To start configure the behavior of all of your
Panels, select
Panel->Global
Preferences from the Main Menu.
This will open the Global Panel
Preferences dialog. (This dialog is a
component of the GNOME Control
Center). With this dialog you can control many
properties shared by all of your Panels.
Figure 19. The Global Panel Configuration Dialog
The Global Panel Configuration dialog
contains the following five tabs:
Animation, Buttons,
Panel Objects, Menu, and
Miscellaneous. Each of these tabs is
explained below.
Enable animations — This allows
Panels and drawers to animate as the
hide and unhide.
Constant speed animations — By
default, the animations start slowly, but then accelerate. If
you enable this option, the animations will not use any
acceleration.
[Animation speed] Auto hide — This
controls the speed of animation for any
Panel which is set to hide automatically
when the mouse leaves the Panel. The
slowest setting is 1, and the fastest is 100.
[Animation speed] Explicit hide — This
controls the hide speed when you press a Panel's
Hide Button. The slowest setting is 1,
and the fastest is 100.
[Animation speed] Drawer sliding —
This controls how fast a drawer menu will raise when you
press a drawer button on a Panel. The
slowest setting is 1, and the fastest is 100.
[Auto hide] Delay (ms) — If you have
a Panel set to minimize automatically
after the mouse leaves the Panel
this will allow you to control how much time passes before it
minimizes. The Panel
will start the time count once the mouse is no longer over
it. It will appear again when the mouse is passed over the
portion of the Panel that remains
visible. This time is measured in milliseconds.
[Auto hide] Size (pixels) —
This determines the number of pixels that show when a
Panel is minimized, for any
Panel which is set to hide automatically.
To maximize the Panel, the pointer must
enter the Panel area.
In this section, you can set the
appearance of the various types of buttons: launcher buttons, menu
buttons, drawer buttons, and special buttons(such as the Logout Button and the Lock Button).
Button Type — Select the type of
button you wish to configure.
Tiles enabled — This checkbox will
enable background tiles for buttons of the given type on the
Panel.
Normal tile — This shows the image
used for the tile in the up position (inactive, not
pressed). To choose another image file, just click on the
image, and it will launch the icon browser. Tiles must be
enabled to access this option.
Clicked tile — This shows the image
used for the tile in the down position (active, pressed). To
choose another image file, just press on the image, and it will
launch the icon browser. Tiles must be enabled to access this
option.
Border width (tile only) — This
determines the width of the border around an icon. For example,
if you set border width equal to 5, this will ensure that at
least 5 pixels of the tile will be shown on every side of the
icon; if necessary, the icon will be cropped. This is very
useful if you have an icon that would normally cover up a tile.
Tiles must be enabled to access this option.
Depth (displacement when pressed) —
This determines the depth an icon will displace when
pressed. Tiles must be enabled to access this option.
This tab also contains 3 options which affect all types
of buttons simultaneously:
Make buttons flush with panel edge
— This allows you to align the button with
the edge of the Panel. If this
option is not set then the border width setting is obeyed.
By default this option is off.
Show button tiles only when cursor is over
the button — If this option is enabled, the
tiles will only appear when mouse cursor is over the button.
Prelight buttons on mouseover
— Choosing this option will make the buttons
brighten up when the mouse cursor is over them.
This tab shows some options related to the placement and moving
of objects on the Panel.
Default movement mode — Here
you can choose the default mode for moving objects on
the Panel. Possible variants are
Switched —
When the object you are moving hits another object,
they switch places.
Free — When
the object you are moving hits another object, it
"jumps" over it, so no other object is disturbed.
This is a convenient option if you like the
current arrangement of objects on your
Panel and want to leave the
other objects in place.
Push — The object you are
moving pushes all other objects in front of it, like
a snow plow.
You can override the default movement mode by dragging
an object while holding Ctrl (for
switched movement), Alt (for free
movement), or Shift (for push movement)
button pressed.
Padding — This changes
the amount of space (padding) between objects on the
Panel. It is measured in pixels.
In this tab, you can set the options determining the
appearance of Panel menus.
Use large icons — This will use
large icons (rather than the default size) in menus. This is only
practical for those with high resolution screens (1280x1024 and
higher).
Show [...] buttons — This will add
small buttons labelled by three dots (...) to all the items of
the Main Menu. Clicking on such a button
with the left mouse button will bring the
pop-up menu for this item, i.e. the same
menu which you get by clicking on the menu item with the right
mouse button.
Show popup menus outside of panels —
When this button is on, it allows pop-up menus to appear away
from the Panel. When toggled off, the
pop-ups will appear over the Panel. This
can be useful on smaller screens or cluttered desktops.
Keep menus in memory — This will
keep your menus in memory so that they do not rescan for added
items. This can increase the speed of GNOME, but may also
result in you missing new items added to your menu.
Global menu — This
allows you to configure the Global Menu
which you get by right-clicking on a
Panel, or by using
the keyboard shortcut. For each of the possible submenus
(Programs,
Favorites, etc.), you can choose
whether it should be included as a part of the Global
Menu, as a submenu, or not included at all. A
description of these submenus is given in the section called Components of the Main Menu.
The Miscellaneous tab contains options for various
customizable behavior that didn't fit anywhere else.
Tooltips enabled — This option
defines whether GNOME should show a tooltip when the
pointer pauses on a Panel item.
Close drawer if a launcher inside it is
pressed — By default drawers will remain open
when you select an item within one. This can be annoying as the
drawer will remain open until you close it with a mouse
click. With this option selected drawers will close
automatically when you select any item within one.
Raise panels on mouse-over — If you
are using a window manager that is not GNOME compliant it will
not understand its relationship with the
Panel. This can cause
your Panel to be covered by
applications. If you enable this feature you can have the
Panel automatically raise when your
mouse is over it.
Keep panel below windows — If you
are using a GNOME compliant window manager, the window manager
will understand its relationship with the
Panel. If you choose
this feature the window manager and GNOME will allow
applications to appear over the
Panel. This can be useful on
smaller screens.
Confirm removal of panels with a
dialog — If this option is enabled,
GNOME will ask for confirmation before removing a
Panel.
This tab also allows you to configure some global key
bindings. You can define key bindings for the Global Menu(ie.
Popup Menu) and
for the Run
Program dialog. (The default key bindings for
these are
Alt+F1
and
Alt+F2
respectively.) To
change these key bindings, select a key from the drop-down list
or press the Grab key… button and then
press the desired key.
Using the Menu and Window keys
You should be able to use the special Menu
and Windows keys for keybindings. If you
have problems with using these keys, the most probable reason
is that your X server was incorrectly configured: the
keyboard type chosen during installation does not match
your actual keyboard. If you are using
XFree86 server, you can fix it by
manually editing the configuration file. This file, named
XF86Config, is usually located in
the /etc or /etc/X11
directory. Open this file with any text editor (not a
word-processor!) and find the line containing the word
XkbModel. Change it to read
XkbModel "pc104"
You must be root (system administrator) to do this. Now,
logout of GNOME and restart the X server by simultaneously
pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.
Use Caution When Editing XF86Config
Making a mistake while editing the XF86Config
file can make your keyboard or screen unusable in X
Windows. Before editing this file, you should make a backup copy of
it and make sure you know how to restore it from the backup file
without using X Windows or GNOME, i.e., from a terminal. If
you don't know how to do this, then do not edit this file.