Linux Desktop Hacks

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Chapter 5, KDE Desktop

#42 Give Depth to Your KDE Windows

HACK

HACK

#42

Give Depth to Your KDE Windows Hack #42

Create a 3D effect with drop shadows for all open KDE Windows.

You can give your application windows and other on-screen elements (such

as menus and dialog boxes) a really nice 3D effect if you add drop shadows

to them. The active window seems to pop right out at you, and you don’t

even need geeky cardboard and plastic glasses for this trick to work.

Although it is also possible to create drop shadows if you use the xcompmgr

utility with Xorg-X11 6.8.0 or higher instead of XFree86

[Hack #33], xcompmgr

is still a work in progress. The xcompmgr program crashes a lot, and some-

times it takes down the window manager with it.

The only real disadvantage to this hack is that it is most useful on fast

machines, especially if you have an accelerated X driver for your video card.

But apart from speed and convenience, these patches have the distinct

advantage of saving you time restarting after a window manager crash

caused by xcompmgr.

These instructions assume you are using KDE 3.3.1; you can combine these

instructions with the KDE improvements in “Make KDE Even Easier to

Use”

[Hack #41].

As I write this, KDE 3.3.2, a bug-fix release for KDE, is being

launched. The patches described here do not apply cleanly to

KDE 3.3.2, although if you are an experienced programmer,

you might be able to fix the areas ...