A contemporary-feel Gnome theme

[alun_sundry]

A theme I've arrived at for Gnome Mint/Ubuntu, with some of my efforts plus edits of others'. The lines below (from style "panel" and on) should be saved in the /home folder as .gtkrc-2.0 (not forgetting the .) and will make the colour scheme of the panel independent of the rest of the theme. The panel height should be changed to 36 pixels. The attached file 'panel-bg-black-36d.png' is a transparent black panel background reminiscent of current KDE panel backgrounds.

I use the enclosed with the gtk Nodoka-Squared 'controls' (the gtk Nodoka theme engine is in the repositaries) selected from System > Appearance > Theme (Mist suits it too), with one of the many Emerald 'Vista-type' borders that then has the curve removed from the corners and the pixmap buttons turned off to distinguish the appearance from Vista, and the shadows settings changed to 12 and -12, creating a more realistic shadow. This border is now in the second post in the thread beow.

Log in again to bring about the .gtkrc-2.0 file's changes.

Lastly I have for better contrast changed two of the Nodoka colours: the Windows and Selected Items backgrounds are #D4D4E3 and #336699 respectively.

The result is somewhere between Kubuntu and Vista and at any rate a contemporary non-Gnome look, without slowing things down like some elaborate themes can.



style "panel"
{
fg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"
fg[PRELIGHT] = "#FFFFFF"
fg[ACTIVE] = "#FFFFFF"
fg[SELECTED] = "#353535"
fg[INSENSITIVE] = "#FFFFFF"

bg[NORMAL] = "#353535"
bg[PRELIGHT] = "#353535"
bg[ACTIVE] = "#353535"
bg[SELECTED] = "#353535"
bg[INSENSITIVE] = "#FFFFFF"

base[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"
base[PRELIGHT] = "#FFFFFF"
base[ACTIVE] = "#FFFFFF"
base[SELECTED] = "#FFFFFF"
base[INSENSITIVE] = "#FFFFFF"

text[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"
text[PRELIGHT] = "#FFFFFF"
text[ACTIVE] = "#FFFFFF"
text[SELECTED] = "#FFFFFF"
text[INSENSITIVE] = "#FFFFFF"
}
widget "*PanelWidget*" style "panel"
widget "*PanelApplet*" style "panel"
class "*Panel*" style "panel"
widget_class "*Mail*" style "panel"
class "*notif*" style "panel"
class "*Notif*" style "panel"
class "*Tray*" style "panel"
class "*tray*" style "panel"

[alun_sundry]

A blue glassy border for Emerald attached here.

[dequire]

Looks good. IMP "modern" does not necessarily mean "Vista-ish". Have you considered making it a downloadable theme from http://www.linuxmint-art.org/?

[alun_sundry]

Thanks, nice to have a bit of feedback. I feel a slight charlatan using nodoka widgets, so I haven't posted it up properly, though since then I've learnt a bit more gtk fiddling and could make this more my effort. I'd like the program boxes in the panel to be more widgety but I see an error reported in the terminal when I add ones from another theme, and to be honest I don't want to learn much more of this - I just wanted my desktop to be satisfying so I could get on with my work without aesthetic flaws invoking my OCD....

I agree that contemporary shouldn't mean Vista-ish, and I pretty much just wanted to get rid of the grey without really getting too involved. It's just a sort of evolutionary accident that the technology should mean that modern would mean that Vista and KDE will look as they do; I do like 'docks' but they have more of a stamp of 'from another OS' than a glassy panel and window border do, to my mind, which bugs me for no good rational reason. I was keen to make the border square and to make the panel more gradiented to make it subtler than Vista's.

I've found Kubuntu a pain in the butt, it's chaos and the font rendering is inferior for someone who uses a word processor half the day, so I'll probably stick to Gnome and spruce it up a bit like this.