14 DAY TRIAL // KDE is one of the most popular and used desktop environments for Linux systems because not only that it looks very much like Microsoft Windows, but it combines ease of use, superb graphical design and new age functionality with high-end technologies of the Unix-based operating systems. Kicker is one of the core parts of the KDE desktop, it is the main panel. This panel can be customized by users in almost every possible way you think of. For example, you can add a lot of useful applets (clock, system tray, show desktop, color picker, desktop preview & pager, dictionary and many more), application shortcuts or you can make it completely transparent or semi transparent, change the skin or colorize it.
Kicker also has a lot of configuration options that are not revealed in any of the existing graphical user interfaces but can be very useful for advanced users. You must know first that these options are found in the /usr/share/config.kcfg/kickerSettings.kcfg and the /home/yourusername/.kde/share/config/kickerrc configuration files. Below are some of the top tweaks found in the kickerSettings.kcfg file, but nothing stops you to read and modify, as necessary, every option.
Note: These tweaks are taken from the current development version of kicker in SVN trunk and it is known that some of these hacks will work with KDE 3.4
WARNING: Please restart kicker with 'dcop kicker restart' in order to see the result of your modifications
[menus]
ShowmenuTitles
This option can be set as true (default) or false and it allows you to configure whether the section titles in K-Menu will be displayed or not.
MenuEntryHeight
This option can set the height of menu entries. The values are in pixels. The default value is 0 which means 16 pixels. If you want to disable icons entirely, please set this value to -1.
[K-Menu]
SidePixmapName
In the KDE's configuration GUI you can only disable or enable the showing of K-Menu side pixmap, but this option allows you to set the file name that kicker uses for this side pixmap, in order to use a customized image. Either you copy your custom side pixmap to the default path (/home/yourusername/share/apps/kicker/pics/) and replace the existing one, or you can specify a different path.
SideTileName
This option allows you to set the name of the file used to fill the height of the K-Menu that the side pixmap doesn't cover.
ShowKMenuText
This option allows you to set as true (default) or false, if you want to display a text label on the K-Menu button.
KMenuText
This is another option to control whether you want to show a text on the K-Menu button. The default text is "Applications" (translated into your language).
[buttons]
ShowMouseOverEffects
This option can be set as true (default) or false and it allows you to enable and disable the mouse over effects.
MouseOversShowIcon
This option can be set as true (default) or false and it allows you to specify whether the mouse over effect displays an icon in the tool tip or not.
MouseOversShowText
Another option that can be set true (default) or false in order to display (or not) a text label in the tooltip, on the mouse over effect. To achieve an effect more like the previous KDE version's icon zooming, set this to false.
MouseOversSpeed
You can tweak this option in order to set the speed of the fade effect on the tooltip. It is measured in thousandths of a second and the default value is 500. If you set this option to 0 it will disable the fade effect and the tooltip will appear instantly.
MouseOversShowDelay
This option lets you specify the delay (in milliseconds) between hovering the mouse over a panel icon and the effect being displayed. The default value is 250 and it cannot be less then 0.
MouseOversHideDelay
This option lets you specify the delay (in milliseconds) before the mouse over effect is hidden. The default value is 200 and it cannot be less then 0.
IconMargin
If you want to specify the margin between panel icons and the panel border (in pixels), then you can tweak this option. The default value is 3 and if you set it to a smaller value, it will give you larger button icons (depending on kicker height).
ButtonTextColor
This option specifies the text color to be used for kicker buttons.