Are you a spammer

Please note, that the first 3 posts you make, will need to be approved by a forum Administrator or Moderator before they are publicly viewable.
Each application to join this forum is checked at the Stop Forum Spam website. If the email or IP address appears there when checked, you will not be allowed to join this forum.
If you get past this check and post spam on this forum, your posts will be immediately deleted and your account inactivated.You will then be banned and your IP will be submitted to your ISP, notifying them of your spamming. So your spam links will only be seen for an hour or two at most. In other words, don't waste your time and ours.

This forum is for the use and enjoyment of the members and visitors looking to learn about and share information regarding the topics listed. It is not a free-for-all advertising venue. Your time would be better spent pursuing legitimate avenues of promoting your websites.

XFCE Themes?



XFCE Themes?

Postby BBOSAK2143 » Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:26 am

Will bet many are going to get a laugh out of this! So, I have been on Linux now for about 2 years. Have had many systems and seen the XFCE desktop for a good year and a half. Now, I never tried any of the XFCE themes since they seemed like really no difference. You know white and bland with the black text, the crap I hate! So, due to that aspect the themes were in my systems but out of all that time I never tried them!

Well as I am now waging my own personal war against terrible looks on LXDE and XFCE desktops, I now decided to take a good look at them! I am coming to find that many of the XFCE themes are basically toast! You, say "How do you come to say that?" Well, say one has these multiple desktops and decides to give one of the XFCE themes a try on Gnome Flashback? I hope no one tries this as is terrible the results since the writing for these themes is too old to work right on that desktop!

Next you say, "Well, that's because those themes are for XFCE and only those that run it as their main desktop will use them!" So then my question would be: "Say someone wants to use XFCE and also have Nemo for a file manager?" Now the measurements are so off that Nemo winds up with all headings squished in together and looks quite terrible! Is apparent to me those that wrote those themes only intended for XFCE to run it and nothing else, not even programs!

Most people will basically use a theme for Gnome since everything is there, right? Usually looks decent on the desktops and has everything needed for programs to take on the attributes of the theme. Still, we have some people out there that XFCE may be the only desktop they can use! So, I say why not take what we have with these outdated/non-functional themes and do our best to create something in-between that can handle additions of Nemo and programs???

From what I have done with a recent Mate theme called "BlackMate" you can see I am serious about doing this! In fact is now in the works. Unfortunately is not far enough along exhibit pictures. This time around I intend to run the entire theme without the usage of png's or svg's! Yes, this is a difficult task, but have to remember there are devices out there that have a difficult time with those pictures! So, I figure is high time to get to work on something that can handle a great percentage and still look decent! Remember no black and white text! Time to wipe that out!!!!

Anyway as am no pro, just a good guesser here and there, will ask if anyone has some advice on how to accomplish this. Am basically looking for ideas as I also cultivate some of my own. So any help will be greatly appreciated as I know when is done many will appreciate the outcome!
Firm believer in Asus, Linux and Technology
"Art is to be enjoyed by all that enjoy it"
Asus M5A97 Plus motherboard
AMD FX 4350 Processor
Asus R7250 2GD5 graphics card
16gig DDR3-1333
2TB Hitachi Hard Drive
24in Asus VE248 LED Monitor
OS=My 8th OS Star Trek(Ubuntu 16.04)
Desktops=Gnome 3.20 and LXDE
Warp Speed!
ASUS Laptop R503U
AMD E2-1800
ATI HD7340
4gig Memory
500gig Hitachi HD
OS= Win7 SP1/8th OS Star Trek(Ubuntu 16.04)
Desktops Gnome 3.20 and LXDE
2nd 500gig Seagate HD R.I.P
User avatar
BBOSAK2143
U.E. God
U.E. God
 
Posts: 923
Joined: Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:56 pm
Location: Mount Pleasant, Tennessee
Age: 61
Operating System: Ultimate Edition 3.5 64 BIT



Re: XFCE Themes?

Postby BBOSAK2143 » Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:42 pm

Okay, so one of the first things needed is a gtkrc that makes no reference to pngs or svg's. This morning found some great information and have accomplished this for a new type gtkrc which will implement into this new idea of mine. Remember the whole idea is to make LXDE, XFCE and Mate resemble Gnome as closely as possible! Also, the theme size will be considerably smaller. As is nowhere near done since gtk-3.0 is in need of a bit of work, I can only estimate the size of the entire theme close to 100kbs. Remember a full blown Gnome theme is anywhere from 300kbs and up!

Of course in the last week I lowered the size of my themes to under 300kbs to about 291kbs, and that was with 3 pictures for gtk-2.0. In gtk-3.0 there is close to 100kbs of pictures that implements the entire theme. I will next be working on that aspect. At present though figured would give a few examples what has been done for a few of my themes which were not possible to display properly with the png's for gtk-2.0. I suppose when you use off the beating track colors as I tend to use, it is nearly impossible to match those colors with pictures!

