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Idea #9190: Be able to choose any color for theme

Written by Eldmannen the 28 May 08 at 17:07. Category: Look and Feel. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
Now when you use the Human theme, you're stuck with brown.

You should be able to pick a color of your own likening so that you can choose blue, green, yellow, white, orange, black, gray, purple, teal, pink or whatever you like.

Check this awesome artwork that I made!
* http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/317/coloredthemeyz9.png
* http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7682/colortheme2ls1.png
* Steel
* Rainbow


From idea #9139 (merged):

Currently the theming is all over the place and changing one place does not affect any other. Although that kind of tweakability is great, most users just want different default colors. (pink, blue, brown, black)

What we should be having:
A: wallpaper - changes every release
B: color-theme - human (easily configurable by user!)
C: splash-canvas - human (we need to create this)
D: gtk-engine - clearlooks with B as default colors
E: kde-engine - oxygen with B as default colors
F: icon-theme - tango with color-filter using B

From these we could generate:
- grub-config using A, B
- bootsplash using A, B, C
- gdm-theme using A, B, C, D, F
- kdm-theme using A, B, C, E, F
- gnome-splash using B, C, F
- kde-splash using B, C, F

This way the most important customization people want, COLORS, will affect everything and keep it all one-look-one-feel. From boot to desktop.

Secondly, the art guys can create new engines, splash-canvas and wallpapers. All the specific appearance settings should be hidden under some 'advanced' button. By default, people change their 'engine', 'icon-theme' or 'colors' .. and this should affect everything from boot-to-finish.

Off course we need some magic unlock-button that turns your settings into system defaults.


I think it's also important to use the color scheme.

If this becomes a feature, any user could have a pink/red/black/blue Ubuntu just by changing the color pallete at the preferences window.

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votes
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Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #9190
Written by Eldmannen the 28 May 08 at 17:07.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #9190 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!
17
votes
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Solution #2: Make the SVG icon colors change to match the theme
Written by Endolith the 6 Mar 09 at 02:16.
There's no reason why the color of SVG icons can't be changed to match the theme. The files themselves don't even need to be changed when the color changes; you just need to change the rules used to render them.

By defining a "base color" in the SVG, and telling the renderer to use a color from the theme while drawing it, you can make the icons any color.

For example, I've modified some SVG icons from Ubuntu Human so that they use the "highlight" color instead of a hard-coded orange. Firefox extracts the "highlight" color from your system when it renders, so Firefox will display them in whatever color you use for your theme:

http://www.endolith.com/svgiconcolors/icontest.html

We should do something similar so that folders and the like match the theme no matter what colors you choose.

Propose your solution

Attachments
forum Ubuntuforums.org thread #810686


Duplicates


Comments
John Karahalis wrote on the 28 May 08 at 20:08
Huge +1

Alot of people have been asking for this and I think it is a fantastic idea. It would be very easy to implement and would be incredibly appealing to Windows refugees and everyday users.

By the way, great artwork Eldmannen!

Eldmannen wrote on the 28 May 08 at 20:32
Thanks! :)

nicholas541 wrote on the 28 May 08 at 20:46
You can already sort of do this!
Go to System->Preferences->Appearance. Click Human-Murrie, then Customize. Go to the Colors tab and change Selected Items and it will change your window color!
I give it +1 to make it easier to get to.

Eldmannen wrote on the 28 May 08 at 20:49
nicholas541,
That only lets you change window background color, it doesn't let you change color of the titlebar.

nicholas541 wrote on the 28 May 08 at 21:21
Those settings do change titlebar color. You have to change several of settings to get it right. I can send a screenshot if you want.

nicholas541 wrote on the 28 May 08 at 21:22
Oh, and you have to change the theme to Human-Murrie!

Eldmannen wrote on the 28 May 08 at 21:47
nicholas541,
Even after I change theme to Human-Murrine, I am unable to find any setting to change the title bar.
I don't think that it is possible.

Nickedynick wrote on the 28 May 08 at 23:14
Surely going to customise in Appearance Preferences, and changing the selected items colour has the same effect?

Eldmannen wrote on the 28 May 08 at 23:18
Nickedynick,
No it does not. Try for yourself.

Marco wrote on the 28 May 08 at 23:43
+1

Wold be great to have this one.
One more thing: theme should be setup as an optional step in the installation or when adding a new user.

John Karahalis wrote on the 28 May 08 at 23:46
Changing the color for "Selected Items" does change the color of the title bar, but this feature seems to be a bit buggy and doesn't take effect right away.

Even if this feature did work as intended, it is certainly not as usable or attractive as having a straightforward choice of colors straight from the "Appearance" window.

For that reason, I still stand by my +1.

