Last week we (somewhat light-heartedly) wondered whether Ubuntu's minimize icon should be changed from a horizontal line to a vertical one so as to match the area of the screen it now affects. Not every agreed; some even felt short-changed at being "forced" to waste their time reading "blog filler". But a number of you thought: "Hey! This makes sense!".
A revamped version of Ubuntu's default GTK theme landed in Ubuntu 12.10 yesterday. If you're not running Ubuntu 12.10 you may be feeling left out. But you don't need to be as the theme and its engine can be used in Ubuntu 12.04 - and here's how.
Minor tweaks to Ubuntu's default Ambiance and Radiance themes have begun to appear in Qunatal's development branches. Although the changes are not as "origami" like as Mark Shuttleworth hinted during his UDS keynote, they do refresh the theme by polishing off its rough edges.
"Arrrgh" cried the perfectionist Ubuntu user when looking at his screen, "My window borders look awful!" If you are using Ubuntu's default Ambiance theme then you, like the exaggerated exmaple user above, have jagged window corners on your windows. It's not a big deal for most (cue comments of 'I never noticed") but for others it... well it irks....
Ubuntu introduced a minor ew theme change for 12.04 - that of making right-click menus inherit the dominant tone of the 'parent' window.
Unity's 'chameleonic' colour matching feature is great at giving the Ubuntu desktop to give your desktop a subtle but consistent feel. It takes the 'average' colour of your desktop wallpaper and uses this to 'tint' the Unity dash, launcher and notification bubbles. But what if it went a bit further and used this colour in the default GTK theme? That 'What if' has now been answered by developer David Callé.
Have you noticed that Ubuntu's default Ambiance theme displays the majority of its menus in a 'light' colour, despite the rest of theme being 'dark'?
Cross-platform app launcher 'Launchy' might be a helpful tool for getting things done quickly but the default theme it ships with doesn't look all that great in Ubuntu. Thankfully we have a solution - Ubuntu user Maxime has created both an Ambiance and Radiance theme for the utility. And they look great...
Dark Toolbars and a new panel gradient are amongst the 'work in progress' changes to Ubuntu's default theme for Ubuntu 11.10.
Dual booters, or even full-time Windows users, who want to add some Ambiance style to their Windows 7 desktop can do so by downloading and install the 'Ubuntu 11' theme for Windows 7.
A PPA for easy installation of elegant Ubuntu theme fork 'Ambiance Evolution' is now available for users of Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04. Ambiance Evolution is the work of DeviantArt user ~simplygreat, and see the theme mod upgrade the stock Ubuntu Ambiance version to a borderless beauty boasting Ubuntu One style dark toolbars and improved application sliders, progress bars and buttons.
"Yo Mr OMG!, Can you feature a theme other than Ambiance-based ones?" I will soon, I promise. But in the mean time let me draw your attention to some more work by ~simplygreat who has created a rather elegant mod of Ubuntu's default Ambiance theme.