How much do you mod your desktop?

[Valsodar]

Whoever thought the need to edit stupidly complex CSS files would be a great way for people to theme Cinnamon and GTK in general going forwards needs shooting.

You may not like CSS but I do and that's the way I prefer to make my themes. That way I know exactly what is changed and to what color. Sure, it takes some time to identify the thing you need but that's why the commenting exists.

Code: Select all

.panel-bottom { /* change color of panel ; СМЕНЯ ЦВЕТА НА ПАНЕЛА */
  background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
  box-shadow: 0 -1px rgba(70, 70, 70, 1); }
  
  #menu-search-entry { /* menu search box */
  padding: 0 1px; /* distance between the entry field border and the first entered character */
  font-size: 12pt;
  min-width: 620px;
  min-height: 20px;
  border: 0px solid;
  color: #cecece; /* text color */
  caret-color: #f0f0f0; }

If they ever gave up using CSS for theming and changed it to something more obscure, I'll most likely redirect myself to another DE.

[bluedxca93]

The thing he wants us to diplay is nearly entirely doable in scss. Once i ve a bit moire time ill prove it but on a blue-grayish color. Sry but no pink for me.

[MurphCID]

One of the nice things is you can mod Mint (and Linux) more than you can Windows or MacOS.

[Drugwash]

I'm still waiting for the proof of that when it comes to Mint 21 which completely screwed up my theme.
And I know it will not happen, at least not 100% if only for the simple reason that there are no border-corner elements in CSS to substitute those in Metacity.
Not to mention the inability to bring back the Menu, Sticky and Shade titlebar buttons that I need and want. Unless the entire Gtk subsystem somehow gets hacked.

[bluedxca93]

There is a unexpected padding problem with window borders once you want to force the look.
And i got a lot of work to do in real life now but i have nit forgotten it and ill post my solution here soon. As always there has to be an hack/workaround.

[Drugwash]

Yes, I noticed that padding problem too. Seems that certain elements/widgets had their names changed, or have been replaced with new elements/widgets, which makes code that works in older Cinnamon GTK to stop working in 5.4+.
This is how it looks in Mint 21 despite old code working in Mint 19; note the missing top-right border image:

Screenshot from 2022-09-01 14-22-16.png (11.83 KiB) Viewed 1212 times

And that's only part of the problem because as mentioned earlier there are corner borders that need to be placed with fixed or semi-fixed size in order to achieve the full look - something I don't think CSS is capable of. Maybe I'm wrong...? Are there border-top-left/border-top-right/border-bottom-left/border-bottom-right elements defined that could be tweaked by using image files? Gradients are simply unacceptable for this particular purpose.

Further issue: there is a fine external 1px outline on all border sides, as well as an internal 1px border frame. Those 1px lines belong to the image files. While all border images are stretched in a way that the 1px line remains at that size, the titlebar image should now be able to allow various heights according to new titlebar/headerbar settings and contents. As such, stretching the titlebar image vertically will inevitably stretch the horizontal 1px lines height breaking the overall aspect. I do not see any kind of fix for this issue.

[bluedxca93]

Some progress. Very hard to code. I need to seperate general csd decoratiuons ands cinnamon window manager.

[Drugwash]

Some progress.

Button placement is almost OK, their size is not - minimize button should have smaller width (26x18px) than the other two (44x18px), but that should be easy to fix.
I see you're only using solid color for titlebar and borders, and gradients for buttons - no images. That is relatively easy, but my theme only uses images for all decorations.
Can you share some of the relevant parts of the code? I might be able to pick it up.
Thanks for your work so far.

[bluedxca93]

https://www.file2send.eu/de/download/9C ... P6HA3IMRhV

@Drugwash here is the theme folder compressed. not perfect but better than nothing. once i have got it fully separated the code of wiondow borders from the rest i think i can apply a gradient on top too.

[Drugwash]

Sorry, something happened. They say download is no longer available (Dieser Download ist nicht mehr verfügbar.)
Didn't manage to get it.
Nevermind, it's a cookie/overlay issue with my browser - it automatically dismissed the cookie acceptance overlay before getting to click it so it wouldn't allow me to download.
That or they really have something against Pale Moon (or my particular location).
Managed to get the archive through Tor though, so it's all fine for now. Danke schön.

