The scrollbars in Unity are of very low contrast, and I can't see where the bar is using just peripheral vision. I have to look at the scrollbar.
Look at Mac OS X interface and notice the blue, contrasting scroll bar. You don't need to look at it directly to have the idea where you are in the page.
How can I change it so that it has more contrast and I see where I am every time?
A bit late, but perhaps I've found a quite nice, easy GUI solution:
Highlights:
~/.gtkrcApply. No need to switch themes back and forthThe changes are quite unobtrusive: it edits (or creates) ~/.gtkrc to include its own config file:
include ".gtkrc-2.0-gnome-color-chooser"
And that file is pretty slim too:
style "gnome-color-chooser-scrollbar"
{
bg[NORMAL] = "#ACACAC"
bg[PRELIGHT] = "#808080"
bg[ACTIVE] = "#ACACAC"
}
widget_class "*Scrollbar" style "gnome-color-chooser-scrollbar"
Btw, I've picked the above colors out of experiments. They blend in nicely with Ambiance's "monochrome-ish" style, being just a bit darker (and thus more visible) than default.
Until Firefox gets overlay scrollbars, I'm quite happy with my custom colors :)
I built upon what culebrón described and accidentally created something I think is pretty awesome...
Open /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc as root for modification:
gksu gedit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
Then modify the matching section in that file to the following (remember to back up the defaults in case you don't like the changes):
style "scrollbar" = "button" {
xthickness = 2
ythickness = 2
bg[NORMAL] = shade (0.62, @bg_color)
bg[PRELIGHT] = shade (0.66, @bg_color)
bg[ACTIVE] = shade (0.64, @bg_color)
engine "murrine"
{
border_shades = {0.95, 0.90}
roundness = 3
contrast = 1.0
trough_shades = {0.92, 0.98}
lightborder_shade = 1.3
glowstyle = 5
glow_shade = 1.02
gradient_shades = {1.2, 1.0, 1.0, 0.86}
trough_border_shades = {0.9, 0.98}
}
}
Save, then apply the changes by toggling themes or logging out.
The new, awesome, and usable scrollbars might look like:
The above changes the scroll bar for applications that use the gtk2 theme files. So does the gnome-color-chooser, (atleast the one in the current repository). For gtk3 applications, like gnome-terminal and gedit in 13.04 using gnome-fallback, one needs to change /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css.
To do this
sudo gedit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css
and replace the * scrollbar * section with this:
/*************
* scrollbar *
*************/
.scrollbar,
.scrollbar.vertical {
-GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: 0;
-GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: 0;
-GtkRange-slider-width: 14;
border-radius: 3px;
border-image: none;
}
.scrollbar.trough,
.scrollbar.trough.vertical {
border-color: shade (@bg_color, 0.64);
}
.scrollbar.trough.horizontal {
}
.scrollbar.slider,
.scrollbar.slider:hover,
.scrollbar.button,
.scrollbar.slider.vertical,
.scrollbar.slider.vertical:hover,
.scrollbar.button.vertical {
border-width: 1px;
border-style: solid;
border-color: shade (@bg_color, 0.4);
background-image: -gtk-gradient (linear, left top, right top,
from (shade (@button_bg_color, 0.76)),
to (shade (@button_bg_color, 0.62)));
box-shadow: inset 1px 0 shade (@button_bg_color, 0.85),
inset -1px 0 shade (@button_bg_color, 0.62),
inset 0 1px shade (@button_bg_color, 0.9),
inset 0 -1px shade (@button_bg_color, 0.62);
}
.scrollbar.slider.horizontal,
.scrollbar.slider.horizontal:hover,
.scrollbar.button.horizontal {
background-image: -gtk-gradient (linear, left top, left bottom,
from (shade (@button_bg_color, 0.76)),
to (shade (@button_bg_color, 0.62)));
box-shadow: inset 1px 0 shade (@button_bg_color, 0.85),
inset -1px 0 shade (@button_bg_color, 0.62),
inset 0 1px shade (@button_bg_color, 0.9),
inset 0 -1px shade (@button_bg_color, 0.62);
}
.scrollbar.button,
.scrollbar.button:insensitive {
}
This gives a scrollbar in gtk3 that looks like this:
Which is kinda similiar to the one for gtk2 above. The small ticks and proper steppers is not included here though.
Found the solution: sudo and open /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc and find this code:
style "scrollbar" = "button" {
Below in the curly braces, change the bg[SOMETHING] lines to look like:
bg[NORMAL] = @selected_bg_color
bg[PRELIGHT] = shade (1.04, @selected_bg_color)
bg[ACTIVE] = shade (0.96, @selected_bg_color)
Or look at the colors declared in line 1 of the file and select the one you prefer. To update the looks, in System settings/Appearance, change the theme to another one and back to Ambiance.
edit: Appears that Xterm uses Radiance theme. Scrollbars in Radiance are black on black and are just invisible. So stylish, yeah! Need to do edit that theme too.
Although not a direct answer to the question, if you dislike the new scrollbars (I don't blame you, they are quite horrendous in my personal opinion), you can revert to standard scrollbars by running the following command:
sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0 liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0
Another alternative:
Some themes that come with colored scrollbars, (Adwaita, NewLooks, etc), have scrollbars that can be easily changed be altering the selected_bg_color setting using dconf-editor: How do I change the "Selected Items" color?
