FAQ for Plasma Active / Contour Novice Users

Setting up Activities

How do I create a new activity?

Pull the activity wheel out from the right
Tap on the + Icon above the wheel to open the "Create Activity dialog"
Enter a name for the activity
Choose a wallpaper
Tap "Create activity"

How do I delete an activity?

Pull out the activity wheel
Scroll to the activity you want to delete (you cannot delete the currently active activity)
Tap the trash can icon on the activity's thumbnail

How do I edit an activity (name and background)?

Tap the wrench icon on the top-left corner of the home screen.

How do I add resources to an activity?

There are two different methods for connecting a resource to an activity.

Via #Share/Like/Connect
Via the "Add resource" dialog

To add a resource to the current activity via the "Add resource" dialog, do the following:

Tap the + Icon to the upper-left of the home screen
Choose a resource category or start typing the name of the resource
Select the desired resource(s) and tap "Add items"

I've just copied/downloaded a new file to my home folder, but it doesn't show up in the add resource dialog. Where is it?

The Add Resource dialog is based on Nepomuk, so it only shows resources that are already present in Nepomuk's database. If your file does not show up in the dialog, wait a few minutes until it has been indexed. In Plasma Active One, the indexer is suspended while on battery, so in order to get it running, plug your device in.

How do I remove a resource from an activity?

Tap and hold the resource icon on the home screen until a context menu pops up
Tap "Activies"
Tap "Current activity".

Remember: This does not delete the file but only disconnect it from the activity.

Share/Like/Connect

What are those three buttons on the right of the panel for?

These are "Share / Like / Connect" (SLC). They provide a unified interface for any Active application allowing you to do things with the currently selected resource (web page, picture, etc.).

For example, "Share" allows you to send an image to a friend or in the future to upload it to flickr etc., "Like" does things like bookmark a website or rate an image, "Connect" allows you to connect a resource to an activity but could connect it to other things as well. What exactly the three buttons do depends on the application and resource type.

The SLC buttons are all greyed out. Why?

This means that SLC is not available in your current context. This happens either on the home screen if nothing is selected or if you are in an application that does not support SLC (yet). As more and more applications receive an Active version, they will implement SLC as well.

How do I add a currently opened resource (Web page, Picture etc.) to an activity?

Just tap the "connect" button (it's the second one from the right, with the checkmark on it), tap "Activities" and then choose an activity to connect to.

Starting and using applications

How do I start an application?

There are two ways to start an application:

From an activity
From the launch area

To start an application from an activity, you have to first Add it to the activity. After that, you can start it by tapping it on the home screen

To start an application from the launch area

Pull the peak all the way down
Tap the application (you can also use the filter box to filter the available apps)

How do I use Kontact Touch?

You can find a manual on KDE UserBase

Where are the Browser's settings?

Since Plasma Active 2, there is a Settings application. Start it from the applicaton launcher and tap Web and Browser on the left hand navigaton. On this screen you will find settings for the browser. Do not look for an apply button, changes apply automatically.

Virtual Keyboard

The virtual keyboard covers something I want to refer to while typing. How do I get it out of the way?

The virtual keyboad can be placed on top or at the bottom. You can archive this by tapping the triangular button on the right edge of the keyboard to move it up.

If this does not work you can just tap on the cross and make moving the keyboard away. If you tap on a textfield again the virtual keyboard appears again. This can be usefull when using the search for widgets or pictures.

Using Netbooks or Virtual Machine

How do I get a Mouse Cursor?

The mouse cursor is still there but invisible or disabled.

First you need to start a terminal program.

Press ctrl+alt+F1 on a netbook or alt+F1 on a virtual machine. Use Meta+F1 in VirtualBox instead, Meta is the right Ctrl button.
If you are able to catch it, you can also launch the Konsole application.
By entering the following commands the invisible mouse cursor theme will be removed.
You have to become super user, please see the release notes for the default passwords.

  user@device# su

Remove the invisible mouse theme

  root@device# rpm -e plasma-mobile-mouse

Remove the -nocursor option from /etc/sysconfig/uxlaunch using a text editor (vim is included in the image).

The mouse cursor will appear after reboot

  root@device# reboot

If you are using an Netbook and you like to try out without installation (live mode),
please instead of using the reboot command above use the following commands to restart only the graphics system

  root@device# init 3 && init 5

Installing Plasma NetworkManagement on Mer x86 images

You have to become super user, please see the release notes for the default passwords.

  user@device# su

Then execute the following commands:

  root@device# zypper install plasmoid-networkmanagement
  root@device# systemctl disable connman.service ofono.service
  root@device# systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

Then:

edit ~mer/.kde/share/config/plasma-device-appletsrc and change org.kde.active.connman to org.kde.networkmanagement
edit /usr/bin/startactive and pre-pend the last command with "ck-launch-session". It should look like this:

ck-launch-session startactive.bin 2>&1 | tee /tmp/startactive-${USER}.log

If your image is newer than April 18th the step above is not necessary.

reboot the device or just shut it down and then turn it on.