Xfce Forum

andy230870

Member

Registered: 2012-11-19

Posts: 4

[Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

Dear All,

First post here, please be gentle.

Running xubuntu 12-10 with xfce 4.10 fresh install. Selected "appearance" theme: bluebird. Selected font set, icon set : humanity: window manager theme: tyrex. Also tried totally fresh default install and still the same...

The problem is that the indicators for volume, network connection, wireless etc are colored grey by default and I cannot find a way to change this. Also the action widget when in menu style has the current user name..in normal font weight. I would like to change the widget indicator color to something more visible, say white, and the font weight to bold in the action widget. The clock I can add tags to do this.

What have i tried....

Created ~.gtkrc-2.0 file and learned some of the settings, but cannot determine if any are relevant.
Found the .config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml file and what I think is the right applet section:

" <property name="plugin-9" type="string" value="actions">
      <property name="appearance" type="uint" value="1"/>
    </property>
"
But I cannot (lots of web searching/forum reading/hanging out on the xfce4 channel in irc) find how to achieve my goal.

Last resort was to download a fresh iso, create a live usb and boot my company laptop with it (not strictly allowed) ..still the same problem. It would be great to view the indicators easily!!

Any thoughts/suggestions/help please?

Regards

Andy

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: [Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

What do you mean by indicators? The tray icons?
If yes, the easiest way for you if you don't want to change icon theme (status icons) would be to change the panel background colour for them to contrast.

andy230870

Member

Registered: 2012-11-19

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

Hi thanks for the reply, yes the indicators. I don't refer to them as tray icons as mine are not in the typical "tray" bottom right position, but at the top of the screen. You are right I could set the background to a solid colour, but unfortunately the default colour of the tray icons mean that no colour can contrast effectively with the grey shade to make them visible, they need to be a different colour, hence my question.
Thanks

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: [Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

Then you need to change icon theme or mix&match one by changing the icons in the 'status' folders.

This trend to use monochromatic icons for the notification area started with GNOME3/Unity and then the sheep found it cool but didn't expect that those DEs would give a damn to the users and so they ended in a no man's land.

Now maybe icon theme modders are returning to more sensible coloured icons there (and sensible environments like Xfce).

andy230870

Member

Registered: 2012-11-19

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

Thanks for the reply, I think you are right. Just out of interest, how does one "change the icons in the status folders"? Not sure I know where these folders are, can you point me in the right direction please?
Tks Andy

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: [Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

For example, suppose you want to keep using this icon theme called 'humanity'.
Then you copy its folder from /usr/share/icons to ~/.icons so you can experiment and tweak in a local copy.
Inside its folder there are sub-folders and one of them should be called 'status'. These are usually the icons for the tray.
If there isn't any folder like that then maybe look in the index.theme file which icon theme is listed in the 'Inherits' key as these may be the icons that are being used.

After you change something, usually only going to the Appearance settings and changing icon theme back and forth will reload the icons but for the tray I think that only by logging out and back in.

But you can change icon theme altogether. Search in xfce-look.org for instance.

Last edited by secipolla (2012-11-20 23:27:22)

andy230870

Member

Registered: 2012-11-19

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] xfce4-panel indicator & action widget text and indicator color adjust

Thank you! I've entered an area I never had before, but I've learned a lot. My issues resolved after finding the icons in question and editing the svg files to be a colour that suits the whole scheme. Thank you!