&Pamela.Roberts;
2010-02-08
4.4.0

# &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.

You can read more about mouse usage in

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.

- From the application launcher menu, select Internet Konqueror (Web Browser) to start it as a browser.

- &Alt;F2 will open &krunner;, enter a path to a folder and press &Enter; to start in file manager mode, or just enter a &URL; such as `http://www.konqueror.org` to start &konqueror; as a browser.

Click on the black arrow right to the Home Page icon to switch to your Home Folder in the file manager mode and vice versa.

If &konqueror; is the default file manager it also starts automatically when you left click on a desktop icon that represents a folder, 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 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 &systemsettings; Appearance Windows, Buttons tab 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 arrow at the right. 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 right 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 Organizing Your Bookmarks section of this document.

The Window is the main area of &konqueror; and can show you the contents of a directory, 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 drag the toolbars by left clicking on the handle at the left hand end of the bars and move them around by holding the &LMB; down while you drag these bars around.

- This screenshot does not show the optional Sidebar.

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; ( in &systemsettings; Appearance Windows, Buttons tab) then when you hover the mouse pointer over a Toolbar or Sidebar tab 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, it 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 folder icon or name and &konqueror; will descend into (show the contents of) that folder.

- 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 folder 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 General page of the Settings Configure Konqueror... dialog. &konqueror; can open links on pages and Bookmarks, as well as the Home, Up, Back and Forward entries in a new tab or window.

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

## 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.

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.

On a File or Folder

  This is a most useful feature. Right clicking on the name or icon of any file or folder not only selects that item but also brings up a menu allowing you to Cut, Move, Copy or Remove the item in various ways, 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` to view the &kmail; documentation.) 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. Alternatively, use `info:/command name` to go straight to the Info page you want.

Unfortunately, &kde; Help pages are stored in such a way that they cannot 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.