I have been using Ubuntu for a while now. With 8.10 just around the corner, I'm considering trying out Kubuntu again. I like to theme my desktop with all the eye candy at gnome-look.org / kde-look.org. Gnome seems to have some insurmountable problems with really dark themes. Particularly in web browsers that inherit the Gnome colors, dark themes are not usable because inputs and other stuff that do not have CSS colors specified are unreadable.

How does KDE 4.1 do with dark themes? Are there any such issues?

It actually comes with a few dark color schemes, and they work pretty well with the default Oxygen theme.

Taken from KDE 4.2 trunk, 4.1 is very similar.



(Couple of minor glitches as I didn't fully change the scheme, see the Dolphin info box for example)

Just a warning: many websites have issues with dark themes ( at least in konq4 ). In particular text will be black ( on a black background so it's unreadable without selecting it ), text boxes such as the reply one on this forum will have a white background.... with white text. as a result because i use konq4, i have to use a light theme ( oxygen at the moment )

bcooksley wrote:Just a warning: many websites have issues with dark themes ( at least in konq4 ). In particular text will be black ( on a black background so it's unreadable without selecting it ), text boxes such as the reply one on this forum will have a white background.... with white text. as a result because i use konq4, i have to use a light theme ( oxygen at the moment )

It's the same with Konqueror 3.x ...but wouldn't it be a better solution to have an option in Konqueror to override the window background colour scheme for only its own windows?

I imagine a checkbox with a colour chooser next to it (e.g. "Override background colour" -> colour) in the settings so the user could enable or disable this option and choose which colour (s)he would like as the background colour in Konqueror.

P.S. Truth be told — such websites have sloppy CSS where they forgot to add the background (or text box in some cases) colour :P

Perhaps konqueror should have a default colours preference panel, with options for "Follow theme" and "Use reasonable web defaults" as two options ( with of course the mandantory full custom option as well ).

There is *somewhere* a default css for khtml you can edit. Not the best solution, but works. However, i currently have no clue where it exactly is.

Blizzz wrote:There is *somewhere* a default css for khtml you can edit. Not the best solution, but works. However, i currently have no clue where it exactly is.

Settings > Configure Konqueror > Stylesheets

You can then point it to your own .css file.

jrick wrote:

Blizzz wrote:There is *somewhere* a default css for khtml you can edit. Not the best solution, but works. However, i currently have no clue where it exactly is.

Settings > Configure Konqueror > Stylesheets

You can then point it to your own .css file.

and from opera one could "steal" the user and author mode, as you switch to user mode when a webbsigt is crippled and your own settings kick in. and have it by one button that can be "off" or "on" in teh way of sunken or raised button or bakground changed button when on or somthing in that way..

Hi there!

I'm using a darker theme (Evening Lilac) too and I'm experiencing problems in KDE 4.0.x, 4.1.x and 4.2.x (or Beta 1/2).

For example with Kword 2.0 (Beta 4):



Kopete:



Or Quassel (non-KDE, but Qt4):



I filed some bugreports because of this, but either my bug report isn't good enough, maybe (I'm only able to show the pictures), there's no responce (kword, kopete) or sadly no one is responsible for this (Quassel: That's not our problem. Ask KDE. KDE: That's not our problem. I'll file a bugreport for quassel. Or this is a problem of your colour scheme or this is a problem of Qt).

I'm a little bit sad about this, because I don't like light (light-coloured?) colour schemes and Evening Lilac (it's a default scheme, isn't it?) became my favourite colour scheme. Kword is unusable, Kopete... okay, I can do something about this, but this is only a workaround, not a solution, Quassel/system tray messages... don't know what to do about this and all my browsers are quiet unusable on some pages: Konqueror, Opera (Qt4-Version) and Firefox, too.

Do you know a workaround for the browsers? I'm not familiar with css-files (though, I'm only a user, not a developer).

And will there be a bugfix or something like this? What can I do as a user?

Wow. I haven't been receiving any post notifications for this thread until today even though my profile default is to subscribe and receive notifications. Had no idea there was a response :P

One thing I did was change the Appearance settings to use the Raleigh theme for non-KDE apps. Then there is another setting to not use KDE color scheme in Gnome apps. This worked great for Firefox, OpenOffice and Pidgin the three apps I use most often. Of course, Konqueror does not work well.

It is really too bad that dark themes are not better supported by the various applications, whether you are using Gnome or KDE. Is it a matter of having color schemes hard-coded in the various apps that are out there, overriding the KDE color scheme?

I have been trying to use KWin by itself but I don't really get the effects I want. I found that manipulating the contrast and selecting like red or blue and then going to the bottom and selecting the darkest...esentially black in that color can give you some very rich darks in kwin. Then I use compiz and emerald with it to get better borders and effects. IMHO

Here is what I am doing.

bcooksley wrote:Just a warning: many websites have issues with dark themes ( at least in konq4 ). In particular text will be black ( on a black background so it's unreadable without selecting it ), text boxes such as the reply one on this forum will have a white background.... with white text. as a result because i use konq4, i have to use a light theme ( oxygen at the moment )

Oh Gosh, I would love it if someone could do something about this.

it's the same in firefox and probably every other browser. It is extremely annoying.

even some places not on the web... Just a few mins ago I was in gimp and was selecting a file format to save as, all black on black

bonfire89 wrote:Oh Gosh, I would love it if someone could do something about this.

it's the same in firefox and probably every other browser. It is extremely annoying.

even some places not on the web... Just a few mins ago I was in gimp and was selecting a file format to save as, all black on black

You can fix Firefox, OpenOffice and other GTK apps by doing the following:

1. System Settings > Appearance > Colors
uncheck apply colors to non-KDE4 applications.

2. GTK Styles and fonts
click the radio button for Use another style and select ClearLooks, Raleigh or another standard theme from drop down.

The system settings location for appearance is slightly different in different distros and also things may be labeled differently. This will allow you to select a dark Color scheme such as Obsidian Coast and it won't mess up GTK apps. You can also download a dark theme for Firefox for a more seamless appearance.

Its been 3y since the last post here but I decided to bump it cause am still experiencing issues with applications when using dark themes, and couldn't find any other related post.

Some forum reply boxes, search boxes and txt files when opened in qt browsers (rekonq, qupzilla) appear to have black text on a dark background that makes it nearly impossible to read.

Am using KDE 4.8.0 against qt 4.8.

Is there any idea at all what is causing this behavior?

Thank you