I'm running KDE 4.2.1 on Kubuntu 8.10. It's become my new default work environment, but the transparent dialogs are difficult to work with.

With compositing off, dialogs are opaque. With compositing on, they initially appear around 80% opaque, hard for me to read. I can make them completely opaque by spinning the mouse wheel in their title bar, but can't find any setting (gui or config file) that's controlling this initial transparency.

I'd really like to keep compositing turned on and somehow force dialogs to be opaque.

I've tried creating a special window setting to override it (alt+f3 -> advanced -> special window settings -> preferences -> active opacity -> force 100%) but the window manager seems to be ignoring it entirely (even trying to force 50% does nothing). I think I'm missing something obvious with these options.

I'd be grateful for anyone with a solution.

System settings -> Desktop -> All effects -> Translucency -> Button on the right.

By default dialogs have 100% opacity.

Zarin wrote:System settings -> Desktop -> All effects -> Translucency -> Button on the right.

By default dialogs have 100% opacity.

So somehow I've set this myself. That helps narrow it down.

I don't have translucency turned on. I had enabled it earlier and played with the sliders, but even with all sliders at maximum, dialogs were still transparent.

For what it's worth, I have desktop effects enabled, but window management, shadows and various animations turned off. No effects for window switching or desktop switching and all plugins under "All Effects" are disabled. Compositing type is set to OpenGL, functionality checks are disabled, OpenGL mode is "Texture from pixmap", texture filter is set to nearest, and direct rendering is enabled.

You use KWin as window manager, right?

grey wrote:I don't have translucency turned on. I had enabled it earlier and played with the sliders, but even with all sliders at maximum, dialogs were still transparent.

And if you enable translucency and decrease the values, does it affect the dialogs?

Hans wrote:You use KWin as window manager, right?

...

And if you enable translucency and decrease the values, does it affect the dialogs?

Yes, I'm using KWin, and the translucency plugin does make the dialogs more transparent.

That's strange since you've disabled all effects. Can you reproduce this with a new user?

Hans wrote:That's strange since you've disabled all effects. Can you reproduce this with a new user?

Thank you, Hans, you guided me to the solution. A new user did not have the same issue. The Bespin theme was the cause; there's an opacity slider in its configuration dialog (System Settings -> Appearance -> set widget style to Bespin -> click Configure button -> select Window tab).