Mint-Yz v4.1 (2022-10-12) GTK Theme For Your Whole System: Colors, Contrasts, And Design

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sebastjava
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

Version 2.1 is now available...

Much better colouring on ALL focused buttons, so now you know what happens when you press that Enter key!
Plus subtle color updates.
  • ALL focused buttons get a colored outline.
  • OR a white outline for the colored buttons.
  • Subtle color updates. Mint, MintContrast, Red, Pink.
https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-theme
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

Graphical view of the other improvements listed above. Click to enlarge.
The main improvement in Mint-Yz is the new colors. But there are also these little improvements shown here.
Other-improvements-preview.png
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

The mint-yz-icons will probably be ready within 24 hours. :)
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

It's starting to get embarrassing, but I've done one more color update. I hope you enjoy. Version 2.2 now available.
https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-theme

This had to be done before finishing the icons. These icons are coming soon.
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

I apologize. I look crazy. I wasn't quite satisfied with these colors yet. I reworked them again, for the 99th time. Only subtle changes. But I wait before uploading... I see that I don't have the same eyes in the morning vs in the evening... Here, now, I want to be sure of my choices because I have to make the icons with these same colors. Technically, everything is perfect, everything is ready. For the icons as for this gtk theme. It's just the choice of colors that is chaotic, crazy. So please don't download yet, just wait a bit...
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

Subtle updates on 7 colors.
Very subtle updates on Red, Orange, Aqua, Blue, BlueDeep, Purple, and Pink. This to match the icons. These icons will be available today.
https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-theme
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Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

colors-preview.png

Finally...
This GTK theme is now complemented by the long awaited Mint-Yz-icons with the same colors:
https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-icons


Please make sure you download the latest Mint-Yz-theme to get the exact same matching colors:
https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-theme

Both the Gtk theme and icons are Debian packages. Very easy to install, upgrade or remove. Just make sure to select the file with the .deb suffix.
Last edited by sebastjava on Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by Mick-Cork »

:) Nice work again sebastjava, I've just installed and am using Mint-Dark icons with darkest mint Controls and Desktop. They all work very well together.

My only dilemma now is do I say goodbye to the Numix-Circle icons which have so elegantly graced my desktop for ages, ah decisions decisions!

Well done, I know that was a lot of work and it's great to have the choice.
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by voidium »

Nice job with the "YZ" project, I managed to mess around with the YZ "icons" and "theme" and came up with my own variation of the base "Green", the original Y green was too..."sad", your 2 "green" variations although they gave it the extra "oumph" to make it more alive (in my personal opinion) they did kinda steer away from the "warm" green and absorbed more blue, making them a little "cold", I "tried" to get the best of both worlds (the warmth of the original with the extra kick of the YZ version) and here is what it looks like in comparison and as a whole.

Image

Image

the hex code is #85c40a if anyone is interested.
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

Nice. I was thinking about trying another green color. This hue, at 80, or maybe 100-105. Yours looks very good.
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

voidium wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 5:23 pm (...) I managed to mess around with the YZ "icons" and "theme" (...)
Here are the instructions for the themes: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-t ... ourself.md
Here are the instructions for the icons: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-i ... ep-by-step
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by sebastjava »

I still have plans in mind to improve these Mint-Yz themes and icons. But it's going to take a while. I have other things to do before this. And then when I work on it again, I'll take more time before I approve and upload.

Coming up:
  1. Are these colors too vibrant? Not all of them, but some of them?
  2. These colors might be okay for buttons, but for file selections in Nemo and for text editors there could be another color, of same hue but with a much lighter shade, with the foreground text remaining black. (see image below)
Nemo-2accent-ex.png

I am not sure. What do you think?
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Re: Mint-Yz: The New Colors of a New Era — Add some refreshed colors to your entire desktop environment now!

Post by voidium »

sebastjava wrote: Sat Sep 26, 2020 11:27 am
voidium wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 5:23 pm (...) I managed to mess around with the YZ "icons" and "theme" (...)
Here are the instructions for the themes: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-t ... ourself.md
Here are the instructions for the icons: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-i ... ep-by-step
Yup those were the links I followed to "mess" around with the colors

1. Are these colors too vibrant? Not all of them, but some of them?

In my opinion, most of the colors looks good on a white background, but when you use a dark background, the Red looks too "bright" while the Deep Blue and the Deep Purple seems too dim. (I think these were never meant for the dark theme, hence why the "not deep" version)

2. These colors might be okay for buttons, but for file selections in Nemo and for text editors there could be another color, of same hue but with a much lighter shade, with the foreground text remaining black.

For me both versions works.
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Matching icons update

Post by sebastjava »

There is a Mint-Yz icon theme with matching colors for this Mint-Yz GTK theme. This icon theme went through substantial revision:

Reset from upstream/master (git reset --hard upstream/master) and replayed it all over again.
  • Fixed missing Trash can or Recycle bin.
  • Fixed broken links in Mint-Yz-Old-Dark/actions and all other colors.
  • Fixed missing icon-theme.cache (i had to replace tabs with spaces in debian/postinst because of my text editor personal preferences!)
  • Etc.
Ultra-simple installation instructions and download here: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-icons
Please take note that color updates are coming soon, for both GTK and icons, but i had to do this first to restart on a fresh, debugged base...
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Mint-Yz, a newer Mint-Y GTK theme: fresh colors for your entire system

Post by sebastjava »

New edition. See the new images on the OP: viewtopic.php?f=211&t=325471
Very simple installation instructions and download here: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-theme
Mint-Yz-icons with the same color scheme: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-icons


I spent a lot of time modifying little colored squares, then making GTK themes with those colors, testing them, going back to square one re-editing small colored squares, and so on. I've been working on this since last January: 11 months! Half the time was spent on tech and GitHub, and the other half was spent reviewing the color choices again and again.

