Unofficial Human theme update: "Humanity"

**psyke83** · May 24th, 2009

Update (03/Oct/09): The Humanity theme has now reached version 1.0! The theme consists of a GTK (buttons and widgets) theme, and three Metacity window border themes (Glow, Glass and Smooth - see attached screenshots).

Please note: the Humanity GTK theme will be identical to the final Human GTK theme, which is the default theme used by Ubuntu. However, the updated Metacity window borders may not be included in the default Human theme, due to time constraints and the Beta Freeze. I have submitted a proposal to Canonical to make a freeze exception, but of course, there is no guarantee that they will be accepted.

Hi,

Since I began work on Human-Murrine-Mod (which later became the official Human-Murrine, and finally Human theme), I felt somewhat limited by the Murrine engine's features. However, more recent versions of the Murrine engine have brought new features and opportunities, and have allowed me to get closer to my original vision for this theme.

Providing no bugs or problems are discovered, this should be considered the final version. Enjoy, and any feedback is appreciated!

Note: Although I have contacted Kenneth Wimer (Ubuntu's art lead) to inform him of this update, I have no idea if he'll be interested in considering it for Karmic as an update for the official theme. Therefore, I have provisionally renamed this theme "Humanity".

To install: Open GNOME's Appearance Preferences and click the Install button.
Warning: This will install the theme into the user's account only, which means that applications with root privileges will not be themed correctly. This is not a bug - if you wish all applications to be themed, move the Humanity* folders from the ~/.themes folder to the /usr/share/themes folder, like so:

Code:

$ sudo mv ~/.themes/Humanity* /usr/share/themes/

Bugs (affecting theme, not caused by theme):

Changelog
v0.2 24/05/09 - First public release
v0.3 26/05/09 - Reversed & tweaked tab gradient
v0.4 26/05/09 - Adjusted tab gradient
v0.5 27/05/09 - Reduced scrollbar's trough border to 2
v0.6 30/05/09 - Tweaked tab gradient
v0.7 04/06/09 - Reversed tab gradient (again)
v0.8 24/06/09 - Final tweaks to tab gradient before official release
v0.9 12/07/09 - Small bugfix to notebook theming, button size set to 16x16 - equivalent to human-theme 0.29ubuntu1.
v1.0 03/10/09 - Major update with new colour scheme, including updated Metacity window border designs. Humanity GTK theme will eventually be used as the default Human GTK theme, but Metacity updates may not.
v1.1 15/10/09 - Fix inactive text selection colour, improved widget outline lighting.
v1.2 16/10/09 - Re-add Metacity themes, reduce Metacity border size & set default Metacity theme to Humanity-Smooth.

**Didius Falco** · May 25th, 2009

I like it!

Thanks for sharing.

Regards,

Didius

**rudenko_ruslan** · May 25th, 2009

Yeah, I like it too. Thanks psyke83

**vaibhav** · May 25th, 2009

Cool

I like it!

**Bou** · May 25th, 2009

Hi Psyke,

It's definitely a great theme. After using it for a while, I thins there are only two things where it can be improved:

-The selected tab looks a little too light, almost white. Could it be a bit darker?
-The scrollbars look really good, but its current looks make it difficult to guess where the button ends and where the bar starts. Is there any way to fix that?

**psyke83** · May 25th, 2009

Originally Posted by Bou

Hi Psyke,

It's definitely a great theme. After using it for a while, I thins there are only two things where it can be improved:

-The selected tab looks a little too light, almost white. Could it be a bit darker?
-The scrollbars look really good, but its current looks make it difficult to guess where the button ends and where the bar starts. Is there any way to fix that?

I wanted the selected tab to stand out slightly, but I agree that perhaps it's a little too light at the moment. The problem is that when you darken the gradient for the selected tab, the unselected tabs are also affected, which causes their gradient to become a flat grey (similar to the current Human). I'll tweak this a little more later tonight and see if I can find a better compromise.

As for the scrollbar buttons, there are no real options to theme it differently, except to restore the buttons to the same way as in the official Human theme (and most other Murrine themes).

**psyke83** · May 26th, 2009

Originally Posted by Bou

-The selected tab looks a little too light, almost white. Could it be a bit darker?

I lightened the gradient slightly, but it still looked a little too white. Reducing the gradient caused the tabs to look identical to the current Human...

This gave me an idea: what if I reversed the tab gradient, so that it's darker on top and lighter at the bottom? The results are v0.3, which I think is a definite improvement. Judge from real usage, as the screenshot doesn't do it justice.

**rudenko_ruslan** · May 26th, 2009

I like this new tab gradient. Thanks to the author, and keep working on this theme

**JohnJackson** · May 26th, 2009

Can the scroll bar be made slightly thinner? Otherwise I like it.

**psyke83** · May 26th, 2009

Originally Posted by JohnJackson

Can the scroll bar be made slightly thinner? Otherwise I like it.

Because this theme has a trough border of 3 on the scrollbars (opposed to no border in the original Human), there are 6 less pixels available that are clickable. This can be a problem, especially if users are somewhat impaired when using a mouse, so I decided to make the scrollbar slightly thicker.

The theme currently uses a scrollbar of 14 pixels and trough border of 3 pixels.

Here's two screenshots:
1. Scrollbar of 14 pixels, trough border 2 pixels.
2. Scrollbar of 13 pixels, trough border 2 pixels.

I prefer the thickness of the first screenshot, but the trough border is less noticeable.

I don't like the second screenshot, as the scrollbar takes a little too much extra effort to click.

Any thoughts are appreciated...