Remember BeiTanBro is still not possible to use in Mate, but Purple Popper has now found its way to be usable on all desktops with this new re-working of the gtkrc. As not to bore anyone beyond belief, here are the two examples and remember as I get more things functional will then also show:
Attachments
No_gtk-2.0pngs_BeiTanBro.jpg
No_gtk-2.0.pngs_BeiTanBro
Purple_PopperMate.jpg
Purple_PopperMate
Firm believer in Asus, Linux and Technology
"Art is to be enjoyed by all that enjoy it"
Asus M5A97 Plus motherboard
AMD FX 4350 Processor
Asus R7250 2GD5 graphics card
16gig DDR3-1333
2TB Hitachi Hard Drive
24in Asus VE248 LED Monitor
OS=My 8th OS Star Trek(Ubuntu 16.04)
Desktops=Gnome 3.20 and LXDE
Warp Speed!
ASUS Laptop R503U
AMD E2-1800
ATI HD7340
4gig Memory
500gig Hitachi HD
OS= Win7 SP1/8th OS Star Trek(Ubuntu 16.04)
Desktops Gnome 3.20 and LXDE
2nd 500gig Seagate HD R.I.P
User avatar
BBOSAK2143
U.E. God
U.E. God
 
Posts: 923
Joined: Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:56 pm
Location: Mount Pleasant, Tennessee
Age: 61
Operating System: Ultimate Edition 3.5 64 BIT



Re: XFCE Themes?

Postby BBOSAK2143 » Fri Apr 25, 2014 11:35 am

For this post, I want to mention the main goal. The main goal is to obtain the closest possible resemblance in XFCE and LXDE desktops to that of Gnome Flashback. For those that have followed Gnome as closely as I have, you now know the Flashback desktop is getting dropped in 3.12. So for those of us theme creators that were able to use all these neat little tricks of coloring are so to speak "SOL" unless we can bring that same beautiful work to other desktops. Sure there are some people looking at forking Flashback, but who knows when it will happen????

Now, most desktops such as XFCE, LXDE and Mate solely rely on what is done in gtkrc, so this is going to be a huge part of this post! In the future I will also discuss some things for gtk-3.0 but for now am going to examine gtk-2.0's gtkrc in fine detail!!! Whatever information I can find, I am going to let all know, so they can understand what can be done so nice looks can be obtained for the above mentioned desktops! Also is real important as we have smaller devices such as tablets and smartphones that are capable of displaying those desktops, although may wind up in trouble due to some constraints. The constraints I am mentioning in first post here, are png's and svg's. So, I basically want to dump all those pictures and rely on text!

Originally, I was led to believe these pictures save on many words.Thought it would be a lot more words but is really not! Below I am going to list 2 codes first one will be with the png's and the second one without. Also the same will go for the pictures shown below that will depict each coding:
Code: Select all

style "menu"
{
   bg[NORMAL]   = @base_color
   fg[NORMAL]   =  shade(1.2, @fg_color)
   text[NORMAL] =  @text_color

   engine "pixmap"
   {
      image
      {
         function   = BOX
         file      = "assets/bg.png"
         stretch      = TRUE
      }
   }
}


Now the second:
Code: Select all

style "menu"
{
bg[NORMAL] = mix (0.9, @bg_color, @base_color)
fg[NORMAL] = shade(0.9, @dark_fg_color)
text[NORMAL] = @text_color

engine "xfce"
{
boxfill
{
fill_style = gradient
orientation = vertical
shade_start = 1.55
shade_end = 0.0
}
}
}
[/code]

Now for the pictures 1st is CyanMate and 2nd is Cyan. Regardless of the name as both were intended to look the same on LXDE and Flashback. You will notice in picture of CyanMate the wrinkles from the png file. In Cyan is clear and looks exactly as it originally looked on Flashback, down to the selected text color when scrolling through the menu, something that now does not work right since 13.10, but is being looked into! Here's the pics:
Attachments
CyanMate2.jpg
CyanMate2
Cyana_LXDE.png
Cyana_LXDE
Firm believer in Asus, Linux and Technology
"Art is to be enjoyed by all that enjoy it"
Asus M5A97 Plus motherboard
AMD FX 4350 Processor
Asus R7250 2GD5 graphics card
16gig DDR3-1333
2TB Hitachi Hard Drive
24in Asus VE248 LED Monitor
OS=My 8th OS Star Trek(Ubuntu 16.04)
Desktops=Gnome 3.20 and LXDE
Warp Speed!
ASUS Laptop R503U
AMD E2-1800
ATI HD7340
4gig Memory
500gig Hitachi HD
OS= Win7 SP1/8th OS Star Trek(Ubuntu 16.04)
Desktops Gnome 3.20 and LXDE
2nd 500gig Seagate HD R.I.P
User avatar
BBOSAK2143
U.E. God
U.E. God
 
Posts: 923
Joined: Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:56 pm
Location: Mount Pleasant, Tennessee
Age: 61
Operating System: Ultimate Edition 3.5 64 BIT


Return to Themes, wallpapers, logos etc.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests