2002-09-22
3.1

# &konqueror; Basics

Like all &kde; applications, &konqueror; is highly configurable. This document describes how &konqueror; behaves with the normal, default, settings.

A three button mouse can be useful when you are running &konqueror; or any other &kde; application. If your mouse only has two buttons then you should be able to set your system up so that you can simulate a &MMB; by pressing both buttons at the same time.

If you are used to having to double-click to perform an action, then take care, because in common with the rest of &kde;, &konqueror; defaults to single-clicking.

## Starting &konqueror;

Being a combined File Manager and Browser, &konqueror; will automatically switch between the two modes as needed when it is running, but it is convenient to be able to choose which mode is to be used when you start it up.

- If you have a house shaped icon on the panel or desktop, then left click on it to open &konqueror; as a file manager.

- Or left click on world shaped icon on the panel or desktop to open &konqueror; in browser mode.

- From the K menu, select Internet Konqueror Web Browser to start it as a browser, or Home to launch &konqueror; in file manager mode.

- &Alt;F2 will open a Run Command dialog box, type ``konqueror`` (lower case) and press Enter or the Run button to start in file manager mode, or just enter a URL such as `http://www.konqueror.org` to start &konqueror; as a browser.

&konqueror; is also started automatically when you left click on a desktop icon that represents a directory, such as a hard disk drive or the Trash icon.

## The Parts of &konqueror;

A brief look at the main parts of &konqueror;'s window:

Here's a screenshot of &konqueror;

The Titlebar is the strip across the top of &konqueror;'s window, and operates in the same way as for other &kde; applications. Right click on the central portion to bring up the neat Titlebar menu.

The Menubar is the strip containing the names of the drop-down menus, left click on a name to alternately show and hide that menu, or you can use &Alt;the underlined letter in the name as a hot key, for example &Alt;E to show the Edit menu. The various menus are described in the Menubar section of this document.

The Toolbar contains icons for commonly used operations. Left clicking on an icon will activate it. If you have enabled tooltips in the Control Center Look & Feel Style Miscellaneous dialog a brief description of what that icon does will appear when you hover the pointer over it.

Some icons, for example the Up and Back icons in the previous screenshot, have a small black triangle at their bottom right corner. If you hold the &LMB; pressed while the cursor is over this type of icon a small dropdown menu will appear.

Right clicking on the Toolbar will bring up the Toolbar Menu which you can use to change the Toolbar 's appearance and position.

The Location Toolbar shows the path to the directory, URL or file being viewed. You can type a path or URL here and press Enter or left click on the Go icon at the right hand end of the Location Toolbar to go to it. The black icon at the left hand end of the Location Toolbar clears the text entry box.

The Bookmark Toolbar is the area under the Location Toolbar in the previous screenshot. You can add frequently used bookmarks here, see the Organising Your Bookmarks section of this document.

The Window is the main area of &konqueror; and can show you the contents of a directory, a web page, document or image. Using the Window menu you can split &konqueror;'s main window into one or more separate views, useful for drag and drop operations, or set it to contain two or more tabbed views.

The Status Bar runs across the bottom of the &konqueror;'s window and often shows general information about whatever the mouse pointer is hovering over. If you have split the main window into a number of views you will get an Status Bar for each view, and it will include a small green light at the left hand end to show which is the active view. Right clicking on the Status Bar brings up the Status Bar Right Mouse Button Menu.

Don't worry if your &konqueror; doesn't look exactly like this screenshot, it is highly configurable. In particular:

- You can use the Settings menu to choose whether to show or hide the Menubar, Main Toolbar, Location Toolbar and Bookmark Toolbar, or even to add an Extra Toolbar.

- You can also flatten the toolbars by left clicking on the vertical lines at the left hand end of the bars, or move them around by holding the &LMB; down while you drag these bars around.

- This screenshot does not show the optional Navigation Panel.

For more details of how to change &konqueror;'s appearance, see the Configuring &konqueror; section

## Tooltips and What's This ?

You can find out a lot about how &konqueror; works without needing to read this entire document if you take advantage of Tooltips and the What's This? feature.

If Tooltips have been enabled in &kde; (K menu Control Center Look & Feel Style, Miscellaneous dialog) then when you hover the mouse pointer over a Toolbar or Navigation Panel button it should bring up a terse description of what that button does.

