I'm using KDE 4.11.1 straight from the latest KUbuntu 13.10. Nothing fancy installed, just the default theme (Oxygen)

I've been struggling to configure the look of the windows. I have 2 requirements

1/ I use a contemporary theme. Plastik is not exactly visually appealing
2/ The title bar changes its color when the window is inactive.

There is a settings in Application Appearance /Colors / Colors / (In)active titlebar
But this is not honored by recent Window decorations. At least the 50 or something I tried. Just Plastik uses it.

On the other hand, window decorations don't differentiate active windows from inactive ones. Or not very much.

I have found some settings in the desktop effects that seemed to do this. For example dim/fade the inactive windows. But these are eye candies. You can't use this to actually work on your desktop; this is just not practical, or disturbing.

So can somebody explain me why it is impossible to configure the color or tint the title bar of active and inactive windows ?

Has something changed in the way we use desktop environments that make this feature useless ?

Here is what I don't want:

1/ a blue glow around the active window. That's creepy. I changed it so that it looks more like a shadow.
2/ changing the color of the outline and a part of the title bar of the active window. I know it can be done, but it's not what I want. Besides, in Oxygen, it's changing the color of the active window only.

"kcmshell4 kwindecoration", pick oxygen, click "Configure Decoraton", select the "Fine Tuning" page, check "Outline active window title" - it should then follow the configured color like Plastik.

Alternatively use QtCurve, Skulpture or Bespin.

The vast majority of decoration you get from kde-look.org (and _every_ decoration you can install from the dialog) are themes for Aurorae (or Smaragd or Dekorator) - and those usually have a hardcoded look.

This works but I feel that "Outline active window title" is an un-intuitive label for this setting - "Change window title bar appearance when active" might be better?