[DeathDancer]

I use the Mate desktop, I use the dconf editor to set the panel to Gnome 2 (Don’t try this unless you know exactly what you are doing!). I use the black mate theme. The Mint-X-Dark icon theme. Fonts are whatever Mint uses. Conky gets changed all the time, whenever the whim hits me. The wallpaper I tend to use is nfeans_street_lights.jpg from Linux Mint Sonya. I change the panel size to 24 pixels, and caja icon view to 66% .

[MurphCID]

Some of these mods are really impressive. Keep it up Ladies and Gentlemen.

[Arch_Enemy]

Wild Child, I am a RICER that tends to break my system from time to time with installing eye candy (e.g. Plasma on top of Cinnamon) and get in trouble with purging. I change my desktop so much, that once a month I go into .icons, .themes, usr/share/icons, usr/share/themes, /usr/share/cinnamon/thumbnails/cursors, and do some housecleaning. I am on Pling (Gnome-Look) everyday, trying new looks just for giggles and grins.

Yup.

Pretty heavily modded. Window borders, window controls, pointer, etc.

I liked the Wiindows-like Gnome 2 interface from many years ago, so I di what it takes to make MATE look the same.

One thing I miss from the Gtk 2 days was the ability to customize colors without having to know XML. Favorite scheme was GnomishGrey, which doesn't work with Gtk 3. So I change what I can to make it similar.

And the background is my most favorite car, the most fun, and so far the best one I ever owned, my 1985 GT-S. 260,000 carefree miles, over 19 years

http://carinpicture.com/wp-content/uplo ... 00x600.jpg

[Pjotr]

the background is my most favorite car, the most fun, and so far the best one I ever owned, my 1985 GT-S. 260,000 carefree miles, over 19 years

http://carinpicture.com/wp-content/uplo ... 00x600.jpg

Nice car! Toyotas, at least the ones that are completely produced in Japan, just seem to go on forever.... I have a Toyota Yaris (Echo), 22 years old and purring along nicely.

[MurphCID]

the background is my most favorite car, the most fun, and so far the best one I ever owned, my 1985 GT-S. 260,000 carefree miles, over 19 years

http://carinpicture.com/wp-content/uplo ... 00x600.jpg

Nice car! Toyotas, at least the ones that are completely produced in Japan, just seem to go on forever.... I have a Toyota Yaris (Echo), 22 years old and purring along nicely.

My Spouse-Unit's Camry (2006) with 350,000 miles is still going strong. It looks like heck, but it works.

[Pjotr]

My Spouse-Unit's Camry (2006) with 350,000 miles is still going strong. It looks like heck, but it works.

Haha. It's the choice of the pros:

[MurphCID]

My Spouse-Unit's Camry (2006) with 350,000 miles is still going strong. It looks like heck, but it works.

Haha. It's the choice of the pros:
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/41/30/71/875 ... 1150x0.jpg

Lol! It looks to be in better shape than my wife's Camry! I want the hat the guy on the left is wearing.

[lctapps]

Quite a lot, I'm really obsessed with material/materia/material-based ui design and it mainly consists of materia-dark-compact.
It sucks, because whenever I do a re-install of my operating system, I have to re-do the whole setup.

[MurphCID]

Any new comments? Any new “wild children”?

[billyswong]

You may not like CSS but I do and that's the way I prefer to make my themes. That way I know exactly what is changed and to what color. Sure, it takes some time to identify the thing you need but that's why the commenting exists.

Code: Select all

.panel-bottom { /* change color of panel ; СМЕНЯ ЦВЕТА НА ПАНЕЛА */
  background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
  box-shadow: 0 -1px rgba(70, 70, 70, 1); }
  
  #menu-search-entry { /* menu search box */
  padding: 0 1px; /* distance between the entry field border and the first entered character */
  font-size: 12pt;
  min-width: 620px;
  min-height: 20px;
  border: 0px solid;
  color: #cecece; /* text color */
  caret-color: #f0f0f0; }

If they ever gave up using CSS for theming and changed it to something more obscure, I'll most likely redirect myself to another DE.

CSS by itself is not a bad choice for theming language. What we lack in current GTK theming system is:
1. Use variables, preferably everyone share the same set of variable names if possible https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... properties
2. a GUI to create / edit an CSS variable override file as local config, running on top of the theme installed by root.

If we have such infrastructure, people who just want some slight tuning to the UI colours will be satisfied in ease.