KDE - How to reduce panel icon size?

[sling-shot]

I want to reduce the size of icons displayed on the bottom panel to optimize the space. I have tried Icon size setting for panel in Customize Desktop (System Settings) but it does not seem to change the size of those icons.

Reducing the height of bottom panel by customizing reduces the icon size but it looks odd for me.

[JohnW_57]

I want to reduce the size of icons displayed on the bottom panel to optimize the space. I have tried Icon size setting for panel in Customize Desktop (System Settings) but it does not seem to change the size of those icons.

Reducing the height of bottom panel by customizing reduces the icon size but it looks odd for me.

When you change the size of the panel also the icon size gonna be changed.
There's no option to change this.

Seems Plasma doesn't allow this (since KDE 4.0).

JohnW

[sling-shot]

Check out this current desktop carefully. Compare the size of Dolphin icon in left corner of bottom panel and the adjacent Smooth Tasks area. I am aiming for the size to be as small as the Smooth Tasks size.



What is the role of panel icon size in KDE System Settings then?

[JohnW_57]

http://ivan.fomentgroup.org/blog/2010/05/28/panel-icon-sizes-in-kdesc-4-5/

Panel icon sizes in KDE SC 4.5

There were a lot of complaints when we decided to limit the size of icons placed on panels in plasma to 32×32 pixels.

The reasoning behind limiting the size were requests from users who use vertical panels – vertical panels are usually made wider then standard panels, and icons would grow to 300×300 pixels taking up most of the space on the panel.

Putting a maximum size for icons was a good decision generally, but the bad side of it was that the new size was hard-coded. There was an option in the system settings to change sizes of icons, but setting the size for panel icons was disabled.

Now, thanks to a patch by Mike Kasick, this option is enabled and it works. Mike is one of the best types of users – although he isn’t a Plasma contributor (as far as I know – no SVN account) he sent us a patch, and responded to all of our suggestions with revised versions.

In the end, Aaron and myself adapted the proposed patch a bit to better fit the rest of Plasma, and it entered the SVN so it is on its way to KDE SC 4.5.

In KDE SC 4.5, the option is located in System Settings -> Application Appearance -> Icons -> Advanced -> Panel

JohnW

[Just17]

Check out this current desktop carefully. Compare the size of Dolphin icon in left corner of bottom panel and the adjacent Smooth Tasks area. I am aiming for the size to be as small as the Smooth Tasks size.



What is the role of panel icon size in KDE System Settings then?

No full sized image available?

[sling-shot]

In KDE SC 4.5, the option is located in System Settings -> Application Appearance -> Icons -> Advanced -> Panel

The problem with almost all the posts I have read about this topic is that most of the posters are concerned about being able to increase the size of icons, unlike me who wants to reduce the icon size.

In my desktop 17" CRT monitor, 60 % of the bottom panel is taken up by PC icon, Shortcuts, Virtual Desktop Switcher, System Tray and Clock leaving only about 40 % for Smooth Tasks. And I can live with icons half of the present size liberating a lot of real estate.
The screenshots posted are from my laptop which has a 1366x768 widescreen aspect ratio and even there I would like more room for Smooth Tasks. ( I do not use Virtual Desktops because for me "Out of sight is out of mind")

The suggested System Settings option has no effect whatsoever in my installations as I have written in my first post above.

[sling-shot]

No full sized image available?

Being forced to fiddle with proxies to access forum and being sleepy while doing so must have caused that. I have corrected it now

[Just17]

Reducing the height of bottom panel by customizing reduces the icon size but it looks odd for me.

What oddity are you trying to avoid?

Reducing the height is what I have been doing here to facilitate all the app launchers I add to the panel.

In addition I create a second panel which can auto hide and put the Smooth Tasks widget in that panel, giving me nearly the full width of the bottom panel for launchers.

[Bald Brick]

Have you considered adding the Quicklaunch widget to the panel? Having the launchers in two (or more) rows in Quicklaunch reduces the space taken up by the icons considerably (but looks too cluttered for me). Even having them in just one row saves you some space: the icons will usually be slightly smaller than the icons you add directly to the panel, albeit larger than the systray icons.

[sling-shot]

What oddity are you trying to avoid?

Reducing the height is what I have been doing here to facilitate all the app launchers I add to the panel.

In addition I create a second panel which can auto hide and put the Smooth Tasks widget in that panel, giving me nearly the full width of the bottom panel for launchers.

Thank God I have pretty good eye sight at present. Big icons wasting screen space annoy me.
In the current set-up the PC icon, Show Desktop icon and Dolphin icon almost take up the entire vertical space of panel with insufficient padding. (On careful observation PC and Dolphin icons are disproportionate compared to Show Desktop)
I like to have both date and time displayed one above the other in the Date Time widget as it is. Lowering of panel height causes them to show horizontally increasing the space they occupy.

I have tried auto-hiding panels before and they irritate due to 2 reasons.
1 - I do not get to see their content without mouse over.
2. An accidental mouse over causes their appearance.

I will attach a picture of my ideal looking bottom panel. (It will be from my Windows XP and using Classic theme. So no transparency although I love transparency in PCLinuxOS.)

[sling-shot]

Have you considered adding the Quicklaunch widget to the panel? Having the launchers in two (or more) rows in Quicklaunch reduces the space taken up by the icons considerably (but looks too cluttered for me). Even having them in just one row saves you some space: the icons will usually be slightly smaller than the icons you add directly to the panel, albeit larger than the systray icons.

This probably is one more step towards what I am looking for. Thank you. Is it what is there in Fully Monty? Or that initial desktop look pinoc favoured?

[sling-shot]

This is my present Windows bottom panel.
- Space below the Start button is wasted unfortunately.
- Double decker Quick Lauch.
- Double row task pane.
- System tray partially hidden reducing space use.
- Time and day (I would have preferred Date)
- All icons are small. May be around 20x20.
- Padding is almost nil. May be 1 pix?

[Just17]

Add Quicklaunch widget to your panel 

[Bald Brick]

This is my present Windows bottom panel.
- Space below the Start button is wasted unfortunately.
- Double decker Quick Lauch.
- Double row task pane.
- System tray partially hidden reducing space use.
- Time and day (I would have preferred Date)
- All icons are small. May be around 20x20.
- Padding is almost nil. May be 1 pix?

Excellent! But why do you use a Windows start-button. Naughty naughty! (Unless it's your way of commenting on the improvements in Windows 8 ...) But I think a normal PCLinuxOS launcher button wouldn't squander  as much space.

[Archie]

This info may not have any relevance to this thread but I have already reported the config option on SystemSettings > Common
> Appearance and Behavior > Application Appearance > Icons > Advanced > Panel ... which had been broken throughout the 4.x.x SC. One of the KDE devs suggested that the config option be killed.