Ubuntu Wiki

This page contains the Dust theme comment archive.

• Don't like the new scrollbars at all, they are buggy in many applications. I reverted back to the old grey ones, haven't experienced any problems with them.

  • The white scrollbars are a workaround for OpenOffice. The old ones show a border around the stepper buttons. Does it really look bad?

    • Before you mentioned that problem with OpenOffice,I didn't even see it. Seeing that we can't get an absolutely perfect solution for everything, I would recommend taking the old approach (and filing a bug against OpenOffice), because the new scrollbars look really ugly sometimes (gnome-terminal for instance).

Imo it's better to have a perfect look in all GTK (and with qgtkstyle qt, too) apps and file bugs against software which just "emulates" GTK like OpenOffice or Firefox where necessary (because it's obviously there mistake). But this is just my humble opinion. Dust Sand is a really wonderful theme, I'm really thankful for it. By the way, I ported the metacity theme of Dust Sand to XFWM4, feel free to take it and integrate it into dust-extras.

• Does anyone know of a fix for Dust + Eclipse? Other than that, great work. - zachtib

  • The Eclipse toolbar glitches have been fixed in recent revisions. Screenshot / Bug report @SIG

• I think Ubuntu needs a more colorful theme. This looks too much like OS X.
• The icons and buttons remind me of OS X. (Are you using an OS X based icon theme?) I'd change the toolbar buttons to look a bit less like brushed-metal and I think the normal buttons could use some prettying up. Asides from that, I love it. If you've already done any work on the theme, can you please upload it? -- Natan
• A W E S O M E. The only thing I would change are the buttons, they are too much Mac-ish and the GTK controls( just add some RGBA to make them prettier). Artir.

• I don't see how this is OS X-like at all. It's as if people think "looks too nice - like Mac OS X!". Care to explain yourselves, or are you happy just touting the position without constructive contribution? (Aimed at the two above Artir). As for the buttons... they are indeed round, but that's the only similarity I see. Maybe a side-by-side comparison would help. I think the smaller buttons are a good idea because they'll translate better to, for example, close buttons on tabs. It would be good to see how this will look with the minimize and maximize shortcuts in there, too. (Even if you don't intend them to be enabled, users may still choose to turn them on).
  
  The thing with MacOS's theme right now is that it tries to stay out of the way. That is, people aren't looking at it but at the contents provided by an application. Thus, any smart and unobtrusive theme is going to look similar. I don't think that is a problem. The only place where people can really legitimately say "looks like MacOS" (aside from window buttons) is if we break mouse acceleration, we reduce valuable functionality by adding a dock and all of our desktop applications start looking like iPhoto. As is, people may as well say "Ubuntu feels too much like MacOS" because the only time it fails is a kernel panic and it prefers very particular hardware.
  
  Back to the topic, I love the mockup! I am a big fan of having certain containers like menu bars and toolbars darkly coloured, but leaving any content with a light background. It keeps everything readable, organized and pretty darn nice looking, too.
  
  I like that your mockup does not rely on the widgets being positioned any certain way. For example, toolbars are not designed to flow into anything else, and the menus do not cast any extra colour to the theme. This makes it much easier to apply the theme without breaking anything.
  
  While it's quite a different topic, I like what you have done with Nautilus' toolbar. Replacing the context menu items (like Extract) with things that appear on the toolbar could be a nice direction for the future. After all, the context menu is only meant to be secondary!
  
  One other thing: You mention to "let the wallpaper define the look, not the window controls." I agree completely, but there is soemthing you miss. The CONTENT - that is, the stuff inside each window being decorated here - is also key. Let's allow good looking content to exist unhindered by arbitrary window themes. One way to do that is to remove overpowering window borders. For example, today's Human theme has overpowering window borders; a window open to display specific content looks caged off from everything else by a thick grey border. The border is nice for resizing, but that is about it. (And frankly, I think that needs to be fixed; themes should not affect interaction like that). You appear to be doing that, too, in your mockup... which means it gets an A+ from me! -- dylanmccall 2008-08-18 16:43:00

  • Hey guys, I'm the person responsible for the mockup here. Thanks for the comment guys.

