum button width based on the DPI, or do something related to the height-vs-width aspect ratio of the buttons.
I don't think that this has been fixed.
James: why? Please provide information. Buttons on my 1600x1200 look just fine. Measuring with kruler shows them to be about 200px wide. Yes, making the max width measured in "em" or "ex" would be better.
I don't think that the default size is wide enough. But, the issue in comment #4 is that the only way to adjust it is to edit a file -- the GUI doesn't have a place to set it.
I'd love to see a setting to change the size of the buttons for the active programs in kicker's taskbar. Illogically the size of those buttons is shrinked the bigger kicker gets. But it wouldn't be a good idea to tie this to the dpi settings. Because some people using a high resolution want very small buttons in a large kicker (I prefer a kicker size of 62 pixel on 1600x1200 and three rows of buttons), a friend of mine *needs* a bigger kicker (74 px) and bigger buttons (preferably just two rows) to see them correctly but doesn't want to lower the resolution beyond 1280x1024 because that looks odd on his TFT. It would be nice to have a menu like the one for the kicker pager where I can easily choose between 1, 2 or 3 rows.
Kicker is no more mantained and all bugs/wishes will not be fixed/implemented in KDE3. A list of the most interesting/unresolved issues which is still valid for KDE4 has been created. Before reopening old kicker bugs on KDE4 Plasma, please try the new KDE 4.3.1, check the current behaviour and, only if you find new bugs or if you need a particular feature, open a new bug report. Remember that KDE 4 is a full rewrite of KDE 3 so some old features will not be re-implemented because the behaviour has be changed a lot on some sides. Thanks for the comprehension and enjoy the new KDE 4! -- FiNeX & D. Andres