more newbie questions: dropdown menus not working, weird clock behaviour etc.

[dbaker]

Preliminary info: I'm running Kubuntu 13.04 in VirtualBox on my iMac, which is running Mac OS 10.7.3.
1 gb ram and 20 gb storage are allocated to the VM; I have 4 gb ram and 500 gb storage in total.
Kubuntu is using KDE 4.10.5. Apparently my Grub version is "0.97-29ubuntu66" whatever that means.

1. Dropdown menus aren't working in Firefox (version 22.0). The 'main' menu - the one at the top of the screen, which only appears when the mouse hovers over it - sometimes works, but sometimes nothing happens when I click on, say, 'File', and it takes a while before it starts working again. Sometimes if I click on the button enough times eventually the dropdown appears again. I've had similar issues with the main menu in Gimp, so it may be a general KDE bug, not just a Firefox bug. However, it's given me more trouble in Firefox because it doesn't just effect the main menu.

I have NoScript and Ghostery installed in Firefox, and in a similar way, sometimes the dropdown menus for these addons appear when I click on them, and other times they don't. I'm sorry I can't be more specific about the circumstances leading to this particular issue, as it seems completely random.

I have never, at any point since installing Kubuntu, been able to get the dropdown menus ('Organize', 'View' and 'Import and backup') to work in Bookmarks > Show all bookmarks. Also, when I go to Preferences > Content > Colors, nothing happens when I click on the color swatches to change the colors. These are the only places I've tried to get to, so it's quite likely other menus/buttons aren't working as well.

The dropdown menu problem appears to carry over into pages visited in Firefox, since none of the dropdown menus on this site are working. I was having this problem BEFORE I installed Noscript and Ghostery so it's not a script-blocking problem.

I have no trouble with menus in Chromium, but Firefox is my favorite browser and I'd like to be able to use it.

I don't want to report this as a bug on the KDE bugtracker site until I've got a second opinion on here, as I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem. I searched for it on the bugtracker site, and on these forums, and haven't found anything like what I'm experiencing.

2. My clock is misbehaving. I keep setting it to the correct time by command-clicking on it and saying adjust date/time, (keeping in mind that in the settings it's 24 hour) and then I'll look up after a few hours and it'll say 5 am when it ought to say 3 pm. I have the timezone correct and everything. Is there something I'm not understanding about how the clock works? I may just be missing something obvious (it wouldn't be the first time )

3. Just an aesthetic thing: I've set the glowing edge of all my windows to cyan, but the glowing edge of selected items in the panel (desktops, minimized apps) is still blue, which looks rather odd. Any way to change this?

EDIT: thought I posted about this in one of my other squillion threads, but I can't find it now. Here's question 4. Sigh.

I want to be able to add individual application launchers to the panel, but I've gone through all the widgets and all the panel settings and can't find any way to do so. Dolphin was there by default and when I command-click on it there's an option to 'remove this launcher'. But I want to ADD a launcher!

[kubicle]

2. This is probably the famous zic/localtime bug that has a numerous threads already on the forum (This is the most thorough one http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...s-create-a-fix). You should be able to fix it by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' and choose your timezone when prompted (although it may take a bit for the clock to update).

3. The screen edge glow comes from a svg file in your plasma theme, you might use another one or edit the svg...I made mine a light-grayish sort of thing.

4. when the application is open, right-click on it's task manager button and choose "Show launcher when program is not running". Another option, if you want a launcher that is "separate" from it's task manager entry, is to open kmenu, find the program you want, right-click, add to panel.

[dbaker]

Thankyou, clock fixed and app launchers added! I guess I should have searched for the clock problem.
Where can I find that svg file? I don't want to edit the wrong thing and mess stuff up.

[kubicle]

Thankyou, clock fixed and app launchers added! I guess I should have searched for the clock problem.
Where can I find that svg file? I don't want to edit the wrong thing and mess stuff up.

Plasma themes installed on the system are in /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/. Before editing, you should copy the theme you want to ~/.kde/share/apps/desktoptheme/ (you don't actually have to copy the whole theme, just the files and the folder hierarchy you wish to change).
The glow effect svg is <themename>/widgets/glowbar.svg(z) (svgz is a gzipped svg). I seem to recall that the default effect uses images instead of gradients (so it's a tad harder to edit)...so you might wish to copy the glowbar.svgz from the "slim-glow" theme to use (or edit if you wish).

Plasma themes are cached for runtime use, so you might not see the effects of changes immediately. Usually switching to another theme and back is enough to refresh the caches, but I seem to recall sometimes you may need to restart plasma/or clear the cache for changes to take effect.

