With the Personal Settings you can not only modify the appearance of objects, but also change the behavior of some components. In the following, find some examples.
Procedure 3.10. Changing the Cursor Behavior
If you want to deactivate the bouncing cursor that shows when starting an application from the graphical user interface, proceed as follows:
Open the Personal Settings and select
+ .From the drop-down list, select another option for
.Click
to apply the changes and close the configuration dialog.You can set a number of mouse options in the Personal Settings, from cursor themes to acceleration and double-click intervals. You can also change the default Linux behavior (use single mouse-click to open files or folders) to a double-click option (like in Microsoft Windows).
Procedure 3.11. Adjusting the Mouse Settings
Open the Personal Settings and click
+ .To switch to double-clicks to open files and folders, select the corresponding option on the
tab.To change the mouse pointer appearance, switch to the
tab and select a different cursor theme.To change the default values of double-click intervals or the distance that the pointer moves over the screen on movement of the mouse, adjust the settings on the
tab.Click
to apply the changes and close the configuration dialog.KDE comes with a set of predefined keyboard shortcuts. You can easily create more keyboard shortcuts or change existing shortcuts, especially if they should conflict with other application-specific shortcuts. KDE also allows you to store more than one scheme of shortcuts.
Procedure 3.12. Modifying KDE Keyboard Shortcuts
Open the Personal Settings and click
+ .To switch from the default scheme to a Windows or Mac based scheme, for example, click
and select a different scheme.Browse through the list of non-application-specific KDE shortcuts on the
tab. To filter for certain keywords, enter a search string in the search field above.For shortcuts for switching between different desktops or windows see the
tab.To view or change application-specific shorts, select the
tab.To change or add a shortcut, select an action in the list and click
. A new dialog opens.To enter a shortcut, just press the desired key or key combination. If this shortcut cannot be accepted or in case of conflict with another existing shortcut, a notification shows. If your input was successful, the new or modified shortcut appears in the list.
To save the altered settings, click
. To reset all shortcuts to the default values, click then .When you click a link to a Web page, KDE opens the Konqueror Web browser by default, when you click an e-mail address, KMail starts.
Procedure 3.13. Changing the Default Web or E-Mail Application
To change this behavior and set your preferred Web browser or e-mail client as default, open the Personal Settings and click
+ .To change the Web browser:
In the list of components, select
.Select
and click the browse button beneath.A dialog opens, showing the main menu structure. Select the Web browser to set as default and click
. The component chooser now shows the selected application in the display field.To change the e-mail client:
In the list of components, select
.Select
and click the browse button.A dialog showing the main menu structure opens. Select the e-mail client to set as default and click
. The component chooser now shows the selected application in the display field.If desired, change other default applications for KDE, like the application for the terminal window or the instant messenger client.
When all options are set according to your wishes, click
.Similar to setting the default Web browser or e-mail application, you can change file associations in KDE. File associations determine which application should be used to open a file, for example, if you want to start a file from Konqueror.
Open the Personal Settings and click
+ .To search for an extension, enter the extension in png in .
. Only file types with a matching file pattern appear in the list. For example, to modify the application for *.png files, enterIn the
list, click the file type to open the setting dialog for this file type. You can change the icon, the filename patterns, description, and the order of the applications.If your tool is not listed, click
in then enter the command.To change the order of the list entries, click the program to move then give it a higher or lower priority by clicking
or . The application listed at the top is used by default when you click a file of this type.If you need a file type that is not listed in the
list, click to open a dialog where you can select a group and enter a type name. The group determines the main type, for example, audio, image, text, or video. Your file type can usually be assigned to one of these.Click
then determine the extensions of the filename.Specify a description in the text field and select which application to use.
When all options are set according to your wishes, click
.