Mint 18.2 colour adjustment: Solved

[gingertom5005]

I've just upgraded my PC to Mint 18.2 Mate and all works fine, no problems that I've encountered as yet. The one very minor irritation I have with it is that this version no longer allows you to adjust the colour of the windows borders etc. Is there a way I can do this? (I installed the 64 bit version).

[Spearmint2]

Isn't that in the background and themes area?

[Schultz]

Control Center >> Appearance >> Theme tab. Click "Customize." Choose your window color from the "Controls" tab.

[gingertom5005]

Perhaps I haven't made myself clear. In 18 and 18.1 I could select a colour from a colour control which was approximately circular. This has been dropped from 18.2. In 18.2 I'm stuck with the preset colour of any window option. Interestingly the control has also been dropped for the task bar and has been replaced by a range of preset colours. Previously there was an infinite range of colour options for both window borders and the taskbar.

[Spearmint2]

I have 18.1 on a computer here. You saying this is not also available in version 18.2? Click on pic for larger copy.

colors_mint18.1.jpeg

[JosephM]

I have 18.1 on a computer here. You saying this is not also available in version 18.2? Click on pic for larger copy.

No it isn't. Mate is now gtk3 and theming is significantly different in gtk2->gtk3. This is a feature that just wouldn't have worked properly and I don't think they had much choice but to remove it.

[Spearmint2]

Go back to what you like then. If that doesn't work (yet?) in 18.2 it's a reason I won't upgrade my second test computer to it.

[Schultz]

Huh, I didn't know this. Seems like the state of computing is just like the state of humanity; it should be getting better, but just keeps getting worse and worse. Even in Linux. Sad.

[gingertom5005]

What is missing from 18.2 is just the fine adjustments for colour. There is quite a range of customisation but no fine adjustment.

[Schultz]

It's still a step in the wrong direction. I did get a bit dramatic though, didn't I?

[gingertom5005]

Here are two screenshots of the colour adjustment taken from my wife's PC which is running Mate 18.1. They illustrate better what has been dropped from Mate 18.2.

To put this into perspective, 18.2 works perfectly as an operating system and it's just one or two colour adjustments I would like to tweak rather than having to choose from a preset range, but in reality it hasn't put me off the operating system in any way.

To put it even more into perspective I have been given an SSD which I will fit when I get round to it and use the existing drive just for storage so in the long term that will put me where I want to be. I won't bother to upgrade to 18.2 then.

[JosephM]

It's still a step in the wrong direction.

I'm sorry but this just isn't true. I know some people will miss this particular feature but I don't think there was much the Mate devs could do about it. At some point they realistically needed to make the move from gtk2->gtk3. There are features needed to support modern hardware that simply don't exist in gtk2. I know they put a lot of work into retaining as many of the features as possible while making the move.

[Spearmint2]

so there's a good rule. Older computers stay at 18.1 or below?

[JosephM]

so there's a good rule. Older computers stay at 18.1 or below?

I suppose that's up to the individual user. If that particular setting is really important to you, then maybe. In truth, if everything is working fine and your happy, there is no pressing need to upgrade anyway. Mint 18 is supported for quite a long time.

[Schultz]

JosephM wrote:
I'm sorry but this just isn't true. I know some people will miss this particular feature but I don't think there was much the Mate devs could do about it. At some point they realistically needed to make the move from gtk2->gtk3.

Can you explain, in layman terms, why this feature can't exist in gtk3?

[gingertom5005]

It's still a step in the wrong direction.

I'm sorry but this just isn't true. I know some people will miss this particular feature but I don't think there was much the Mate devs could do about it. At some point they realistically needed to make the move from gtk2->gtk3. There are features needed to support modern hardware that simply don't exist in gtk2. I know they put a lot of work into retaining as many of the features as possible while making the move.