    • Re: OSX look: I think most of what makes it OSX are (1) the icons, and (2) the 'unified' title/menu/toolbar look. As for the icons, I didn't really intend to use those icons. I lifted them from a screenshot of my desktop (which happened to be using a Leopard icon theme at that time). Ideally, there should be a theme to go with this. IMHO even the default Human icon theme will look good here.
      
      Re: posting the theme: Sorry guys, this is just a mockup. I'd love to develop it into a GTK theme but I'm not sure if I'll ever get to do that. Will update this thread in case that happens of course.
      
      Re: windowborders: My thoughts exactly too Dylan. Regarding resizing windows, I remember making an Emerald theme that has "transparent" borders -- i.e., meaning they appear borderless, but they can be grabbed by the mouse as resize handlers. Maybe this can be done with gtk-window-decorator too?
      
      Re: small min/max/close icons: Definitely a part of the mockup that didn't get much work on. Having just a close button (and invisible min/max) is unacceptable in my standards too. Sorry for being to lazy to mock those up too. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-08-18 22:13:31

• -- troy-sobotka 2008-08-19 03:48:52 First, to avoid 'is ugly' 'is awsome' 'zomg' 'is nasty', I'll try to temper the comments with related speculation regarding an audience.

  • Mature. The theme has a maturity to it. Hard for me to pinpoint exactly why so, but I'd speculate that it firstly avoids the gaudy heavy handed outlines present in both Tango 48 point icons, but also a plethora of the heavy outlined GTK engines (Murrine included.) That speaks of sophistication, and as a result, maturity. Works in the late twenty to thirty range.
  • Slightly Masculine. The darkness probably lends more to a male audience. Not quite slick hot rods, but enough masculinity to maybe consider neutralizing the tonal value slightly as an experiment? Certainly works on male 'sleek', 'dark', 'mysterious' feeling.
  • Sophisticated. As above. Note the subtle font size as compared against default Ubuntu bold, boxy, and clunky feeling. Note the absence of Tango outlines on both the 48 point icons (Borrowed, of course) and the GTK implementation. This also aids in keeping the GTK button sizes down which helps pull this toward a sophisticated feel.
  • Instrumental. The monochromatic interface elements on both the browser and the panel are plus one. Kenneth Wimer and myself did a brief foray into the monochromatic icon shapes on Launchpad somewhere. I'd have to say that the monochromatic icon look, when executed properly, aspires towards instrumentation panels far superior than the multi-coloured icon sets out there. The GTK and window decorations are examples of this as well -- again avoiding the repetitive heaviness present in so many GTK engines thanks to outlines and overly massive vertical presence.

    • The Nokia N810 uses monochromatic notification icons. They look really great, but I don't know how they are licensed. Definitely worth a lok for people into monochromatic icons. -- kamstrup 2008-09-23 10:02:13

  • Dark Webby. There have been many websites that exploit a dark and simplistic two dimensional feeling to great effect. This theme, using some of those cues, has a very contemporary feel as a result.

  Keep up the good work. Only a few reservations I feel are fighting against the positives potentially. Purely subjective estimations, but...
  • Icons. Avoid Tango if you want to keep the above feel. Avoid Tango styled icons. The 22 point sizes certainly aren't disastrous, and it would be difficult to avoid them at this stage without a groundswell of help. That said, I'd hate to see the overall feel dragged down thanks to Tango outlines and style.
  • Thematic. The basic interface is working tremendously well. What sort of visual imagery would further the thematic along? I don't believe the stones quite do it justice at this point.
  • Palette. This theme might greatly come to life with a little colour. Perhaps through the choice of a visual thematic you can obtain a clear triplet or quad based palette? I believe in this instance the interface being devoid of colour is working extremely well. Round it out with some helping visual colour in other areas? If you get a clear triplet or quad, perhaps you can integrate subtle cues in the active / selected items tones?
  • Let the Dated Die. There are still some yearnings toward gloss on the panels. Might be worth experimenting with the 'webby' concept above by avoiding the gloss? Perhaps even experiment further by dropping the slight 3D feel to the windows? Interesting alternatives at the very least.
  • Real. How close can this theme come to reality at this point? Can we set this into motion via a downloadable tarball?
  Great stuff. Love to see more.
  • Great, except in firefox, the text is black on black on the bookmarks bar, other than that, perfect

