How can I get minimized windows to restart properly ?

openSUSE 12.3
KDE 4.10.5

I was trying to shuffle around some icons in the bottom tray (system tray ?) and they now behaves differently.

1st off, is that the “system tray” ? The tray along the bottom. Apparently the system tray is a smaller tray that fits into the bottom tray, whatever it’s called.

So, it used to be that when I launched Firefox or KMyMoney from the panel, then minimized it, when I hovered the cursor above the icon in the panel, it would show me what I had open.
Now it does not work like that. I cannot get back into the running app as before. However the ALT-TAB now seems to work that way, and I want it back like it was. I have no clue how I
messed it up. For some reason the icons became left justified and I liked them right justified.
That I can get used to, but the not-being-able-to re-enter a running app is not right.

I am dangerous to myself. rotfl!

The whole bar at the bottom is called “panel”.
The system tray is the thing next to the clock, where the KMix symbol and NetworkManager are located f.e.

What you seem to miss now is the “task manager”.
Click on the toolbox symbol on the right end of the panel, click on “Add Widgets…” and type task into the search field, and double-click on the “task manager”, you should have it back then. As long as the panel’s options are open you can drag it to the place you like in the panel.
Since the task manager normally takes all space it can get, your icons should be right-aligned again after you drag the task manager to the place it was.

Found the “Task Manager” widget though I don’t know how it got deleted.

Well, when you right-click on an entry in the panel, the last entry at the bottom of the context menu is “Remove xxx”.
So it can happen that you accidentally remove an item by just pressing a mouse button again without moving the mouse…

That context menu entry has been removed recently (for 4.11.4), so such accidents should not happen anymore in the future. :wink: