&Mike.McBride; &Mike.McBride.mail;
John Knight

    anarchist_tomato@herzeleid.net

Conversion to British English
2003-09-22
3.2
KDE KControl style

## Style

### Introduction

This module is used to configure how the individual widgets are drawn by &kde;.

A Widget is a commonly-used programmer's term for referring to User Interface elements such as buttons, menus, and scroll bars. You can think of them as the fundamental pieces that are assembled to make your application.

You can configure how the widgets are drawn with this module, but to change the colour of the widgets, you should refer to the section entitled Colours.

This panel is divided into three tabs: Style, Effects, Miscellaneous.

#### Style tab

The top list box, labelled Widget Style contains a list of the pre-defined styles. Each style has a name, and a brief description.

To change styles, simply click on the style name, and a preview of the style will be displayed in the preview box below the style list.

The other options available here are:

Show icons on buttons

  If this option is selected, action buttons (like OK and Apply will have a small icon located within them to act as a visual reference. If this option is not selected, then only the text of the button will appear in the button.

Enable tooltips

  This will toggle tooltips off and on.

Menubar on the top of the screen in the style of MacOS

  This will turn on a menubar at the top of the screen. This menubar will reflect the menu options of the active application.

#### Effects tab

If you click on the Effects tab, you will see the panel is divided into two sections.

At the top of the first section, is a checkbox labelled Enable GUI effects. If there is no mark in front of this checkbox, then all visual effects of this panel are disabled. To edit any of these effects, simply place a mark in this checkbox.

Below that checkbox, are 4 combo boxes:

Combobox effects

  This combobox has two options. If this option is set to Animate then when a combo box is selected, it will appear to scroll down. If Disable is selected, then the combobox list appears instantly.

Tool Tip Effect

  This combobox has three options. If this option is set to Animate then when a tool tip appears, it will have a short animation. If Fade is selected, the tool tip appears to fade from the background. If Disable is selected, then the tool tip appears instantly.

Menu Effect

  This combobox has four options. If this option is set to Animate then when a menu list appears, it will appear to scroll downward. If Fade is selected, the menu list appears to fade from the background. If Make Transparent is selected, the menu list will have a transparent look to it. The details of that transparency is configured in the next part of the dialogue. If Disable is selected, then the menu list appears instantly.

Menu tear-off handles

  If this option is set to Disable, then no menus can be separated from the application. If Application Level is selected, then it is left up to each individual application to determine which menus can be torn separated from the application.

  Many applications do not have tear off menus. You cannot tell &kde; to force an application to allow tear off menus. This is determined by the authors of the application.

The next checkbox, labelled Menu drop shadow is used to toggle the drop shadow behind all &kde; menus. A drop shadow is a dark, soft line on the bottom and right sides of the menu, which give the menus the appearance that the menu is lifted off the application, and the menu is creating a shadow on the application.

The next section only applies if the combobox labelled Menu Effect is set to Make Transparent. You can use the combo box labelled Menu transparency type to select the method &kde; uses to generate the transparency. You can use the slider to determine the level of transparency in menus. A preview is visible on the right side of this section.

#### Miscellaneous tab

This small section has six options.

Highlight buttons under mouse.

  If there is a mark in this checkbox, when the mouse pointer is above a toolbar button, that button will be highlighted with a square around the button. This is a good visual indicator of which button will be selected with a mouse click.

Transparent toolbars when moving

  As the title suggests, if this option is selected, the toolbars will be transparent when you are moving them around on the screen.

Text position

  This combo box lets you determine where on the button the text name of the button will appear as the default. If Icon Only is selected, then there is no text on the tool bar buttons. If Text Only is selected, then the buttons icon is replaced with a text name of the button. If Text Alongside Icons is selected, then the name of the button will be placed to the right of the icon. If Text Under Icons is selected, the default will be to have the text of the button below the icon.

  This option only specifies the default location. Each application can override the setting used in this panel.