Eldmannen wrote on the 29 May 08 at 00:02
John Karahalis
Oh, you're right.
It is buggy. Now after I tried again, it worked.

Xero Xenith wrote on the 29 May 08 at 17:05
This would be simply awesome if you could select one colour for the whole system, including the logo at startup/throughout the system, login, windows and background. Then I wouldn't need Blubuntu to have a system I can live with. :)

Eldmannen wrote on the 29 May 08 at 20:21
I just noticed that some administrator have edited my post and merged another idea into my idea.

Not sure why this was done as it was marked a duplicate anyways. I haven't seen this done before.

The merged idea is a bit confusing to me.

alvevind wrote on the 1 Jun 08 at 16:03
Similar to this idea:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5238/

brettalton wrote on the 2 Jun 08 at 19:56
I thought you could finally change the colour of the bar in Feisty, then not Gutsy and then Hardy again. At least that's how it went for me.

saivann (Brainstorm moderator) wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 19:35
I did not accept request to make idea 2614 a duplicate of this one because even if the description really sounds similar, this idea his duplicates are about "more themes" and not the capacity to change colors for a specific theme. If brainstorm "related ideas" functionality comes soon, I think that this should be marked as a related idea.

Super Jamie wrote on the 4 Jun 08 at 11:50
You can already do this and choose ANY color. Follow these steps:

1) System -> Preferences -> Appearance.
2) Ensure you are on the "Theme" tab.
3) Click the "Customize" button.
4) Controls tab: Choose whatever you want, I use Clearlooks myself.
5) Colors tab: Change the "Selected items" color to something of your choosing.
***NOW FOR THE THE CRUCIAL STEP***
6) Window Border tab: Select a random border, then select Human again.

At this point, you'll find your window borders change to the "Selected items" color you just set.

Note: There are only certain GTK Controls that will let you select a customized color, and not all borders will change color to match your selection. If your current controls/border don't behave this way, select another theme. Though Clearlooks/Human is a good attractive selection in my opinion.

TWO wrote on the 6 Jun 08 at 00:53
+1

Calvin wrote on the 17 Jun 08 at 02:55
This would be an amazing idea as it would cut off the need for third party themes such as Blubuntu.

Ape wrote on the 10 Jul 08 at 15:18
Isn't this at least partly already done.

whistler wrote on the 12 Aug 08 at 06:56
It would be great if after installation, the user could pick the color he wants, in a wizard perhaps. I dont mind even if there are as few as 4 colors to choose from. Selecting this color should have a system wide effect, from bootup to window manager to shutdown.

The brown ubuntu color does not normally appeal to users.

plantboy1 wrote on the 16 Aug 08 at 22:24
I changed my Human theme to the color blue. It wasn't that hard to do, and it's always the first thing I do when I install Ubuntu.

nitrofurano wrote on the 5 Sep 08 at 19:01
Try using gnome-color-chooser (it's in the repository) - it allows you to apply colour schemes very in the way we used to do on Irix or KDE.

I sent to gnome-color-chooser developer some Python converters would allow to convert .basecolorpalette (Irix) and .kcsrc (KDE) to .gnomecc (Gnome) colour schemes. Please check for some at gnome-look.org

The only problem may happen is if the theme you're using is not 100% compatible with the colour scheme featuring - some ones are more compatible than others, which seems theme developers could be tuned on fixing them in next versions...

kernel_script wrote on the 22 Oct 08 at 17:31
Good ieda.

+1

There is the GNOME Color Chooser that sort do this too. But it is not complete as this idea proposal. But it is a good app to change GNOME colors.

kernel_script wrote on the 22 Oct 08 at 17:32
*idea

shlomil wrote on the 11 Nov 08 at 23:29
My way to create a blue Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install blubuntu-theme
sudo sh -c "for i in \`find /usr/share/icons/Human -type f -name '*.png'\`; do convert \$i -recolor '0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0' \$i ; done;"

to revert:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall human-icon-theme

Endolith wrote on the 18 Nov 08 at 04:37
Uh... You can already do this.

Appearance Preferences --> Customize... --> Colors tab --> Selected items background button

jeypeyy wrote on the 19 Nov 08 at 13:54
What about this idea? http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13498/

Endolith wrote on the 19 Feb 09 at 15:45
As for changing the main theme color, you can already do this using:

Appearance Preferences > Customize > Colors > Selected items

That will make the title bars and other colored highlights change.

As for making the icons match the theme color, we should take advantage of the flexibility of SVG. Here is an example of some modified Human icons that automatically match your desktop's theme using Firefox's CSS2 colors:

http://endolith.com/svgiconcolors/icontest.html

The "base color" is derived directly from your system's "Selected items" color, and the desktop background color of the little computer icon is derived directly from your real desktop's background color.


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