I fully support what JosephM is saying. All I was originally saying was that 18.2 lacks a feature which is an aesthetic choice. Hardware is moving on all the time and it's hats off and thanks to the developers for providing people like me with an operating system and additional software for free which is keeping pace with the hardware (I do contribute financially to the project BTW). If anything I have said sounds like ingratitude to the developers I apologise because I know how blessed we are to have this software. We would do well to reflect on what I suspect will happen with Microsoft Windows10. My suspicion is that Microsoft will charge annually for support for Windows10 because they will inevitably sell less operating systems if they aren't going to produce anything after Windows10. Perhaps £100 PA for security updates or perhaps they will rent Windows10 - and they will have millions of users by the short and curlies as they say. We should be continually grateful to our developers.

[JosephM]

Can you explain, in layman terms, why this feature can't exist in gtk3?

I can try though I'm not the best at that

Theming in gtk3 is very different to gtk2. In gtk2 it was fairly simplistic. Meaning you were pretty limited to setting things like background color, foreground color, border color, etc. The only way to really get around that was by using a theme engine like the pixmap engine that would allow to modify things using image based assets. It was quite a bit of work and many themes stuck to using the simpler theming. Because of that it was fairly easy for a tool to do things like override the background color of an element. I would like to point out that it already didn't work properly for most themes using the pixmap engine. Simply overriding the background color would have no effect on the pre-created image.

In gtk3 this is quite different. Css is used for theming and it's far more powerful and flexible than the old style theming in gtk2. Let's take for example something like a button. In css you can do something like set the background-color to transparent then create a gradient going from light -> dark using background-image without having to create a single image asset. The background-image takes priority over the background-color. Let's say I set the background-color of my button to red. Then I create a gradient in background-image that goes from purple at the top to blue at the bottom. The background-image will override the background-color and what the user will see is a button going from purple -> blue. That is only the tip of the iceberg of what can be done.

Now lets take the tool that was removed. Say the user opens it and sets the background color for buttons to yellow. Guess what? Nothing is going to appear to happen. In the case of our button our background-color is totally covered by our background-image. Do you start to see the issue? And this gets even more complex when throwing in things like image assets, border-images, box-shadows, etc. All stuff that if fairly easy and thus heavily used in gtk3 theming.

From a developer perspective just trying to write a tool that would work with all that would be a nightmare. Even if you did so it would still fail in many cases and appear buggy to an end user.

Not sure if that explanation helps anything or just makes it more confusing but I told you it wasn't my strong suit

[Schultz]

Clear as mud, at least to me. I'll take your word that it would be a nightmare.

[Biggles]

I'm new to the forum but have been using Mint since version 13. I have just upgraded to 18.2 on my test computer and was disappointed to find the lack of window border colour. Some people in this thread have referred to it as aesthetics but it's more than that, it indicates which window is active and to a non technical person like my partner that is very important in her understanding of what she's seeing on the screen. In addition, in the particular theme I use (and maybe others) the text in the inactive window title bar is actually bolder than the text in the active window title bar so this just adds to the confusion. For my partner I shall leave her on 18.1 until / if the window border colour is restored. I think Linux Mint is an excellent operating system and don't want to knock the developers in any way but it's little things like this that will put some people off using it.

[Biggles]

I've just upgraded my PC to Mint 18.2 Mate and all works fine, no problems that I've encountered as yet. The one very minor irritation I have with it is that this version no longer allows you to adjust the colour of the windows borders etc. Is there a way I can do this? (I installed the 64 bit version).

I have discovered a way to bring the colour back to the window title bar / borders or at least a workaround, I'm using Mint 18.2 Mate so I don't know if it will work for the other flavours.

Bring up the Appearance Preferences window and select Theme then Customise. In the Customise Theme window under the Controls tab select the colour you want from the Mint-X range. Under the Window Border tab select the border you want, something different to Mint-X or Mint-Y and one or two others. Under the Icons tab select the icons you want then close the Customise Theme window, I stick with the default pointer. Save your theme and you've got coloured window borders again.

As this is a workaround I suppose it might get broken with a future update. It works for me using an upgrade from 18.1 to 18.2 with MDM still installed and the default 18.2 kernel. It also works in an 18.2 live session so that will be using LightDM.