Search and Launch: Remove favorites?

[Jimi-James]

I'm posting this because of its un-Google-able nature (I have no idea what the name of this object is, and keywords like "favorites," "favorites bar," and "favorites box" brought me nothing):

No, I don't mean the favorites options that you can uncheck in the settings. In the screenshot, you can see a translucent rectangle between the search bar and Plasma panel, which houses launchers for rekonq, the system settings, and Dolphin in a vanilla Search and Launch activity (I removed them). I'm wondering how to remove that unsightly rectangle that remains when the three icons are gone. I tried restarting Plasma, but that just brought the icons back again. Which leads me to mention I need a solution that will stick between instances of Plasma.

EDIT: Derp, forgot to attach the screenshot:

[bra|10n]

You could try removing background.svgz from /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/appdashboard/widgets/ but I suspect even with this image removed it will be substituted with the 'next' background.svgz image found. You will need to delete plasma_theme_default.kcache from /home/kubuntu/.kde/cache-/* , change to another plasma theme and back to Air, logout/in again to see if it worked.

Good luck.

[Jimi-James]

Thanks. Is there any other way to do it, though? This way, the search bar and its results don't get more room (what I was hoping for), and the three icons still won't go away forever.

[bra|10n]

It sounds like you were successful in removing the dashboard panel. Good. The issue of the 'returning icons' might be caused by a default setting 'restore previous session', SystemSettings > SessionManagement and change to 'start with an empty session'.

Now regarding resizing the main icon space (to just below your top panel) I believe this can be achieved. I remember seeing such a setting in a layout file somewhere, but right now I can't say where, sorry.
Do you wish to retain the search function or would you prefer that gone also?

[Jimi-James]

"Start with an empty session" was already checked, and I don't think that was the problem because even killall plasma-desktop && plasma-desktop will bring the icons back. I want to retain the search function and only be rid of that gray box.

[bra|10n]

Ok there seems to be a default setting of a minimum of three application shortcuts in the dashboard. This setting will no doubt be included in the layout file I referred to earlier.
Can you confirm if you were able to delete the dashboard background using the instructions I gave you...

Also you might get the location of the 'layout file' from "askubuntu.com" rather than waiting for me to remember in the meantime...

[Jimi-James]

Following your instructions did not get rid of the background. I also tried editing the background file with Inkscape--It was a vertical gray-to-transparent gradient, which doesn't look like the dashboard background, and deleting that gradient to make a transparent svgz image did not change how the background looks, so I'm not so sure that the Search and Launch activity uses that file.

[vw72]

Would it not be simpler to tell KDE to use the desktop interface instead of the netbook interface and then configure it to look however you want?

EDIT: My mistake, I notice that you are running the desktop interface.

[Jimi-James]

I'm not following. I tried changing the them from Air for netbooks to Air, but that didn't let me remove the gray rectangle. Did you mean something else?

EDIT: Oh, alright.