KBFX is an alternative to the classical K-Menu button and it's menu. KBFX project improves the user experience by enabling the user to set a bigger (and thus more visible) start button and by finally replacing the Win95-like K-Menu.

But if you still want the old menu, because you're used to it, it is still available as an option in kbfx. We recommend, however, that you give the Spinx bar a try.

History:

KBFX was started on June 5th 2005 as a hobbyist project by Siraj Razick, born out of a spontanous idea. The reason was that Siraj didn't like the old K-Menu, which was quite a clone of the old Win95 Startmenu. So he started coding.

The first step provided merely the possibility to call the K-Menu via a button, that could have a different shape and size than the original K-Menu button, which has always been an icon of a square size. To change the default KBFX button, one still had to copy an image file to a certain location.

After the first post in mid-june 05, KBFX has spread rapidly and it was nice to see that until end of june, there were already a dozen posts on kde-look with buttons and builds.

Mensur Zahirovic (called Nookie) joined Siraj on 5th of august, after Siraj met him on yahoo. Nookie is responsible for the Web-development and the Q&A. He also arranged the site www.kbfx.org, that replaces the previous site www.linuxlots.com/~siraj/plugin/kde.

After that, things began to speed up. The next members were Akhmed Fathonih, who works on the configuration modules, and Ron, who provides distribution packages.
KBFX is no longer just another button design for the K-Menu, but now provides an alternative to it, that is in fact more sophisticated than the XP-Startmenu.

KBFX version 0.4.9 is a four month long prototypical development Approach. The release is a complete rewrite eliminating all the negative points of previous versions. At the start we had a list of end requirements for version 0.4.9 and we developed each of the feature unit testing it as it was developed.

Testing each and every class along the way. Apart from unit testing, the quality assurance manager would periodically check the quality of the product and as new releases are made to the KBFX source repository. QA always check the product against the requirements that we had set to maximize quality. This way of development help us to discover tons of bugs and fix then then and there, and we debut that KBFX has any hidden bugs that can't be fixes.

And it was more than helpful to see many users around the world checking out the development release of KBFX from CVS, and reporting and posting problems encountered helping to add more stability and compatibility between distribution. Because of this even before KBFX is 0.4.9 is released we know the supported platforms. KBFX has been tested to work with all GCC3.x and GCC4.x compliers.

And also on retributions such as Gentoo, Debian , Ubantu , Suse, Slack, Mango, and Manrake, and Fedora core systems.But compiling on FreeBSD systems is yet to be tested, we will port KBFX to FreeBSD and PcBSD.

Here are some key features of "KBFX":

· Selecting an Application Group
· Selecting an Application
· Type and locate an Application
· Logout of the Desktop
· Lock the Desktop
· Launch KBFX settings manager
· scroll up and down the application list
· Extra features
· Double buffered Widgets to minimize flicker.
· Animated scroll bars
· New Tooltip
· Gif/Mng File Support
· New Control Manager

Installation:

To install kbfx you need to do following things:

make -f Makefile.cvs
./configure --prefix=`kde-config --prefix`
make
make install (AS ROOT)

Workaround for Suse and Gentoo: since these distros do not install KDE in /usr ld linker dose not pick up libkio .

1. Download automake 1.6 and install
2. run kde-config --prefix and find out where your KDE prefix is
3. Given your KDE prefix is /opt/kde3/
4. Open kbfxconfigapp/Makefile.am
5. replace $(KIO_LIB) with -L/opt/kde3/lib/ -lkio
6. compile as normal

Usage:

· Right-click on the panel, on which you want to place the kbfx button
· Select "add applet to panel" in the context menu
· Select "kbfxspinx"
· A tooltip appears "kbfxpinx Added"
· If you move your mouse over the button, a tooltip appears.
· If you want to, you can now remove the K-Menu button and move the KBFX to the desired place on the panel. To open the menu, just click on the button.

What's New in 0.4.9.3.1 Stable Release:

· CHANGED layout and font configfile specs
· UPDATED help documentation
· ADDED fade transition effect on the KBFX Button
· ADDED install guides for using checkinstall
· ADDED Hungarian translation (thanks to Ferenc Stelcz for it)
· ADDED option to watch for KDE global changes like new installed applications
· ADDED option for Theme Info
· ADDED resizable configuration dialogs
· ADDED drag&drop hover, pressed and normal images over the KBFX button
· ADDED tooltip support for the KBFX button
· ADDED switch between KBFX and K Menu
· ADDED new two panel skin"2panels"
· ADDED configurable middle backgroundmiddleboxbg.png
· ADDED fonts support in every part of the menu
· ADDED layout support in the KBFX Configurator
· ADDED support for the new versions of strigi
· ADDED support for use of strigi in Gentoo
· ADDED support for SVN version in Gentoo
· ADDED support for PCLinuxOS rpm build (thanks to @PaGal and @tom777 for the testing)
· ADDED support for future KDE4 (part 1)
· ADDED uninstall option for "build.sh" script
· FIXED cmake uninstall
· FIXED RPM .la issues
· FIXED some major bugs
· REMOVED Water effect (too much CPU time consuming and not a favorite one for our users)

What's New in 0.4.9.3-20070225 Development Release:

· CHANGED layout and font configfile specs
· ADDED resizable configuration dialogs
· ADDED drag&drop hover, pressed and normal images over the KBFX button
· ADDED tooltip support for the KBFX button
· ADDED switch between KBFX and K Menu
· ADDED new two panel skin"2panels"
· ADDED configurable middle backgroundmiddleboxbg.png
· ADDED fonts support in every part of the menu
· ADDED layout support in the KBFX Configurator
· ADDED support for the new versions of strigi
· ADDED support for use of strigi in Gentoo
· ADDED support for SVN version in Gentoo
· ADDED support for PCLinuxOS rpm build (thanks to @PaGal for the testing)
· ADDED support for future KDE4 (part 1)
· ADDED uninstall option for "build.sh" script
· FIXED cmake uninstall
· FIXED RPM .la issues
· FIXED some major bugs