KDE Plasma 6 to Ship with Floating Panel by Default

[jlittle]

Ah, that might work with large icons but I'm old fashioned and have Dolphin set to show details with minimum size icons meaning there is no place for a plus

As Claydoh points out, it's there. As a small grey white background icon, it's not very visible against small monochrome white background icons. (It's one of the reasons I much dislike the Breeze Ipad-like icons.)

[claydoh]

Old fashioned works too, if you have your bifocals on.



Essentially, click on the name to open, click on the icon to select.

[claydoh]

I get frustrated the other way. I have been a single-clicker since my first home computer, with Win 95. It was one of the first things I ever changed to customize my settings.
Using Windows for work, I keep forgetting to double-click lol.

[jlittle]

Since I was in this thread in June, I thought I'd chime in.

I switched to single click to open, and after mostly getting used to it I agree it's better. But I still open files unintentionally; several decades of habit are hard to dislodge. (I think I learned single click to select using the original Macs.)

Just click behind the name

It's actually the "plus in circle" symbol that appears in the top left of the thumbnail. (It only appears if "Show selection marker" is checked.) If one is zoomed out all the way (the zoom slider all the way to the left), the symbol takes up almost all the thumbnail. But, after zooming in, the thumbnail gets larger and the symbol doesn't, and it is at the top left. If you miss it, a click on the thumbnail works just like a click on the file name.

A middle-click on files (that are not archives) also can be used to select them. But a middle-click opens directories and archive files in a new tab; I wish I could turn that off.

[Beerislife]

Single clicking to select and double clicking to open has always been normal for me! So was dragging a file to the printer icon to print it or dragging a file to the shredder icon to delete it!

[claydoh]

A new on on me, too. I usually drag to select, or shift/ctrl-click. On folders where I have large previews, I just use the that "+" sigh overlay button.

[oshunluvr]

I did not, and it's pretty cool!

[jlittle]

I asked:

So, how do you select a file, not and not open it?

oshunluvr replied with 3 suggestions, but did not mention dolphin selection mode!

Press the space bar to enter this mode.

I had no idea one could do that, and I suspect many other dolphin users don't know about it.

[jlittle]

Trawling through old posts via google, I found a post on stack exchange which had a method to turn off single click, by editing ~/.config/kdeglobals to have

...
[KDE]
...
SingleClick=false
...

I've added SingleClick=true, and it now works. It's a good idea to have dolphin's "Show selection marker" checked; I'd turned that off trying to get single click to work.

[claydoh]

No, it is the only place to set this that I am aware of. It is the setting I now have to change on every new install.

[jlittle]

Influenced by the discussion about single click to open here, I thought I'd give it another go. I've gone to system settings, workspace behaviour, general behaviour, and checked "Clicking files or folders: Opens them".

To no effect, the setting is ignored, even after a reboot. Is there something else I need to change, or reset?

[GreyGeek]

I pretty much run KDE in Vanilla, except I switch the desktop layout from the default "Folder View" to "Desktop", and slap on my favorite wall paper.
When I was much younger and not so lazy, and had more vim and vigor, I used Conky, dynamic weather apps, active screens and indicators showing ram usage, cpu percentages, email and msg interrupts, and several other status indicators. Doing a fresh install and setting that stuff back up took days to get it right. As time progressed I began dropping things off my desktop and panel. Now, my desktop is clean. Psensor was the 2nd to last gadget to leave my toolbar a month ago. KDEconnect remains. On the left side of my panel is the menu icon, System monitor, settings, kcalc, dolphin, konsole, thunderbird, kate and Firefox. On the right side is the clipboard, the volume control, battery charge indicator, wifi icon, printer queue, the time and date, and the minimize all windows icon. After a fresh install, which isn't often, it usually takes me an additional 30 or so minutes to delete the apps I don't use, install those I want and set up my desktop.

[claydoh]

Ok, I can concede that double-click has its place. Namely on a virtual Windows workstation instance (citrix) over the internet. The latency is something awful. Or just awful enough.

Or do I need triple- quad-click, lol!

[claydoh]

I am going to guess that I usually know what I want to do before I touch a file or directory, so I am having a hard time playing around to see when I need to select just one file.
I right-click on it, to perform actions. Shift-click/ctrl-click, if I am feeling 1337. Or left-click-drag to move it. There is the "+" marker on the top left corner of files, to single-click select. This is probably mainly how I do it.
Left-click-drag to select multiple items, and use that "+" button to de-select.

[oshunluvr]

So, how do you select a file, not and not open it?

In Dolphin:

1. Hovering over the filename then clicking on the plus sign that appears.
2. Dragging the mouse cursor over the file icon.
3. Click and hold the filename, then move the mouse cursor a bit.