• I wrote a comment on Reddit, which I am transcribing here. Should answer some of the questions on where it feels too much like OS X, at least what I perceived:

  • Looks way too much like Leopard.
    • Borderless windows? That doesn't work so well if you don't have things better planned (i.e., every single resizable window will need a bottom-right resizer; even on OS X, which in theory should have sorted that out already, has its eventual quirks with that). Not to mention the shape of the windows is basically the same as OS X's (rounded upper edges with strikingly similar radius, square lower edges). Then there's the shadow of the windows, quite similar to OS X's too.
    • The Firefox theme is obviously an adaptation of the OS X version. Please, we can do better than having round buttons on some toolbars and square buttons on others. Then there's the Safari-ish lack of a status bar, which I find quite bad... and which led here to Firefox being nearly unresizable, due to the lack of a resizer widget.
    • Monochrome notification icons, also too similar to OS X's. I particularly dislike that idea, first because it doesn't really fit with the Tango palette, second because you won't succeed in getting all applications (or even the popular ones) to use similarly-themed icons. In no time the notification area will become a mess of colorful and monochrome icons. So, it's better to just stick with something that blends nicely with Tango, since that's the goal of GNOME UIs today.
    • The fonts are quite small, and that, together with the color and the lack of hinting (another controversial aspect of OS X, by the way), produce text that is blurry and harder to read than it should by default.
    • Plus, it's awfully hard to tell which is the focused window. But since that seems to be just a mock, it could be just that the author didn't work on that yet. Anyway, since I guess the titlebar will have to blend with the menubar for the unified look (another Leopard-ism), it won't be able to change color unless the menu bar also changes, and possibly the whole toolbar/statusbar/client area. I've never seen GTK do that, but I don't know its capabilities either. And changing just the title color will most certainly still be not enough to easily tell the focused window.
    A few other problems which can be solved more easily:
    • Lack of minimize and maximize buttons.
    • Non-hinted fonts. I know, this is configurable, but I find it unlikely that Ubuntu will use them by default, and it'd be nice if the screenshots were taken/mocked looking closer to a default install. My personal favorite is slight hinting, anyway.

    Out of curiosity, what is the "No activity" item in the top panel? I assume this is just something the author uses, not a proposal for the default panels.
    But of course, the author could address all of these points, so this shouldn't be taken as a "there's no hope here" kind of criticism. I'm eagerly looking forward to new versions.
    -- -- mernen 2008-08-25 07:03:24

• please, choose this so i don't feel like i have to excuse myself every time i install ubuntu for someone. "yes, i know it looks ugly, but relax. I'll change the theme right away". - -- lars DateTime(2008-08-25T09:30:00Z)

• Good enough to be the default theme. -- heavensblade23 2008-08-25 22:03:30

• In almost every Drak theme, I've found that workspace switcher is not rendered properly. It's becomes almost invisible. -- sandaru1

• Looks fantastic, but needs some love on the Firefox front and a little something to make things like the system monitor applet and workspace switcher stand out a bit more. Firefox is the more important issue though: that's what keeps me from using this as a new default right away. As far as the icons are concerned: maybe the Foxtrot or Gion icon sets can do the job. I'm using it with Gion now and that seems to fit (but is a matter of personal taste, of course). I noticed some glitches on the panels while 'spinning the cube' with this theme on Intrepid, but then again, those glitches might always have been there and not been noticed by me... -- maxim

• I LOVE it! It has a polish and maturity that can't be found on any other theme I've seen. I'm with maxim though. The GION theme is gorgeous and would fit this theme beautifully. You can find it here: http://art.gnome.org/themes/icon/1340 -- chiefmanyrabbitguteat

• I like it a lot ! I've already tried to install the theme (Murrine), and the result is near the screenshots. I just have 1 question : What is the font used in the screenshots (and plz the configuration too RGB ? slight-hinting or not etc...) and I'll be in paradise -- Cpt-Falcon [2008-08-28]

