[PARTIALLY SOLVED] Mint Style issues: 'Close Windows' panel, and scroll bar sizes

[red-striped-zebra]

Is there a way I can change the size of these two items:

1. The scroll bar we use to navigate the page up and down with the mouse is very thin, in both LM, and Ubuntu, as opposed to Windows where it is thick and convenient. While I enjoy the look and feel and the rounded edges, my mouse is always around the edges and never on the scroll, so I end up placing it here and there.

2. The Maximize-Minimize-Close Windows panel at the top right of the browser window is also too tiny relative to the size of the window itself. Is it possible to expand them somehow, particularly the 'close' button?

[Moem]

Can you please tell us your version of Mint, and also which desktop environment you are using? This is a question about the graphical interface, and it's impossible to answer such a question without knowing these things.

[red-striped-zebra]

Can you please tell us your version of Mint, and also which desktop environment you are using? This is a question about the graphical interface, and it's impossible to answer such a question without knowing these things.

sure, LM 20.3 Cinnamon 5.2.7

[Cosmo.]

#1 In which application? The desktop itself does not have a scroll bar.

#2 I have a virtual machine with XP. If I place the windows with the VM and a Linux application (like xed) side by side or so, that the title bars are exactly one below the other I do not see the described size difference. In the contrary, the horizontal space for the 3 buttons are in Mint (Cinnamon 5.2.7, using Mint Y border theme)) a little bit wider than in Windows.

[Hoser Rob]

You could try some different themes

[red-striped-zebra]

#1 In which application? The desktop itself does not have a scroll bar.

#2 I have a virtual machine with XP. If I place the windows with the VM and a Linux application (like xed) side by side or so, that the title bars are exactly one below the other I do not see the described size difference. In the contrary, the horizontal space for the 3 buttons are in Mint (Cinnamon 5.2.7, using Mint Y border theme)) a little bit wider than in Windows.

Such as the browser windows of Mozilla Firefox and Librewolf, the slider to the right of the LM start menu, the scroll/slider to the right on the txt files etc...it is thin in all of them and my mouse struggles to position it exactly within the slider's lean borders...it is a bit counterintuitive and annoying, hoping I can make it somewhat w-i-d-e-r. My mouse wheel doesn't function right now, so I can't scroll that way either. I use the arrow keys but I still have to occasionally position the mouse on the slider to get to the exact point, or I will have to crawl slowly to where I want using arrows. esp true in reddit, etc

[red-striped-zebra]

You could try some different themes

which ones can you suggest with wider options for minimize-maximize-close buttons, and scroll slider?

[SMG]

Such as the browser windows of Mozilla Firefox

That is something you set in Firefox. The default is to have the scrollbars not show. Go to Settings > General and scroll to the Browsing section and check "Always show scrollbars".

and Librewolf,

Might be the same as Firefox.

[billyswong]

For Firefox scrollbar width, see here viewtopic.php?t=393047

For scrollbar width in other GTK applications, go to Menu > Themes > Settings > Override the current theme's scrollbar width

[red-striped-zebra]

For Firefox scrollbar width, see here viewtopic.php?t=393047

For scrollbar width in other GTK applications, go to Menu > Themes > Settings > Override the current theme's scrollbar width

Thank you billyswong, trying this now!

(GTK wikipedia doesn't give out the full form, but I am guessing from it, should be Gnome/General Tool Kit)

Also, if you know of a way to increase the size of the "min-max-close" buttons on the browser window, please let me know.

[rossdv8]

. . . Also, if you know of a way to increase the size of the "min-max-close" buttons on the browser window, please let me know.

A bit like these Titlebar Buttons?




I don't use Cinnamon or Mate, I use Mint 21.1 XfcKDe. However if I can get buttons that size into Xfce, it 'should' be possible to theme Cinnamon's window decorations, provided Cinnamon is using GTK 3 or similar.

I modified my favourite themes in Mint 19 and up, partly because one release of Mint suddenly dropped Window 'borders', making it nearly impossible to resize windows unless I used a combination of keyboard and moose. Until then I was mostly only interested in doing silly stuff like Video Wallpaper, and transparent parts of Apps. When I suddenly had no decent places to grab a window with a mouse, and tiny little minimise restore and close buttons - I got annoyed and almost dumped Mint - then realised nearly every distro was using the same widgets.

Luckily, Mint Xfce and Mint Kde are fairly open to theming. I'm still learning by trial and error (mostly error) but I have mine themed almost the way I want it.
If buttons that size are similar to what you want, someone here should be able to show you how to do the same thing with Cinnamon.
Or, you might find something that will do the same job somewhere like gnome-look.org

[red-striped-zebra]

Hey all, Billyswongs recommendation worked on Firefox and Librewolf!

However, the non-browser apps (txt, odt, etc) still have the smaller size

Go to Settings > General and scroll to the Browsing section and check "Always show scrollbars".

Done, thanks.

[red-striped-zebra]

A bit like these Titlebar Buttons?

Thanks for replying.

Yes to the size (these are like we get on Windows); though I like the circular style in Cinnamon around the buttons. Just want to enlarge their area.

Luckily, Mint Xfce and Mint Kde are fairly open to theming. I'm still learning by trial and error (mostly error) but I have mine themed almost the way I want it.
If buttons that size are similar to what you want, someone here should be able to show you how to do the same thing with Cinnamon.
Or, you might find something that will do the same job somewhere like gnome-look.org

Thanks for the suggestion. But gnome-look.org will require me to change the whole desktop environment to gnome, isn't it, or am I wrong? I only want the buttons changed. I like the minimalism of Cinnamon. Besides, changing the DE might prove too complex for me at this point. Still a noob.

[SMG]

I only want the buttons changed. I like the minimalism of Cinnamon.

