SOLVED! Scroll-bar on right is annoyingly narrow!

[DougWa]

Linux Mate Petra: In all windows, but most annoyingly in Firefox, I hate how supermodel-thin the scroll-bar is; it takes extra care with the mouse to use it. I haven't found any way to widen it (I already have my screen zoomed to 1024x768). Haven't found any way via google...
Any help will be greatly appreciated!!

[woodsman]

I too find the scroll bar widths too narrow. For gtk2 apps you can work-around the problem by editing or creating a gtkrc file. The snippet you need for the scroll bar width:

style "scroll"
{
GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 19
}

Adjust the width to your needs. This snippet will affect all gtk2 apps globally, such as Firefox and Mate apps. You need to restart the apps after applying the change.

Many developers follow a flawed philosophy of trying to "maximize screen real estate." That is why scroll bars are too narrow, fonts too small, panels to short, etc. Developers also tend to use monitors that are as big as TVs. Their designs looks fine on the large monitors but then they forget to test on small or standard monitors.

Fixing scroll bar widths in gtk3 apps is more convoluted and I haven't found a global fix like the above snippet for gtk2 apps. Refer to this thread as an example.

[DougWa]

G_d bless you, woodsman... there's been a crud-load of views here but no assistance, UNTIL YOU!
However, I'm a Linux noob and I'll have to google around to learn how to implement your gtkrc file trick. I'll re-reply if I need more help.
THANKS AGAIN!!
-------
EDIT: er... I'm back!
I went to usr share themes Mint-X gtk-2.0 and opened gtkrc as administrator and added:
style "scroll"
{
GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 28
}
and saved changes.
I also went to gtk-3.0 and opened gtk-widgets.css as admin and changed this from 15 to 28:
-GtkRange-slider-width: 28;

Rebooted and... absolutely no change.
In Control Center - Appearance I am using Mint-X as the theme... what did I do wrong?

[JosephM]

I no longer have Mint 16 installed but I will help you the best I can from what I remember. You are on the right track. In the gtk-2.0 folder you actually need to go inside the Styles folder and find slider.rc. In that file should find a section with a heading of style "pixmap-scrollbar". Inside that section is the GtkRange::slider_width value that you want to change. There is no need for the new "scroll" style that you created.

For the other in gtk-widgtes.css, the setting you want to change is GtkRange-slider-width. There should be a setting for this in the first section at the top of gtk-widgets.css. Because I don't have the theme in front of me I can't remember if this will affect a couple other widgets or not. You could try doing a search in your text editor for GtkRange-slider-width and see if it's in more than one place. If you find this setting inside a section called .scrollbar or GtkScrollbar change that one to the value you want instead.

[woodsman]

Currently Mint uses both gtk2 and gtk3 apps. The snippet I shared affects gtk2 apps only. The link to which I referred affects gtk3 apps.

There are several places to add the gtk2 snippet. Look in $HOME/.config/gtk-2.0. In your Caja file manager you need to have hidden files enabled to see the .config directory. In $HOME/.config/gtk-2.0 you might see a file named gtkrc. If you do not then create the file. You can "right-click" inside the directory or use the File menu to "Create New Document." After $HOME/.config/gtk-2.0/gtkrc file exists, copy and paste the snippet into the gtkrc file. Save and restart any affected apps.

Bear in mind that modifying $HOME/.config/gtk-2.0/gtkrc affects only that one user account. If you want this change to affect all user accounts, then perform the same act to /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc. Root privileges are needed to create and modify that file.

[DougWa]

Man oh man, how great IS this place?! THANKS AGAIN, I'll play with your advice and let you know how I make out!
- - - -
EDIT:
YIPPIE YAHOO, Firefox listened to the new setting inside slider.rc, I'm perfectly spectacularly amazingly blessed right now! lol
Warm regards to both of you generous nics for helping me!!
~dw~

[rick]

Sooo... what IS the solution? Those narrow sliders are a nightmare to some people. Please tell me what to do in clear steps, please? From the prior posts I don't even know where to START to address this difficult slider issue. TYVM.

[DougWa]

For those who've come here via a Google link, in Mint 20.2 Uma, the right hand vertical scrollbar width is NOT changed by any of the old tricks. (sigh)

[bin]

For those who've come here via a Google link, in Mint 20.2 Uma, the right hand vertical scrollbar width is NOT changed by any of the old tricks. (sigh)

I hate, loathe and detest these stupid hipster fashionista skinny late pencil thin scollbars with a vengance! However, there are still ways round it. It depends what you're looking for in your themes etc. However, ClassicLooks https://sourceforge.net/projects/classi ... p/download gives you wider square slider scrollbars. Just unzip and drop into .themes There are a lot of 'hacking' options so you do need to look at the comprehensive info in the ClassicLooks folder. Out of the box it works without any effort. There's no need to run the installer, MATE will pick up from the files as unzipped.

If you are looking at Thunderbird and Firefox scrollbars - you can alter these up to a point via about:config widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size and widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.round-thumb - plus others you may come across there. In Tbird use the Prefs>Config Editor.