Installing and Creating Themes in the Gnome Desktop

Question

In Ubuntu 9.x, I could browse/install and create/name etc all aspects of the theme, even go to the Gnome art website and download and install Gnome themes all with one tool.

Now I can only customize bits and pieces of a Gnome theme, and can't even install Gnome themes when I download the Gnome art packages.

I have to do this manually. I can't even change the colours of the main window menu. I could do all this with one simple application in version 9.x, but from 11.x on I have not been able to do this. There are application which can do this, but only change different pieces of the theme, such as colours, window colours, fonts etc.

Where can I get the application that 9.x used? It was so convenient. I am currently using Ubuntu 12.04 lightdm with lightdm greeter and gnome-classic metacity desktop.

Answer 1

Where can I get the application that 9.x used? It was so convenient

Nowhere, that application was used to and with GTK 2 Themes, those themes used an XML like structure. GTK 3 was a big leap from that, it uses CSS making them different enough that porting a Theme is really making a new one. Thus Gnome Appearance is no longer of any used in Gnome 3.

Granted that it was easier to change things like colors before it is not that hard now, if you want to change the colors of theme just open the file gtk.css located inside the Theme folder.

You will find colors are in hex, and the lines are pretty self explanatory so you know what you're changing.

Also installing theme snow isn't that hard, just drag n' drop the theme folder inside the hidden themes folder in your Home (.themes/).