Panel opacity

[pwabrahams]

Is there a way to make the panel at the bottom of the screen opaque, so the wallpaper doesn't show through on it? I find that having the wallpaper show through makes it hard to read the contents of the panel. I didn't see anything in the panel settings that seemed to do this.

[Rog131]

Re: Panel opacity

The panel is part of the plasma (desktop) theme. The theme elements are svg images. More > Creating a Plasma Theme.

The theme elements are saved to the /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/.

If you are using the "Get Hot New Sutff - Plasma Workspace Add-On Installer" the theme will be installed to the ~/.kde/share/apps/desktoptheme/.

The default theme is in /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/. Opaque panel is in the /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/opaque/widgets/panel-background.svgz. The transparent is in the /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/widgets/panel-background.svgz.

You could change the places or use an image editor to change the transparency.


More > Plasma FAQ ( > Re: Karmic Release Schedule, Plans, KDE 4.3 - FINAL)

[Vistaus]

Re: Panel opacity

If the desktop effects are turned off, the panel is opaque.
Also when installing a theme via GHNS or manually, like Rog said.

[pwabrahams]

Re: Panel opacity

I tried turning off desktop effects in System Settings / Look and Feel / Desktop / General. It did something, but it didn't make the panel opaque. I can still see the wallpaper showing through the panel.

Incidentally, it's unclear to me the rationale behind the division of settings between the Desktop section of System Settings and the Desktop Settings you get by right-clicking on the desktop.

[qu.dawei]

Re: Panel opacity

I tried turning off desktop effects in System Settings / Look and Feel / Desktop / General. It did something, but it didn't make the panel opaque. I can still see the wallpaper showing through the panel.

This corresponds to my experience. I also tried the other suggestion about switching the .svgz fils around, and that had no effect either.

Incidentally, it's unclear to me the rationale behind the division of settings between the Desktop section of System Settings and the Desktop Settings you get by right-clicking on the desktop.

It is very unclear to me as well, as it seems inconsistent at the moment. I guess there is a consistency if one is more knowledgeable about how things are being designed and so on, but wouldn't that defeat the objective of making things simple and obvious from an end-user usability point-of-view?

What I am trying to obtain are black clearly viewable names of the pages on them. I am surprised that the facility for changing fonts, sizes, and colours are not present on the pager configuration panel, just as, for example, it is on the date and clock panels. Without this, it seems to me that the option of placing the names on the pages is effectively worthless as you can almost always never see them, and only occasionally get a very faint blurry view of them.

[pwabrahams]

Panel opacity and related issues

Incidentally, it's unclear to me the rationale behind the division of settings between the Desktop section of System Settings and the Desktop Settings you get by right-clicking on the desktop.

It is very unclear to me as well, as it seems inconsistent at the moment. I guess there is a consistency if one is more knowledgeable about how things are being designed and so on, but wouldn't that defeat the objective of making things simple and obvious from an end-user usability point-of-view?

What I am trying to obtain are black clearly viewable names of the pages on them.

That's what I was looking for also.

Without this, it seems to me that the option of placing the names on the pages is effectively worthless as you can almost always never see them, and only occasionally get a very faint blurry view of them.

Exactly my experience.

Looks like there's a bug and a semi-bug here:

- The bug is that the panel cannot be made opaque, at least as far as we can discover.

- The semi-bug is that there is no obvious division of capability between the Desktop section of Systems Settings and the Desktop Settings gotten by right-clicking the desktop.

I'll be reporting these soon.