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Tips & Tricks

XFCE crash due to wrong icon-theme selection

Sometimes when playing around in the fast & lightweight XFCE desktop it may happen that due to the wrong selection of icon-theme, XFCE won't start the next time. The wrong selection of the icon-theme could be probably because you accidently (or intentionally) selected the mouse cursor theme instead of the icon-theme.
You can correct this problem by following these easy steps:

1. Log in normally into KDE.
2. Open your Home folder and click on View > Show hidden files.
3. Now navigate to .config/xfce4/mcs_settings.
4. Open the file gtk.xml. Find & change the value of the variable IconThemeName to the original value, say Rodent.
5. Logout of KDE and log into XFCE. Viola!!! Your problem has gone for good.

Giving a style to the busy cursor (the mouse pointer in busy state, eg., while an application is launching) certainly makes the boring old pointer look good. To give it a Bouncing cursor style, go to Menu > Appearance & Themes (in the Settings column) > Launch Feedback. There you'll find the option to do the requisite task.
[NOTE: In Granular v0.90, the busy cursor style is set to bouncing cursor by default.]

The default setting in Firefox makes the tab bar disappear whenever you close the single open tab. This can be irritating if you are used to opening a new tab by double-clicking on the empty part of the tab bar.
To prevent Firefox from doing this, go to Edit > Preferences. Then move on to the Tabs category and tick the option 'Always show the tab bar'.

Sometimes it happens that one, while browsing in Firefox, accidentaly closes a tab in which a very important website was open whose address was long enough to go beyond human understanding. In such a case, just press the key combination: CTRL + SHIFT + T, and the disappeared tab while reappear.

If the little blue notification box that comes up in the center of the screen when a track changes in the Amarok playlist annoys you, then here is how you can readjust the location of that notification box (also called OSD). In the main Amarok interface, go to Settings > Configure Amarok > OSD and then drag the OSD to the desired location.

If, in any situation, you feel that the KDE panel (the screen-wide grey strip at the top; analogous to taskbar in Windows) is causing a pain in your eyes, then there is an easy way through which you can get rid of it.

1. Right-click on an empty part of the panel and choose to Unlock Panels.
2. Again right-click on the empty part of the panel and select Configure Panel.
3. Now go to Hiding > Panel hiding-buttons and tick the Show right panel-hiding button option. Click the OK button.
4. A button will appear in the extreme right side of the panel. Click on it to make the panel go away. Clicking it again will make the panel come again.

The latest version of Granular ships with a cool looking menu which replaces the conventional KMenu. This menu is called KBFX. By default, the KBFX menu can be seen just in the root account, and the regular user accounts still use the old KMenu in Granular v0.90.

To get the KBFX menu in regular user accounts as well, do this:

1. Log into your user account.
2. Right-click on an empty part of the KDE panel and select Add Applet to Panel from the resulting menu.
3. Search for the KBFX applet in the selection box that appears.
4. If needed, remove the KMenu applet from the panel by right-clicking on the KMenu button and selecting Remove KMenu Menu.