[dbaker]

Thanks. I don't really know how to edit that (it unzipped when I clicked on it, and was just a short line of code which I couldn't see how to edit..something about an xml image.) I might just leave it.

[kubicle]

Thanks. I don't really know how to edit that (it unzipped when I clicked on it, and was just a short line of code which I couldn't see how to edit..something about an xml image.) I might just leave it.

svgs are technically text files, but most people would prefer a vector graphics program (such as karbon or inkscape) to edit them. However, there is a learning curve to vector graphics editing if you're not familiar with it...so you might just copy the glowbar.svgz from the "slim-glow" theme to your chosen theme and see if you like that better (it's less "in-your-face-blue")

[kubicle]

Oh wait...I just reread your original post, and I misunderstood the glow effect you were talking about. "glowbar.svgz" is the effect of screen edge glow with hidden panels, for example. The taskbar item glows come from other files (but also from the plasma theme, so you can copy the corresponding files from other themes if you find one that you prefer). I'll add the filenames in a bit.

tasks.svg(z) = task buttons
pager.svg(z) = pager (virtual desktop switcher)

Of course, rather than changing individual theme elements, you may wish to try other themes if there is one you'd prefer.

[dbaker]

Ok, here's what I did.
I opened tasks.svg in kate using terminal and found the offending color, replaced it with the color I wanted, and saved the file. I was surprised it let me save it actually, since previously when I've tried to save system files it's told me I don't have the necessary permissions.
I open the pager file as well, but I couldn't find any colors mentioned in it that weren't just various shades of gray. Which is a mystery.
Anyway, after restarting my system, the color of the task bar glow still hasn't changed...

EDIT: It seems there are multiple task/pager files, for the different themes, and I was editing the wrong ones. I found the ones for the Oxygen theme (which I'm using) and this time the pager file had the offending blue color, but the task bar file didn't! And still, after editing and restarting, no colors have changed.
Customizing the themes in system settings >workspace appearence>desktop theme>details didn't make any difference even when I clicked apply. (looks like you're meant to be able to choose bits and pieces from the difference themes and mash them together.)

It's a very minor issue but I like poking around in 'forbidden' system files and messing with things. That's the whole reason I'm running Linux :P

[dbaker]

UPDATE: I can't figure out how to edit the title of this post so I can't put [SOLVED], but anyway....
I fixed the dropdown problem in Firefox by changing the menu bar to be in-application rather than a dissapearing panel. Firefox is still a bit buggy (sometimes when I try to drag the window it won't move, for example) so I'm going to try another browser. I can only imagine the dropdown menu problem is a bug but I'm still a bit too scared to report it... :|

[Snowhog]

Click on Thread Tools and select Mark this thread as Solved...

There was a glitch and I got it fixed. The option is there now.

[dbaker]

thankyou!

[kubicle]

Sorry for the late reply, I missed your post.

I opened tasks.svg in kate using terminal and found the offending color, replaced it with the color I wanted, and saved the file. I was surprised it let me save it actually, since previously when I've tried to save system files it's told me I don't have the necessary permissions.

That's why I recommended that you copy the system theme files to your home directory before editing. If there, for example, is a file ~/.kde/share/apps/desktoptheme/oxygen/widgets/tasks.svgz it will be used instead of the system wide /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/oxygen/widgets/tasks.svgz. This has a few benefits, including:
1. You don't need elevated permissions to edit the file in your home dir
2. Your changes won't be overwritten on upgrades.
3. Your changes won't affect other users (if there are other users on your machine)

It seems there are multiple task/pager files, for the different themes, and I was editing the wrong ones. I found the ones for the Oxygen theme (which I'm using) and this time the pager file had the offending blue color, but the task bar file didn't! And still, after editing and restarting, no colors have changed.

There can be three different tasks.svg(z) files for a theme (normal, opaque and translucent...the opaque one is used when there is no transparency, for example)...so you need to edit the correct one (or all of them). To make things a bit more confusing, not all themes are "complete" (that is, include all files that are used in theming) in which case missing files are picked from the theme named "default". It can take a while to figure out the quirks. And for changes to take effect, you sometimes need to delete the plasma theme cache files for the theme in /var/tmp/kdecache-<username>.

Customizing the themes in system settings >workspace appearence>desktop theme>details didn't make any difference even when I clicked apply. (looks like you're meant to be able to choose bits and pieces from the difference themes and mash them together.)

There is that, but you can only edit some parts of the theme with it, which is why I prefer manual editing. And it can be a tad unintuitive to use...I haven't used it in a good while (and there has been some changes to it since then). You can try giving your "mixed" custom theme a name (You can access that option with "more"), and then switch to that theme.