When I select a Desktop theme like glassified or oxywin, the icons in my task bar go nuts. They jump left and right constantly. I believe I have the most current theme.

Why is this occurring?

I'm using Oxygen right now. I really like the shapes of items, and how items functions, but I really dislike that brown color. This got me looking for other themes, but I ran across these problems.

Kde 4.3.5/opensuse 11.2

Thank you.

Oxygen should be green or white ( depending on use of the openSUSE branding or Upstream branding ) not brown. If you have compositing enabled, try changing your wallpaper.

No idea why they are constantly change size, they should settle down quickly.

I'll have to stay away from Themes: Oxywin and Glassified until I figure out why the icons/widgets/tasks on the panel/taskbar start jumping back and forth.
The only way to stop it, is to go back to a theme that doesn't have that problem, like Oxygen. It's like something doesn't fit in the task_manager/panel and it keeps redrawing, shifting, and redrawing, but at the speed of humming bird wings. I only tried them because I don't like the dark brown I'm getting in Oxygen.

Now Oxygen. It appears I have a brown mystery on my hands. HHHmmm....

I right-click and select Desktop Settings. Theme=Oxygen. Color=#24607A.
My desktop is a solid #24607A and the desktop folders are a darker shade (KColor Chooser says #1A475A). But popups, krunner, dialogs, even the Traditional (default/std) application kicker all have a background of brown (#020202). I changed the Desktop background Color, but those items are still the same.

I like the Oxygen theme shapes and how it operates. I just don't like that dark brown.

Any other suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you.

Which color scheme are you currently using in System Settings > Appearance > Colours?

bcooksley wrote:Which color scheme are you currently using in System Settings > Appearance > Colours?

I'm using the system installation Default. I double checked, and it is the Default, which appears to have a white background.

Any other thoughts where that dark brown background (popups, dialogs, krunner, app launcher, digital clock widget background etc) is coming from? Just looking at my desktop, everything is blue/greenish. I only notice it, when I start working. I tried options, to learn, but I put them back.

I don't associate a dark brown when I think of oxygen , and it is difficult to pick visual options via mostly words. Given that when I goto Desktop Settings and click on the Theme drop down, and scroll to Oxygen. It is a a rounded-corner rectangle with highlights, and dark brown. Should it be dark brown in the drop down? As I scroll, it seems all my themes are a shade of brown, except Blend, which is bright sky blue. I'd LOVE to get rid of that dark brown.

Thank you so much for your assistance.

Try the following:

Code: Select all

kquitapp plasma-desktop
rm -rf /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/plasma*
rm -r /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/kpc/
kbuildsycoca4
plasma-desktop &

I completed your steps successfully. No luck. Everything looks the same.

Still a dark brown mystery. Where is that brown coming from? HHHmmm....

I don't know what the Oxygen Desktop Settings is suppose to look like. I've googled and tried to look for images. Is it a color, shape, an action... (still learning the features of KDE 4). But looking at this link, http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.4/applications.php, it seems like dark brown is not part of it. So how do I fix "it"?

This link is NOT my desktop, but it has widgets that match the color:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/KDE4_Oxygen3.png. I'll focus on one widget in this image for an example. The analog clock. That is what I am seeing ONLY for popups, dialogs, widgets. For testing, I added the analog clock, and it is dark brown. I click on a folder, in the desktop folder view, and the background is dark brown (#020202). I hit alt-f2 to bring up krunner, and it's dark brown. I click leave and the dialog is dark brown. I hover over the task bar/panel and the popups are dark brown. My desktop is a simple single color, a light blue/green (#24607A), and my desktop folder views are a little darker blue/green (#1A475A). When I right-click on the desktop, that menu is light grey, as is the desktop settings, and add widgets.

I believe what I should see, rather than the dark brown, is some variation of blue/green with the Oxygen Desktop Settings Theme.

Your suggestions are very much appreciated. Any other thoughts?

Thank you.

I still have the brown background problem with the Oxygen Desktop theme.

If not for the brown, I would have stayed with Oxygen. So I looked at Glassifed and Oxywin (without pattern). These 2 themes caused the icons in the system tray and tasks in the Taskbar/panel to go nuts redrawing. I suspected it was either the Digital Clock or Device Notifier widget. I had them both on the right, after the system tray.