The technical side is well mastered, but the choice of colors seemed very laborious, going back and forth all the time. Let's say I was looking for the right balance between energizing colors and non-distracting background colors.

It seemed impossible to make "relaxing" reds or oranges. I could have altered the saturation and/or brightness levels a lot but then it wouldn't be what I call "red" or "orange" anymore. In contrast, I was more conservative when choosing the blue tones. This blue isn't as pretty as I would like it to be, but it's easy to read, being not distractive. Maybe I'll do another blue, someday. Something prettier, more energetic.

What about you? What do you think? I believe Linux Mint is the best distro I have ever seen. I enjoyed all of the new software and other improvements seen over the past few years. But the colors needed to be improved, IMHO.
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Re: Mint-Yz, a newer Mint-Y GTK theme: fresh colors for your entire system

Post by antikythera »

Nice efforts, I've starred it on github :D
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Re: Mint-Yz, a newer Mint-Y GTK theme: fresh colors for your entire system

Post by begtognen »

Sebastjava - Thanks so much for all of the hard work you've put into these themes, I really appreciate it. I love being able to tell which buttons are highlighted for the first time in forever!

I wanted to ask if there's a way I'm missing to make the focused titlebar a different colour from the unfocused titlebar? I can see that the close button in the titlebar is orange for the focused titlebar, but I'm wondering if there's a way to change the colour of the entire titlebar.
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Re: Mint-Yz, a newer Mint-Y GTK theme: fresh colors for your entire system

Post by sebastjava »

begtognen wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:10 pm I'm wondering if there's a way to change the colour of the entire titlebar.
My test:
Mint-Yz-MintSoft-metacity-test.png

Yes, there is a way to do that. I have done this a long time ago, when there was not much contrast difference between focused and unfocused window titles. Even now i still have to look two times to be sure which one is focused or not. So i agree this is a good idea. I just didn’t want to change the theme too much, trying to please everyone...
Thanks for your positive comments, but i have to admit i am still not sure i have done the best yet. Maybe i shouldn’t have made some colours subdued for the "darkest" themes, in this current latest version. And i have another blue colour in mind to be tried soon. So there is possibly a 99th new version coming soon...

Here is the answer to your question, quick and easy way:

When you want to test things, you may prefer to work in the ~/.themes directory. This directory overrides /usr/share/themes/ and you don’t need any "sudo" and passwords there.
  1. File manager > View > Show hidden files (Ctrl+H)
  2. Terminal: mkdir -p ~/.themes
  3. Copy an entire theme into ~/.themes folder. Example: cp -rf /usr/share/themes/Mint-Yz-Base-MintSoda ~/.themes/Mint-Yz-Base-MintSoda
  4. Right-click ~/.themes/Mint-Yz-Base-MintSoda/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml to open it in your text editor.
  5. Change <constant name="C_wm_bg_focused" value="rgba(217,217,217,1.0)" />. Example: <constant name="C_wm_bg_focused" value="rgba(85,221,153,1.0)" /> (RGBA stands for red,green,blue,alpha and values are 0-255,0-255,0-255,0-1)
  6. Do the same on ~/.themes/Mint-Yz-Base-MintSoda/metacity-1/metacity-theme-2.xml but using #HEX values. Example: #55DD99
  7. Save those files.
  8. Open Menu > Preferences > Themes and switch back and forth from some old theme and back to your freshly edited theme to refresh. Try it.
  9. When everything is OK, you should copy your new theme into /usr/share/themes/ and then delete it from ~/.themes to make it available systemwide, i.e for root access, other users, your login screen, etc.
That was just the "quick and easy" way. But you would probably want to do this for each theme, for each Base and Darkest variants: 11 colours X 2 variants = 22 themes. The "real", "professional" way to do this "right" is to clone my repository from GitHub and then edit the 4 metacity files found in ~/mint-yz-theme/src/Mint-Y/metacity-1/, using this colour: #92b372. Only this colour. This old Mint-Y colour would then be replaced automatically with each new accent colour, when going through the whole big process described here: https://github.com/SebastJava/mint-yz-t ... ourself.md But that’s far too complex for just changing the window title background colour (C_wm_bg_focused). You should prefer the "quick and easy" method listed above. Yes, i know, it is not so quick and easy. :)
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Re: Mint-Yz, a newer Mint-Y GTK theme: fresh colors for your entire system

Post by begtognen »

Sebastjava - Thanks so much for your very specific set of instructions. I created the .themes directory, I copied the entire directory (Mint-Yz-Base-Orange), I opened metacity-theme-3.xml and replaced the rgba specifications for C_wm_bg_focused, then I opened metacity-theme-2.xml and replaced the HEX value for C_wm_bg_focused. Then I switched to a different theme and back to the Mint-Yz-Base-Orange theme.

I'm not sure what I did wrong, but it didn't work. Any suggestions are appreciated.
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Re: Mint-Yz, a newer Mint-Y GTK theme: fresh colors for your entire system

Post by antikythera »

sebastjava wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:40 pm So there is possibly a 99th new version coming soon...[/b]
:D In honour of that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aLiT3wXko0
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