Transparent Gnome tray icons have white background!

[auh2o]

This is how my Firestarter and Pidgin icons appear in the tray against a panel using an image background, even though the icons are transparent. What can be done to fix this? According to this five year old thread, GTK libraries didn't support transparency in the tray area back then, but surely this must've been fixed by now? There are even some links to bugfixes in that very thread, but I'm hesitant to apply something that old. What to do?

[auh2o]

Bump.

Here it is treated like a Pidgin bug, and is still not fixed:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...in/+bug/447548

But as evident, Firestarter has the same problem, and so does VLC. Deluge or Transmission however, do not. Neither does Gnome Do. So might it be program specific after all, and not any longer a GTK problem, as it was 5 years ago? This problem is showing up with too many programs though, so you think developers would have taken note.

What other programs do you know who have the same problem?

[Tikkyca]

I think thats because of that theme if not then icons are not transparent it happens sometimes to me like in limewire or vuze,but in other programs it doesn't happen at all.

[auh2o]

The icons do indeed have transparent backgrounds, I have verified this. You can do so yourself by having a look at for example the Pidgin icons in /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/tray in Gimp, should you have them installed.

And it's not a theme, I have simply set the panel to display a background image - and it doesn't matter what image, either. The problem persists. Likewise if I choose a solid color background.

No, the only way I can get the icons to blend in is to use the system theme. That is the color around the icons, that very light gray. Which again leads me to believe it's a Gnome related problem. Somehow, Gnome can't properly handle the transparency of these icons, although it can handle others.

[auh2o]

Well, here's another thread from 4 years ago, lamenting the white color around the Firestarter icon.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=108316

The "solution" in that thread? Paint the area around the icon black to blend with the black panel that guy was using.

Seriously, how can this seemingly simple problem have been around for so long without a fix? There are endless bug reports on Launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ee/+bug/403135

And it IS a theme problem, not an application problem. All themes included by default in Karmic gives several icons either white or black backgrounds. But apparently, the problem disappears with some of the Lucid themes (though not the one applied by default):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...35/comments/80

Screenshot included at link.

So after 5 years of this problem, it may finally go away if you upgrade to Lucid and choose the right theme? That's it? No other solution?

[auh2o]

Am I really the only one still bothered by this in 9.10?

[bornagainpenguin]

Am I really the only one still bothered by this in 9.10?

Hardly! But other than complaining about it, what can we do about it? Strangely enough this wasn't an issue at all for me under Hardy...

--bornagainpenguin

[darkshines87]

Hi,

I recently switched my gnome panel look to a cool semi transparent background image and got rid of this notification icon (that letter thing). Then I activated the Pidgin tray icon and was shocked to see that the transparency didn't work. Even after restarting and switching around the panel looks it didn't change.

I couldn't find any solution to this, although I want one badly!

@ auh2o you are not the only one, this has to be fixed easily, considering that the icon image has transparency information and the fusion and transmission icons have a transparent background.

plz someone fix this!

[Spike-X]

Am I really the only one still bothered by this in 9.10?

No. No, you're not.

*grumble*

[andoni]

I hope it gets fixed in Lucid (I don't think so though...).