HOWTO Change Gnome Panel Text & Handle Colour

[_simon_]

Note: I cannot help with transparency, I have looked all over the place but not been able to find a working guide.

Create an empty file called .gtkrc-2.0 in /home

If you already have a .gtkrc-2.0 then just add the code to your existing file.

Paste the following code inside:

style "panel"
{
    bg[NORMAL]               = "#"
    fg[NORMAL]               = "#"
}
widget "*PanelWidget*" style "panel"
widget "*PanelApplet*" style "panel"
class "*Panel*" style "panel"
widget_class "*Mail*" style "panel"
class "*notif*" style "panel"
class "*Notif*" style "panel"
class "*Tray*" style "panel"
class "*tray*" style "panel"

bg[NORMAL] is what defines your Gnome panel handles colour, simply add the hex code for the colour that you require. - you will probably want it to match the colour of your Gnome panels.

fg[NORMAL] is what defines your Gnome panel text colour, again simply add the hex code for the colour that you require.

e.g.

bg[NORMAL] = "#000000"
fg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"

This gives me a handle colour of black and a text colour of white.

Now save the file, logout and back in and you should see the changes take effect.

[nimbledinosaur]

Thanks for the how too, worked perfectly.

[aktiwers]

Here is another way (almost the same)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=334570

[ravenon]

Gnome Color Chooser also works nicely. It is available on gnome-look.org

[JackTheDipper]

it's available on http://www.punk-***-bitch.org/gnome-color-chooser/ and not on gnome-look.org anymore

[edit]
ok, the forum doesn't like that address *g*
but it can be downloaded here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnomecc/
[/edit]

[el-mar01]

Hey,

How would I exclude the gnome window list from the colour/font change in the panel ??

Thanks

[sethborders]

i tried it and it didnt work. did i miss something?

[nathan726]

Originally Posted by sethborders i tried it and it didnt work. did i miss something?

You need to restart the panel for any changes to take effect. You can do that by opening the terminal and typing:

killall gnome-panel

One question: how do you change the "hover" text colour?

[Veggiet]

Gnome-color-chooser does let you pick the text color, but still doesn't include those pesky panel handles, so this tutorial worked great, now if only I could save the theme completely!