On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 8:50 AM, David C. Rankin wrote:

Listmates,

       I stumbled across some absolutely killer gtk-2.0 & metacity themes that caught my eye. If you use gnome, Xfce, etc.., give them a try and I guarantee you, you

Are all of them black-ish?

Actually, dark themes can be easy on the eyes, I've found. But they gotta be well done, cos otherrwise they just look weird. 2010/2/27 Nilesh Govindarajan

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 4:31 AM, Sachiel wrote:

...

...

Listmates,

I stumbled across some absolutely killer gtk-2.0 & metacity

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 8:50 AM, David C. Rankin wrote: themes that caught

...

my eye. If you use gnome, Xfce, etc.., give them a try and I guarantee you, you

Are all of them black-ish?

Thank god I didn't check them out. I hate blackish themes.

-- Nilesh Govindarajan Site & Server Administrator www.itech7.com

On 27 February 2010 12:08, Michishige Kaito wrote:

Actually, dark themes can be easy on the eyes, I've found. But they gotta be well done, cos otherrwise they just look weird.

95% of dark themes/skins on the WWW is poorly done. It's difficult to create one properly; you need the correct balance of contrast. Even the dark palette in KDE is not perfect. -- GPG/PGP ID: B42DDCAD

On 02/26/2010 12:50 AM, David C. Rankin wrote:

Listmates,

I stumbled across some absolutely killer gtk-2.0 & metacity themes that caught my eye. If you use gnome, Xfce, etc.., give them a try and I guarantee you, you will be blown away. They are available at gnome-look or Xfce-look.org sites or by googling the theme name. Most also come with an emerald theme as well as part of the package. Here is the short list:

** Abstract-DarkGlow Aero-ion3.1 Black Plastic V.2 ** Blue-Joy Correcamins DarkVision DiMurrineGTK Dust (Dust Burnt, and the rest of the Dust ... themes) Elegant Aurora (and the other Elegant....) Glow Fire (Lava, Flower, Cinder ...) Harvest Industrial-Glacier (GONYX, Lighthouse, Charcoal, Zeta, ...) Moomex Nova-Blue (Gold, etc...) Overglossed Oxygen-Molecule River Shifte_Black ShinyBlack Silence ** SlicknesS-black SphereCrystal Tenebrific-BlueMods Vision Xfce-cadmium (many of the Xfce themes also have matching gtk themes) Zniavre

** (top 3 for me - the rest are a close 4th)

And the screenshot giving an example of Blue-Joy and SlicknesS-black:

(86k) http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/ss/gnome/gnome-bling.jpg

They're just so.. black. And I like dark themes, but some of those are solid black.. And Dust doesn't work for some reason :(

On 02/26/2010 10:08 PM, Michishige Kaito wrote:

Actually, dark themes can be easy on the eyes, I've found. But they gotta be well done, cos otherrwise they just look weird.

Agreed, I'm very picky about the shade and contrast of the themes and set my own colors, Appearance -> Customize -> Colors. These themes are excellent with the dark colors I have. Perhaps I'll dig out my gtk2 theme and post that so I can insure you see what I see. I'm confident that if you do, you do, you will like what you see :p -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:41 AM, David C. Rankin < drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:

On 02/27/2010 12:46 AM, Nilesh Govindarajan wrote:

...

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Michishige Kaito <snip>

...

Till date whatever black themes i've tried let it be for GNOME, KDE, XFCE or Firefox, they strictly didn't suit me. It strained my eyes. Since then I took an oath not to ever see blackish themes :D

This will help show what I'm seeing. This screenshot is with the Blue-Joy theme:

http://archangel.3111skyline.com/dl/ss/gnome/darkTheme_02.jpg

You may still not like it, but I wanted to give you a chance of seeing what I was looking at.

-- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

Grrrrrrr..... I've tried a similar theme. I don't like this. It strains my eyes. -- Nilesh Govindarajan Site & Server Administrator www.itech7.com

Excerpts from David C. Rankin's message of 2010-02-26 08:50:59 +0100:

Listmates,

I stumbled across some absolutely killer gtk-2.0 & metacity themes that caught my eye. If you use gnome, Xfce, etc.., give them a try and I guarantee you, you will be blown away. They are available at gnome-look or Xfce-look.org sites or by googling the theme name. Most also come with an emerald theme as well as part of the package. Here is the short list:

** Abstract-DarkGlow Aero-ion3.1 Black Plastic V.2 ** Blue-Joy Correcamins DarkVision DiMurrineGTK Dust (Dust Burnt, and the rest of the Dust ... themes) Elegant Aurora (and the other Elegant....) Glow Fire (Lava, Flower, Cinder ...) Harvest Industrial-Glacier (GONYX, Lighthouse, Charcoal, Zeta, ...) Moomex Nova-Blue (Gold, etc...) Overglossed Oxygen-Molecule River Shifte_Black ShinyBlack Silence ** SlicknesS-black SphereCrystal Tenebrific-BlueMods Vision Xfce-cadmium (many of the Xfce themes also have matching gtk themes) Zniavre

** (top 3 for me - the rest are a close 4th)

And the screenshot giving an example of Blue-Joy and SlicknesS-black:

(86k) http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/ss/gnome/gnome-bling.jpg

Hey, I tried the favorites there, but wasn't blown away. Basically all of them have usability issues. However, I had a look today and found one I really like. The only issue I found with it so far is minor (active tab in firefox could be better visible). Thought I let you know. http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=33246 I use WaspLogin (this variant has dark background in filemanagers) with some GNOME icons now, and really love it. Regards, -- Philipp -- "Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan

Excerpts from David C. Rankin's message of 2010-08-21 05:00:46 +0200:

On 08/19/2010 07:16 PM, Philipp Überbacher wrote:

...

Hey, I tried the favorites there, but wasn't blown away. Basically all of them have usability issues. However, I had a look today and found one I really like. The only issue I found with it so far is minor (active tab in firefox could be better visible). Thought I let you know.

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=33246

I use WaspLogin (this variant has dark background in filemanagers) with some GNOME icons now, and really love it.

Regards, -- Philipp

Whow... old post. Yep I agree those themes were pretty much yesterday. Mix and match the following new list of favorites. Just grab them from my box:

I did remember such a thread, and that's what my mail client came up with. Didn't notice that it was half a year old..

Aeternum: http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/gnome/gtk/Aeternum.tar.gz

Doesn't show up in my theme choosers.

AnimaNera: http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/gnome/gtk/AnimaNera.tar.gz

Not bad, I didn't find any severe issues, it's just really black, so some widgets are almost impossible to see unless highlighted. Example: Aqualung balance/volume/progress sliders. Among the really really dark themes this one seems to be pretty good :)

Darkness (rgba true) http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/gnome/gtk/Darkness_GTK2_(rgba_true)_v1.3b.t...

Darkness (rgba false) http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/gnome/gtk/Darkness_GTK2_(rgba_false)_v1.3b....

No problem seeing those sliders with this one, since they appear white, but it fails my ROX filer keyboard navigation test. It's very very hard to see where you are with the keyboard 'cursor'. Well, with most other dark themes it's invisible :) It's also hard to see which tab is active in FF.

The rest in that directory are pretty good as well. Then drop by my deviantART page and grab the dcrExtrude emerald theme if you use compiz with emerald decorations. I really like that one.

http://drankinatty.deviantart.com/gallery

I use no such stuff, no gnome, compiz or any other fancy stuff. I just like themes I can still look at at night. The problem is that most dark themes fail to provide the one or other visual cue and this way make some programs hard to use. I haven't seen the perfectly usable theme yet, and bright ones fail as well as dark ones. So my main concern is usability over prettiness, and I like simple clean stuff, no bling. Ironically it's the WaspLogin theme, something probably written for some login manager or something, that fits best so far. I was contemplating writing my own or modifying a theme, but let's say when I did this for a program I had to name the theme 'illegal'.

Then actually visit the galleries of people that know what they are doing with gtk theme design:

http://lagadesk.deviantart.com/gallery http://mk64.deviantart.com/gallery

For icons see:

http://bluepal.deviantart.com/gallery/

Too much bling for my taste. Icons must convey the meaning at any size, what I've seen there is ill suited.

That will get you some of the current stuff I've found. Then you can shoot it full of holes :p

Thanks for the suggestions David, the AnimaNera theme is certainly usable. I find it too dark for day usage but I'll try it again at night. Regards, -- Philipp -- "Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan