Dark Themes For the Win

Gnome has a fundamental DT bug

2007-11-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

It appears that GTK's integrated "Search-as-you-type" has a bug (this is the Rhythmbox bug I filed right now). I've seen it in many places around the gnome desktop.

See the bug below for a screenie.

The problem: White is the color for dark themes' text. When the search bar changes, it should either force the text to be black, change the color of the yellow, or detect the lightness and if it's too light, change the text.

Bug filed!

OpenOffice breaks with pixmap themes... not good!

2007-11-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

BAD CODING ALERT!

Apparently, dark themes mess up OpenOffice with Gutsy--or at least the best dark theme out there, Neutronium Unity.

Some options don't open at all and crash it, and the icons don't show anymore. For instance, the Colors section in "Options" does this.

Can anyone confirm, and is there any fix for this?

Thanks :)

EDIT: It's any theme based on the Pixmap engine, and perhaps it's been fixed, but there's no update to Gutsy yet.

BUG #2: Text Editor

2007-09-04T00:54:00.000-07:00

Success! The search match color can now be specified in the style scheme.

Text editor (gedit) is quite good with a dark theme. One thing that might be necessary with a dark background like this is to change the color of the colored text. This is done through menus and is quite easy. That's all right for me! :)

However, there's one minor annoyance, again having to do with a yellow highlight: When you search, it highlights the words, yet when it does so, white text is invisible:

Bug filed!

Overall, once again, four stars!

****-

let's see what the devs can do ;)

BUG #3: Skype Beta Chat

2007-09-04T00:52:00.000-07:00

SUCCESS! This bug has been fixed in the new version of Skype.

Skype Beta chat text is always black, so dark themes get left out :( This is still a beta, so it shouldn't be horrible. I hope they fix this (and get video for linux out soon!).

Other than that, though, looks great! Better than an annoying bright interface :P (the names are white, but i've blurred them out)

Bug filed!

Gmail Notifier users: Freedom to use a dark theme, finally!

2007-07-24T18:34:00.001-07:00

Guess what I found out today? Take a look:

Gmail Notify is a python app.
Gmail Notify's white background is merely an image.
The image, when changed with a dark one, no longer is a problem with white text!

To replace your impossible-to-read notifier with this slick one, merely save this image to your home folder and run the following commands:

cd /usr/share/apps/gmail-notify/
sudo cp background.jpg background-old.jpg
sudo cp ~/background.jpg background.jpg

Restart gmail notifier and there you go! :)

Here's what it looks like:

As you can see, it works best with the Neutronium Unity theme. Don't worry though, all you have to do is make your own if you don't like it ;)

BUG #1: Rhythmbox Search Bar

2007-07-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's my first annoyance. Rhythmbox's search bar turns yellow when I start typing stuff in it, but since my text color is white, it's near-impossible to read it! Here's a screenshot:

Overall, however, Rhythmbox looks great:

Therefore, our DTFTW rating IS:

****-
Four (out of five) stars! :)

Now just fix that little bug guys!

NOTE: screenshot does not necessarily show my taste for music. In fact almost all of that music is from my sister ;)

EDIT: Bug filed here... we'll see what happens!

Update: The bug was already reported, and it looks like it may be fixed in a newer version :) YAY!

Welcome :)

2007-07-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

Hi. This is my attempt to have a nice Open Source experience with my dark theme. I am going to go around bugging developers from all walks of life to FIX THOSE DARK THEME BUGS! :)

You see, no one seems to ever design their application around a dark theme. Sometimes the program assumes that text is going to be black when it shouldn't be. Or maybe vice versa!

I'll be reviewing various apps on my Ubuntu system, and contacting the devs about these little (but important) bugs, so that we all can have a cooler experience on our Linux systems!

ENJOY!