  • The font I was using in the mockups is proprietary, sorry. As an alternative, I suggest Droid: http://dump.ambiescent.com/i/dust-droid-1.png The settings to get full antialiasing is to check "subpixel rendering (LCDs)" with hinting as "None" (which I assume is what you're looking for!) Good luck @-- rico-ambiescent 2008-08-29 03:30:49@

    • Ok thank you for Droid, I've tried it but I can't have the same rendering as you... I'll try harder But just for info, what was the name of the font you used ? Myriad (Pro) ? Oh and by the way where did you find your icon set ? Blue directories looks great, and the icons in the top bar too ! (Proprietary too ? Nevermind, give me some names plz lol). I hope your theme will be the default theme for intrepid, need some tweaks maybe, but you've already done the big job ! I'm bored by the orange theme :p Where can I vote for you ? Cpt-Falcon 2008-08-29 08:00:49

• It's too dark on my screen. I loved the screenshots but when I installed the themes I was dissapointed.
  I have a cheap and crappy 19" LCD screen, yet most popular IMO, and the panels and toolbars backgroung seems just too black.
  This is more disturbing when one window is on all the screen so you don't see the wallpaper as a seperation between the window's border and the top and bottom panels, and it gets worser in daylight.
  I would suggest to keep the dark concept but make all the dark colors a little bit brighter, for the sake of those who don't have the latest state-of-the-art LCD panels.
  Another option I like is to keep the dark panels, but make the window's content much brighter (I saw this in other mockup suggested here, I don't remeber which).
  Except that I have a bug in the links in firefox (black on black), but that's already known I assume.
  Thanks.

• Request: Please make this wallpaper available if it's freely distributable! Thank you and if you want you can move this to comments or delete it - mewithafez aka firefish17

  • For 1280 only here. I really don't want to release it because I feel it doesn't quite match neither the Ubuntu ideals, nor the Dust look. (in fact I'm not sure where I got the bg texture from!) -- rico-ambiescent 2008-08-31 20:39:14

  • Thank you! While it may not match the ideals, I encourage you to post it on deviantart/gnome-look/the ubuntu forums even if it is just to draw eyes back to this theme. - mewithafez

• Wow this theme looks hot! Theres's one thing i don't like tho: dark menu-dropdown-lists. Dropdownlists like in the GoodDarkTheme mockup are much more appealing imo. However, i really wish this (more polished) would become the default theme for future Ubuntu releases. Worth a look: Kim's area (especially his soft-surface theme), NuoveXt 2.

  • The dark popup menus are there mostly as a workaround to make Firefox and OO.o menus appear correctly without adding more files. I do like the dark popup menus, though :P -Kido

• This is a wonderful theme! With 09/07 update, I noticed some bugs: one in Thunderbird, one in the menu-bar (I made a 2 bugs in one screen-shot for those) and one in the .tar.gz itself: theme manager say "the required icon theme "Dust" is not installed".
  Otherwise, I think min/max/close buttons have to be bigger and/or with different colors because I don't think it is currently use-able for some user (olds persons, bad view...) those buttons are fundamental for a good OS experience, they have to be easy to access and to see for everyone.
  - Malaria (sorry for my English )

  • Fixed the panel menubar issue. I don't think we can do anything about the Thunderbird issue. We'll have to wait for Rico to do something about the window buttons. :P -Kido
• You should post this on gnome-look to get more exposure for what currently is among the top 2-3 themes for Ibex so far. I would recommend trying to blend the window border/menu so that it looks seamless. Also, are you striving to make an iconset soon? The icons mockup is quite impressive. -PRGUY85

  • You can now find the GTK themes listed here on ubuntu-art.org, and here on gnome-look.org. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-09 02:45:58

• Insensitive text should be darker than normal text on dark background and you should get back the previous selection colour (it makes content more meaningful). Last version (09/08/2008) seems to be uninstallable.
• I love the theme, but I think that it could use a bit more darkness or color inside the windows themselves. Right now the menus and titlebars are dark, and everything else is just white or gray. That's not necessarily a bad thing (it keeps the theme totally usable) but it seems a bit out of place. Perhaps a drop more black or colors in widget borders would help. Subtle gradients _inside_ the window might also do the trick.

