Xfce Forum

revgaud

Member

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 2

Theming program

Hi all,
I've installed Xubuntu to try it out. I like XFce4 and I would like to try my hand at theming. Is there a program available to do this, or do I have to learn to write gtkrc files by hand, or modify existing ones?

p0ng

Member

From: Brasil

Registered: 2007-01-25

Posts: 15

Website

Re: Theming program

see http://www.xfce.org/xfwm4-theme-howto for details

Cheers

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revgaud

Member

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 2

Re: Theming program

see http://www.xfce.org/xfwm4-theme-howto for details

Cheers

Thanks for the link, I'll check that out. I was trying out some themes from art.gnome.org, but I found that the window decorations didn't work well and I wondered how one would go about theming XFce4. Thanks a bunch p0ng.

Nick

Dev

From: ~

Registered: 2005-02-17

Posts: 1,144

Website

Re: Theming program

Here is a better link (the slightly better maintained page): http://wiki.xfce.org/xfwm4_theme_howto

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crimesaucer

Member

Registered: 2007-05-21

Posts: 103

Re: Theming program

The best thing to do, is to read as many different gtkrc files as possible, and study how they are made for the engines "xfce".

Then copy your favorite theme that you would like to customize (I'm going to use the theme Xfce-winter for an example), then change the name and put it into your /usr/share/themes like this:

cd /usr/share/themes

sudo cp -r Xfce-winter /usr/share/themes/Xfce-NEWwinter

Next I open up the /usr/share/themes/Xfce-NEWwinter/gtk-2.0/gtkrc with my mousepad while in Root, and start changing the hex color codes to see what they change. What I did was I created a text file called "g_t_k_r_c places", then I wrote down the results of every change I made, like this:

bg[NORMAL] = EEEEEE (the main color of the browser and all apps)
fg[NORMAL] = 000000 (the text color of the browser and all apps)

Now I have a complete list of what every color changes, so when I make a new theme, I can just look at my cheat-sheet. I also wrote down anything else I learned in my list...

You can also compare your old Xfce-winter theme and your newly modified Xfce-NEWwinter theme to see all of your changes.

After you feel that you have a grasp of the colors, then try changing other things like the boxfill and the xthickness and ythickness, and your style "default" settings. You can even change the gradient percentages, shade_start and shade_end, as well as the orientation. Just check out how other gtkrc files write the code for these and don't be scared to try new things. This is my newest xfce4 theme:

Large 1280x800 view: http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r161 … -22-15.png

You should also get the app called: thewidgetfactory (pictured above)

...it's in synaptic and you run it in terminal with the code:

twf

...that way you can see how all your widgets look with your changes and color changes, you can even compare it to your other themes when you click your "themes" drop down menu.

After you make a few themes, you will get better and it will become very easy. Then you can make a matching xfwm4 window theme, or a matching Emerald theme if you use Compiz Fusion.