The easiest way to see which of the 5 Xfce theme components are being addressed by any one theme, is to review the content of the compressed files that you download. As well as maybe a GTK2/GTK3/xfwm category. I would also like to see a GTK2/GTK3 category for themes that contain both of those components. Maybe, xfce themes should be xfwm (Window Manager) themes, but they should change the title and call it Window Manager themes, and then only put window manager themes there. The problem is that the content in those sections doesn't particularily fit with any pattern that I can discern. They offer GTK1.x (which hasn't been used for quite some time), gtk2 and xfce theme categories. Now as for, I personally find that site confusing. Please also note that Greybird requires both the murrine and pixbuf theme engines to properly render the GTK components.
#GTK THEMES PLUS#
Greybird is one of the better themes since it supports both gtk2 and gtk3, plus offers a consistent look with an xfwm4 component and a notification component. The other 2, unity and metacity, are not related to Xfce. Gtk-2.0 gtk-3.0 metacity-1 unity xfce-notify-4.0 xfwm4Īs you can see above, the Greybird theme has a gtk-2.0 folder (supports gtk2), a gtk-3.0 folder (supports gtk3), and xfwm4 folder (supports the window manager theme component of Xfce), a xfce-notify-4.0 folder (supports notification themes). When you look at a theme, you will notice a number of ls These themes, still fewer in number but growing, provide the best option for getting a consistent look and feel (assuming of course that the GTK3 components of these themes are updated regularly as the GTK3 toolkit changes). To this end, some theme author's have ported their themes to support both GTK2 and GTK3. However, many apps are now based on GTK3 and this poses an interesting problem for Xfce with respect to generating a consistent look-and-feel between all of the apps. If you only use GTK2 apps, you should be able to get a consistent look-and-feel. There has been some talk about re-coding Xfce to fully support GTK3, but since GTK3 seems to be a constantly moving target, the uptake has been minimal (see for an interesting discussion). GTK2, as I understand it, has been retired and the bulk of the work is being done on GTK3. These engines extend the toolkits to allow them to provide further functionality. This is what you refer to as murrine, unico, etc. In addition to the GTK toolkit itself, you can extend the toolkit by using what are called "engines".
In fact, these inconsistencies affect GTK3.x themes in that the themes themselves need to be updated regularly to remain compatible with the GTK3 library version installed on your system (see: for one person's rant). There are difference major versions of GTK (1.x, 2.x, 3.x) that are different among themselves and even within the 3.x branch of GTK, differences between minor version (3.6, 3.8, 3.10, 3.12). Now, GTK (Appearance style) is an interesting beast. The "Icons" (Settings Manager -> Appearance -> Icons) are the icons.Īll of these components play a part in determining the "look" of Xfce as you see it on the screen. The "Cursors" (Settings Manager -> Mouse and Touchpad -> Theme) are the mouse cursor themes. The "Notification" (Settings Manager -> Notifications) are the popup notifications that show up when certain events occur. The "Window" (Settings Manager -> Window Manager -> Style) is all the window decorations which includes the borders, title bar, maximize/minimize buttons, etc. The "Appearance" (Settings Manager -> Appearance -> Style) is basically the GTK component which includes the buttons, textboxes, drawing canvas, etc - everything within the borders and title bars of a window. To begin with, its important to understand what constitutes a "theme" in Xfce. This is my understanding of themeing in Xfce. Get yourself a cup of coffee or tea and and make yourself comfortable. Okay, I'll give this a try but be warned, it will be a long post.