What's This? is invoked by the Menubar Help What's This ? item, by &Shift;F1, or by just &LMB; clicking on the question mark near the top right hand corner of &konqueror;'s window. It changes the cursor to show a question mark alongside the arrow.

When this question mark is visible, a &LMB; click won't actually do anything until you have clicked on a control (or the text alongside it) that supports What's This ?, in which case it will display a reasonably comprehensive description of what the control is supposed to do. Most of the dialog boxes that &konqueror; brings up support the What's This? feature.

## Left and Middle Mouse Button Actions

If you click the &LMB; on an item in &konqueror;'s window that item will be activated. Thus

- Left click on an icon in the Toolbar to do whatever that icon is supposed to do.

- Left click on an item in the Menubar to make that menu drop down.

- Left click on a menu item to do that thing.

- Left click on an icon in the Bookmark Toolbar to open that URL.

- Left click on a link in a web page to make &konqueror; follow that link.

- Left click on a directory icon or name and &konqueror; will descend into (show the contents of) that directory.

- Left click on a file name or icon and &konqueror; will do whatever it thinks appropriate, based on the file type. In general this means opening HTML pages, or previewing text, image or KOffice files, showing them within &konqueror;'s window (Preview means that you can see the file but not change it).

  &konqueror; decides what the file type is by matching the filename extension against a list of known types. If that fails it tries to guess the type from the file contents. You can change the list of known file types and associated actions with the File Associations page of the Settings Configure Konqueror... dialog.

Clicking the &MMB; on a file or directory name or icon does essentially the same as left clicking except that it usually does it in a new &konqueror; window, unless the Open links in new tab instead of in new window box has been checked in the Behavior page of the Settings Configure Konqueror... dialog.

Holding the &Shift; key down while pressing the &MMB; will open the link in the background.

If you click the &MMB; when the mouse cursor is over a blank part of the main view (not over a link or file name or icon) &konqueror; will copy the contents of the clipboard into the Location Toolbar and try to use that as a &URL;.

## Right Mouse Button Menus

Clicking the &RMB; on almost any part of &konqueror;'s window will bring up an appropriate context menu.

If you have enabled the Right click goes back in history option in &konqueror;'s configuration settings a simple right click is equivalent to clicking on the Back button. In this case you can access the context menu by moving the mouse with the right button held down.

On the Titlebar

  Right clicking on any free area of the Titlebar brings up the Titlebar Menu, allowing you to control the position of &konqueror;'s window as well as the decoration applied to all &kde; program windows.

On the Main Toolbar

  Right click on any free area of the Toolbar to bring up the Toolbar Menu. You can use it to control whether the Toolbar is at the top, bottom, left or right of &konqueror;'s window. You can also use the Toolbar Menu to set the size of the buttons on the Toolbar, and whether they are shown as icons, text or both.

On the Location Toolbar

  Right click in the URL entry box area to perform Cut, Copy, Paste or Clear operations in this area, or to change the automatic Text Completion features.

On the Bookmark Toolbar

  If you have the Bookmark Toolbar showing, then right click on any free part of it to bring up the Bookmark Toolbar Menu which lets you change its position and whether items are shown as text, icons, or both.

Within a View

  If you right click on any free area of a view then you will get a menu that contains, among other options, the Up, Back, Forward and Reload navigation commands as well as the Create new option from the Edit menu.

On a File or Directory

  This is a most useful feature. Right clicking on the name or icon of any file or directory not only selects that item but also brings up a menu allowing you to Cut, Move, Copy or Remove the item in various ways, add it to your Bookmarks, open it with the program of your choice or preview it, rename it, or edit the file type or properties.

On the Status Bar

  Right click on the Status Bar at the bottom of a window or view to add or remove a view within &konqueror;'s window.

## Viewing Help, Man and Info Pages

You can view &kde; Help and &UNIX; Man and Info pages directly in &konqueror;, without having to start up KHelpCenter.

To view a &kde; Help page, enter `help:/<application name>` (for example `help:/kmail`) into &konqueror;'s Location Toolbar window.

If you want to read &UNIX; Man pages &konqueror; makes it easy, for example type `man:/touch` or `#touch` into the Location Toolbar to see the page for the touch command.

To browse through &UNIX; Info pages, entering `info:/dir` takes you to Info's top level directory then it's just a matter of clicking on the right links to find the page you want.

Unfortunately, &kde; Help pages are stored in such a way that they can not be viewed in other browsers. If you really need to do this your only recourse is to go online and visit http://docs.kde.org.