I'm moving your topic to the Themes, Icons & Wallpaper forum because that is where customization issues are handled. You may find some existing topics there describing what you want to do. I seem to recall others asking for "big buttons".

[rossdv8]

Thanks for the suggestion. But gnome-look.org will require me to change the whole desktop environment to gnome, isn't it, or am I wrong? I only want the buttons changed. I like the minimalism of Cinnamon. Besides, changing the DE might prove too complex for me at this point. Still a noob.

You can use sites like gnome-look.org to get an idea of some things that are possible in theming. Then you can take certain individual bits from one theme, and use those ideas to design what you want.
For example, the square buttons I use in the Title Bars were a bit smaller in a theme I saw somewhere, so I made some in the size I wanted, but used the same colours and graphic because I liked them.
So if you look at the close up of the 'bright highlight and compare how much of the Titlebar they take up, you can see that the buttons in the pic at the top take up more of the Titlebar space than the bottom ones.
Also I wanted it to be really obvious when I was hovering over a button, so I made the buttons flash a really garish glow when the mouse hovers over them.

Somewhere I also have a theme I did for myself with those buttons just as big, but round. They just didn't look right filling the straight outlines of the Title Bar though, so I scrapped the idea. There's no reason why you can't do it in Cinnamon though. It is just a few hours work in Gimp, along with a little editing of some files and putting the images into the right folders.

I like the minimalism of Cinnamon. Besides, changing the DE might prove too complex for me at this point. Still a noob.

Like a lot of other forum members, I was also a Linux noob in 1996. By 1998 we had converted our whole business across to Linux, although being IBM agents we still had to support Windows and Xenix. By 2001 I was helping with Linux distros including Mandrake, Mepis, PC-LinuxOS and others, and even now a search on my name finds stuff I wrote.
So don;t be worried about being an 'noob'. Once you start exploring how to do stuff, you stop being noobish before you realise.
If you are enjoying Mint, and you remember to:
Back up everything that you are going to change - BEFORE you change anything!
You can't go too far wrong.

One neat thing about Cinnamon themes is that the buttons on the TitleBar seem to be what is known as .svg files. svg stands for Scalable Vector Graphic, and unlike the square buttons in my examples, which are .png images, .svg files are designed to scale infintely larger or smaller while maintaining a nice sharp edge.

Once you do a little searching, you can do things like changing the size of round buttons in Cinnamon, by simply changing a number in several places in a file. So for example, if you wanted to make the round titlebar 'Close' button in the theme 'Mint-Y-Dark' bigger, you could simply change the size from 26px to something like 32px or whatever fits, in the relevant .css file. Of course, for those of us who have been writing HTML for the last 30 years, that means something. If you don;t know what css is, do some reading about it before you edit the file.

just as an example though, here's what the buttons look like:


And this is a quick guess at 'probably' where I would change the size of the 'Close' buttons, by changing the appropriate 26px, to something more like 32px or 36px - depending how big I want them:


I haven't double checked these, as I mentioned I do NOT like nor use Cinnamon. But the general idea is the same across most Mint desktops.

There are some very good and easy to follow guides on how to modify themes for almost all Desktop Environments for most distros.
If you do some searches on things like:
modifying Mint Cinnamon Desktop themes

in Google or whatever your favourite search engine is, and also in Youtube, you should find some easy to follow, step by step tutorials.

Just remember to ALWAYS make a backup copy of whatever theme you plan to modify - and save it with something like a -BAK after the folder name.
Then make another copy, and give it a name with something you'll remember (like your initials) after the name.
Then, and ONLY then, start editing ONE thing at a time.
There's a specific folder that you can copy this new theme folder into that should let you see the changes more or less as you make them.

It is way past my bed time. I'll try to check back over the next days and see if you have had a look at changing a set of buttons.

[billyswong]

For Firefox scrollbar width, see here viewtopic.php?t=393047

For scrollbar width in other GTK applications, go to Menu > Themes > Settings > Override the current theme's scrollbar width

Thank you billyswong, trying this now!

(GTK wikipedia doesn't give out the full form, but I am guessing from it, should be Gnome/General Tool Kit)

Also, if you know of a way to increase the size of the "min-max-close" buttons on the browser window, please let me know.

Hey all, Billyswongs recommendation worked on Firefox and Librewolf!

However, the non-browser apps (txt, odt, etc) still have the smaller size

GTK is one of the two most common GUI toolkits in Linux ecosystem. The another one is Qt. Most of the GUI software including the desktop environments (all 3 variants) in Linux Mint do the GUI drawing by GTK. The "Override the current theme's scrollbar width" is an extra setting provided by Cinnamon DE, so that people can enjoy a wider scrollbar without turning to an older theme or do DIY theme modding. Apply it, set the new width, then reopen whatever applications you are running.

For the min-max-close button size, switching theme or theme modding is necessary. No shortcut is available.

[Grateful4Linux]

Is there a way I can change the size of:

2. The Maximize-Minimize-Close Windows panel at the top right of the browser window is also too tiny relative to the size of the window itself. Is it possible to expand them somehow, particularly the 'close' button?

Perhaps this will help you?

Window Borders Mint19 provided by Smurphos -- https://github.com/smurphos/Window_Borders_Mint_19

"Additional Metacity Themes from Mint 18.3 Cinnamon Edition tweaked to work in Mint 19 / Cinnamon 3.8.x through to Mint 20.x / Cinnamon 5.2.x"
-----

I am currently using LM 19.3 and am sad to see that the Metacity Window Borders will no longer be available for Linux Mint 21.x.

My favorite is the High Contrast that the min/max/close buttons so easy to see:

I'm desperately hoping to find something similar for LM 21!