Window-specific options in KDE 4.4

Jack Wallen
Feb 20, 2010
Updated • Feb 15, 2018
Linux
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6

Continuing with the KDE 4.4 theme we will turn our phasers towards configuring window-specific options.

What exactly does this mean? It means you can configure options for a specific window that apply only to a specific window or a specific application. And what's best, it's easy enough that any level of experience shouldn't have trouble.

These options range from the placement of a window (or application) to the opacity, size, shading, and much more. NOTE: You do have to be using KWin decorator for these to take affect.

In this article you will learn how to configure options for both a window and a specific application.

Where are the configurations?

Figure 1

You won't find these settings in the System Settings window. You find them in a special menu that appears when you right-click the title bar of a window or application (see Figure 1). The menu entries are in the Advanced menu.

There are two menu entries in particular:

Special Window Settings: Configure window attributes.

Special Application Settings: Configure application attributes.

There is very little difference between the two.  If you compare the two different settings, side by side, for the same application, you will find in just about every case, all available options are the same. The difference will be how each is configured.  To make this easier, we will take a look at the Special Application Settings configuration. For the purposes of this article, we will examine the settings for the application konsole (the KDE console tool).

Figure 2

When you open up the Special Applications Settings you will see five tabs (see Figure 2):

  • Windows: Description, class, and role of the window defines the window (or application) you are affecting.
  • Window Extra: Window types, title, extra roles.
  • Geometry: Position, size, maximized (either/or horizontally or vertically), fullscreen, desktop, etc.
  • Preferences: Various preferences such as skip taskbar, autogroup, keep above/below, etc.
  • Workarounds: Stealing prevention, moving resizing, minimized size, etc.

When you poke around this window you will find a ton of possible options. The easiest way to describe how this works is by example.

Kiosk mode

Let's say you use a Linux machine in a kiosk where you want the Linux box to serve as nothing more than a web browser. You don't want the users to be able to get their fingers on any other applications and you don't want the browser to be able to be closed. You can do this with the help of this tool. For such a set up you would want to configure the following:

Geometry: Select Full Screen and, from the drop down, select Force (make sure you tick the force check boxe as well)

Preferences: Select Skip Taskbar and, from the drop down, select Force (make sure you tick the force check boxe as well) . Select No Border and, from the drop down, select Force (make sure you tick the force check boxe as well).

Figure 3

The next time you open that application (in this case Firefox) you will have a full screen browser with no way to close or get to other applications (see Figure 3).

But how can you close the browser? Easy. Click <Alt>F3 to get the right-click menu back and select Close. Or you can re-configure the Special Application Settings.

Final thoughts

These fine-grain configurations make KDE (and KWin) an outstanding desktop that is flexible and highly configurable. Play around with these settings until you get the perfect desktop. If you create something cool, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

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Window-specific options in KDE 4.4
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Window-specific options in KDE 4.4
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In this article you will learn how to configure options for both a window and a specific application.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. lefty.crupps said on February 22, 2010 at 3:21 pm
    Reply

    > Select No Border and, from the drop down, select Force
    > (make sure you tick the force check box as well).

    Can you or anyone clarify why I would need to tick this box if I’ve already selected that option? I’ve never understood this.

  2. tetris4 said on February 21, 2010 at 3:29 pm
    Reply

    I took advantage of this configurations to embed the Konsole into the Desktop. Looks neat =)

  3. redapple said on February 21, 2010 at 12:40 pm
    Reply

    thats what i needed

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