It is the Digital Clock widget. I removed it (Argh! Lost all settings for DC) and changed the theme and no problem. I added DC back with default settings. No problem. When I enabled:

- Show Date:
- Show day of the week
- Show year

The icons began jumping.

It seems when the second line of the DC gets longer than the first time, the problem happens, with some themes (i.e., Oxywin and Glassified). The first line is the time (i.e., 11:20 pm). The second line is the date (i.e., 14 Mar 2010 or Sun, 14 Mar). You can have "Show day of the week" OR "Show year", but not both (Sun, 14 Mar 2010).

11:20 pm
Sun, 14 Mar 2010

Right-click -> Desktop Settings -> Theme -> Oxywin
Apply
Icons go nuts
Theme -> Oxygen
Apply

Remove the Digital Clock widget, changed the Theme to Oxywin and applied. No problem.

Original Digital Clock Widget Settings:
- Font: Bitstream Vera Sans
- Bold
- Use theme color
- Show date
- Show day of the week
- Show year

Is this KDE, the DC widget, or the Themes problem?

Thank you.

In this case it is probably the Theme specifying settings such as paddings, etc. which cannot be met due to size constraints.

Are you referring to a desktop similar to the following in terms of color being brown? http://www.desktoplinux.com/files/misc/ ... kde_sm.jpg

In this case it is probably the Theme...

I'll contact the creators at http://www.kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=76.

Are you referring to a desktop similar to the following in terms of color being brown? http://www.desktoplinux.com/files/misc/ ... kde_sm.jpg

No. In your image example, I see the light grey color for the background of widgets. That's what I want. What I'm seeing is really dark brown (KColorChooser: #020202).

See the analog clock and calendar in this image: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/testing-kde-42-release-candidate-on-windows.ars. The user has a blue solid color background and is using the Oxygen theme.

This same site did a good job explaining the Oxygen theme. See:
http://arstechnica.com/software/reviews/2008/01/kde-40-review.ars/2. Scroll down to the section title - The Oxygen widget style. The author says:

... Although the widget style is very attractive and easy on the eyes, its one weakness is that there isn't quite enough contrast in some places with the default settings. Fortunately, the Oxygen widget style works very well with a wide variety of dark and light color choices and KDE makes it very easy to alter the colors and adjust the contrast of 3D elements. ...

Notice the light and dark image examples.

If I go to, Personal Settings -> Appearance -> Style, I see a light color in the Preview, the Default color theme. Where is that dark color coming from that affects backgrounds of widgets, popups and dialogs? Argh! I examined the KDE options carefully, and I'm stumped. What am I missing?

Personal Settings -> Appearance -> Colors is set to Default.

Any thoughts?

Thank you.

Can you please try reinstalling the Plasma theme that was installed? Also, please make sure there are no folders named "oxygen" located in $(kde4-config --localprefix)/share/apps/desktoptheme or any subdirectory of $(kde4-config --localprefix)/share/apps/plasma?

Thank you. Sorry, no change.

I'm beginning to think that this ugly brown background on widgets, popups, dialogs (but strangely enough not desktop folder view) is working as designed. I installed OpenSUSE on a VM with kde 4.3.5, brand new, single color blue/greenish desktop, and oxygen theme, and there's that brown. I'll keep my eyes open for any changes and/or fixes.

Regarding the jumping icons. I thought I was onto something with the Digital Clock.
But I could not repeat the problem on my VM, so I started comparing them, OpenSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.3.5 side-by-side.

On the machine with the Desktop Theme redrawing problem, I increased the height of the taskbar/panel and changed the Desktop Theme from oxygen to oxywin and glassified, and they both worked. I then put the height of the taskbar/panel back to the original height and tried oxywin and glassified again. I expected to see the redrawing problem, but I didn't. They worked! In fact, I can not get them to fail.

So it seems just increasing the height of the taskbar/panel and then putting it back, fixed whatever was going on... permanently. That's a good thing, but I can't explain it. Oh well.

Thank you.