Icon-Only Task Manager no longer indicates programs are running in background windows

[Guest]

Hi Forum Folks,

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. Before I begin with my question, let me just thank everyone for all of the great information you've posted here throughout the years. Even if I've had nothing to say before, I've soaked up a lot of good information thanks to you all.

I've noticed an oddity with the Icon-Only Task Manager in Kubuntu 14.04 that I figure ought to be simple enough for me to fix, but I just can't figure it out and searching the forum and the internet at large have left me coming up dry for help. I'm hoping you all might be able to help.

I've been using Kubuntu 12.04 (64-bit) as my daily driver for a couple of years now and it's been great. I'm pretty much an LTS-only guy, so I haven't checked in with any of the releases in between, and I haven't yet pulled the trigger on upgrading to 14.04 on my main machine. I have, however, installed Kubuntu 14.04 as a new OS (Windows XP replacement!) on a couple of older laptops for friends, and as I've helped them configure it to their liking, I've noticed that the Icon-Only Task Manager behaves not quite as I would expect it to in 14.04.

I don't get too fancy with customizing my KDE, but for any Kubuntu installation that I configure for myself, I use the Icon-Only Task Manager as a replacement for the default Task Manager widget in my bottom panel, and I create launchers for my most commonly-used applications. Everything works as I expect it to in 12.04, but in 14.04 I can no longer tell the difference between a launcher for a closed application and an icon for an application that is running in a background window. There is no difference in how the IOTM displays these two different application states, which is extremely confusing. In 12.04, applications that are open but in a background window have a sort of "halo" box around their icons, while the active foreground window also has such a box but it appears "indented" or "pushed in". Inactive applications with launchers appear with no "halo" at all.

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[Guest]

This is probably the point at which a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a comparison between 12.04 and 14.04. In all examples, Dolphin, Kate, and KCalc are running, and Konsole is not running.

Note that in 12.04, the three running applications are highlighted with "halos" or boxes, with the foreground application (Kate) appearing with an "indented" icon, and Konsole is a normal icon:
12.04 example: http://imgur.com/WylqdDg
12.04 task manager close-up: http://imgur.com/3byQsEJ

But in 14.04, only the foreground application (KCalc) is highlighted. There is no difference between the icons for Dolphin and Kate, which are running in background windows, and Konsole, which is not running at all:
14.04 example: http://imgur.com/p1cPO7h
14.04 task manager close-up: http://imgur.com/aDarX5B

After a while, once I get into much more heavy-duty multitasking, it becomes impossible on 14.04 to know whether an application with a launcher is not running at all, or if it just has a background window that got covered up by other windows or is otherwise not immediately visible.


I've looked through every System Setting that I could think of to find an option to set the IOTM to work as it did in 12.04, but I can't seem to find one. I've also tried running both 12.04 and 14.04 live CDs on the same hardware to see if it's some sort of graphics driver problem, but the different behavior is always visible between the versions even on the same hardware (including a laptop with Intel graphics). I've even tried directly comparing the "icontasks" sections of ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc between 12.04 and 14.04, and I can't find any significant difference that relates to my issue.

I'm guessing that this is a simple thing I'm just overlooking somehow, but the lack of functionality is driving me batty, and until I can get this figured out, I have hold off on upgrading my main 12.04 box to 14.04.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Do you see this same behavior in your 14.04 too, or is it just me?
Thanks to anyone who can help.

[SteveRiley]

It appears that the icon-only task manager now uses a separator between applications with a pinned launcher and without. In the example below, I have pinned launchers for KCalc and Kate. Neither is running. They are above the separator on my vertical panel; they'd be to the left of the separator on a horizontal panel. Beneath the separator are icons for KMail and Konqueror, both which are open now but neither has a pinned launcher. The outline around the Konqueror icon represents the active window, because I'm typing in it.



Below, I've started KCalc. You can see the outline around it, because that's the active window. However, I've noticed that if I switch windows, the outline disappears. In that case, even though KCalc is open, nothing in the task manager indicates that this is true.



Here's my settings window...I've enabled the separator:

About the only other thing you can do to get a true visual indication of closed, open, or active is to change the style to "Use indicators." Here, KCalc (pinned) and KMail (not pinned) are open, and Konqueor (not pinned) is active.