Dark Color Schemes/Themes in KDE4.1

[melissawm]

Hey guys,

I always had this problem with dark themes, I just wanted to know if it is the case for you guys too

When you decide to use a dark color scheme for KDE (or gnome, whatever) you ALWAYS have these little pieces of the system (buttons, scroll bars, dialogs...) that really don't switch to the same theme you're using. There is also the problem of external programs that won't match the particular theme...

Do you have any suggestions on how to match/tweak these things? I really think that dark themes make my eyes much more relaxed and help me but when they don't work it's just ugly. I'd really just like to know if some of you use dark themes regularly and how do you feel about it.

I'm attaching a screenshot of firefox 3 to show what I mean - I have had to tweak a lot on other programs but right now the only one really bothering me is Firefox. I'm using Kubuntu 8.10. Thanks.

[tonyj]

Re: Dark Color Schemes/Themes in KDE4.1

Hi melissawm ,

That particular annoying effect illustrated in your image seems to be from a combination of using the kde Oxygen widgit theme with Firefox.

I found 2 ways around this:

Option 1. If you change your widgit theme (K > System Settings > Appearance > Style) to something like Plastique, then the buttons and checkboxes, etc look a bit nicer in FF... However, this will obviously change the theme across all your kde apps as well. This was annoying to me, because I LIKE the Oxygen widgits in kde.

Option 2: If you install the "gtk2-engines" package, then you will have some additional themes available (K > System Settings > Appearance > GTK Styles and Fonts > GTK Styles) that will change the look of GTK aware programs like FF, without affecting your other kde progs. The one I chose was "Industrial".

However, I don't particularly use dark themes, and I can't be sure if such options above are suitable for you, but it might be worth an experiment to see.

[bonfire89]

Re: Dark Color Schemes/Themes in KDE4.1

ahhh!!! thank you.. This helped a lot.

I had white on white text, check boxes not showing up and all sorts of crazy things. I took your second option and worked great! thaanks!!!!!!!

[bonfire89]

Re: Dark Color Schemes/Themes in KDE4.1

bah... siiigggh...

90% of the success found in firefox dissapeared upon restart... (forgot to restart initially)

one of the big ones, is with the facebook chat.. I get white on white text because it uses the "view text" setting... buut... for now.. since I don't have the patience to fiddle more, instead of using white text on black throughout my theme, I'm just using a red, or a blue or green or whatever text on black. since that will show up on the white too.

or for example, the attach filebox bellow where I'm typing (which doesn't work btw) is black

[Ayvlis]

Re: Dark Color Schemes/Themes in KDE4.1

Could it be a firefox problem? I've installed a dark theme in firefox (under Windows) and my "forward" button is 80% black with a sort of green line on the right... you see, like you have covered the green button with a dark blanket but the blanket is too small so a piece of button has escaped from it...