KTrayer: modification of kicker to save space.

1/2. Idea

I came up with a thing for desktops.
For maniacs like me who fight for every pixel.
Generally. The standard application bar, it’s the taskbar, it’s the kicker, it’s evil, because it takes up space on the screen. Moreover, most of this place is undeservedly occupied.
There are dockers a la macos, but they also take up space, which is a shame.
In general, the concept is designed for intransigence in the struggle to clean the desktop, and also assumes that the user spends most of his time working with maximized applications, i.e. deployed in full screen.
The concept looks like this:


The idea is that on the screen, when even the application is maximized, there is always a non-working zone - this is the right half of the title bar of the window, approximately between its middle and the window control buttons (minimize-maximize-close).
Here you can stick something that will be displayed on top of the window, without any damage to health. (As a rule, there is a window title on the left half of this strip, plus approximately in the center I double-click when I want to maximize the window, etc.).
I suggest sticking there a narrow - the width of the window title itself - strip on which would be located the clock, tray, and icons of open windows, the size of the tray icon, without headers (i.e., like in makos dockers) and actually behave this strip is just like a docker - i.e. with the fisheye effect, bouncing on louvered windows, etc.
In my opinion, it would be very convenient.

Why not just turn on the auto-hide panel? Because I always need a watch, several tray icons, for example, the current language and the Gaim icon, plus applications are not highlighted for good reason - this information is also needed and relevant right away, and not during the next check “if something appeared” ?

2/2. Implementation

I expressed this idea in LJ and on a pair of IRC channels. On FreeNode # kde they suggested how this can be achieved with existing tools. Here is an easily achievable result: The steps by which the result is reproduced in the current KDE: I. Panel customization. 1. In the panel settings ("Configure - KDE Panel" / Arrangement), select: - size - tiny; - lenth - 1%; - check “Expand as required to fit contents” - position - top-center. 2. In “Configure - KDE Panel” / Hiding, select “Allow other windows to cover the panel”.











3. [You can also optionally adjust the background of the panel in Appeareance configure appeareance. In my screenshot, I selected “enable background image” with the default panel background from SUSE 10.2 and highlighted “Colorize to match the desktop color scheme”].

II. Configure KDE.
In "KControl", it is also "Configure Desktop", go to Desktop - Window-specific settings, select "new" ...
1. click on "Detect", point to the kicker panel.
2. Go to Preferences, select "keep above" - ​​"force" checked.

... and it turns out what happens :)