Also, can you please add a border to scrollbar arrow-buttons. It's a bit confusing to have the empty scrollbar area merge with the arrow-buttons. --Aantn

• One other thing, can you please make the gnome-panel image a bit more transparent. If you're already adding in transparency, you might as well make it a bit more noticable.

  • I adjusted the panel's transparency a lot of times to be subtle enough yet work well with many different wallpapers. I don't think I'll be adjusting these, but you can make changes to your own copy of the image. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-12 02:48:39

• I love the gradient in the menubar. It definitely spices things up.
• I really like this theme, though I feel like the first concept image was far and away the best!
• There are some issues with Applications. Totem, as example, looks a bit ugly. Other Applications with Problems are: Inkscape and Eye of Gnome. I also noticed that a lot of trayicons are looking weird when using your panel-background.

  • Can you elaborate on "looks a bit ugly?" What doesn't look right to you? -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-09 02:45:58

• I'm having trouble seeing the latest version (10-Sept-08) under the Appearence app. --mike.basinger

  • If this is about installing, I'm not sure if this theme is installable by dragging it to the Appearance tab. You can use the theme by selecting "Customize..." and picking the right Controls and Window Borders. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-12 02:48:39

• AWESOME THEME. Not an OS-X or Vista clone and very sharp and professional. Is the Firefox theme just a mockup or is there a Dark Camino like theme? --nickuni

  • Just some local edits using the Stylish extension on my machine for now, nothing concrete just yet. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-12 02:48:39

• I'm under Hardy and I got some problem with the "style" when I start apps with sudo or gtksu: they appear non-gtk-like as if the engine doesn't correctly render. But really great theme!!
  • Either untar your Dust package into /usr/share/themes, or do a sudo ln -s ~/.themes /root/.themes (?) (p.s. please edit the page properly.) -Kido

• I just tried to install Dust on my laptop running Hardy. I built Murrine from SVN and it works but not with the Dust GTK theme. Did something break with an SVN update to Murrine? --nickuni

  • Same thing with Dust-20080913.tar.gz. I have a stock Ubuntu Hardy install and I followed the Murrine svn instructions, is there something I could be missing? The theme engine is just not working. --nickuni

    • I'm not sure what's going on with Murrine SVN, but Intrepid will use the snapshot in Kenneth Wimer's PPA (https://launchpad.net/~kwwii/+archive) and this theme is guaranteed to work with it. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-12 23:00:32

      • To add to this, the latest update to Murrine SVN requires changes to the theme, so don't use the newest from SVN (yet). -Kido

        • The Hardy series Murrine engine from the above link worked for me. This looks really nice, thank you! --nickuni

• Great theme, and its maturing rapidly. I would say that Inkscape still looks off, with the double toolbars underneath each other looking very 3D, while the rest of the theme is flat. Your doing a great job. --lasse-sosialisme

  • I agree, the toolbar gradients could be more subtle to match the window header. It would make the icons 'pop' more. --nickuni

• I love it! The progress bar in file-roller looks a bit ugly atm Great work, keep on!

• Hmmm ... can't say i love those changes made on September 16.
• Great work so far, I'm really loving the Dust Theme. Quick question, could you provide a link to the wallpaper used in the ubuntudust.jpg ? Thanks - Steve
• Great theme, really love it! Looks very great, you're doing a good job! But how do I get those rounded inputfields? Haven't got them on my theme... Am I doing anything wrong? By the way: Is there a possibiliy to help you developing?! thx david

• I've created a stylish theme for firefox that matches a slightly modified version of Dust. You can see a screenshot here : http://hungmaow.org/files/ss1.png and get the css theme here : http://userstyles.org/styles/10576 It's just a work in progress I'd like to share if it can helps this fabulous Dust project.cjean

  • Very nice. Where can we get it? -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-18 06:02:25

    • I've uploaded a tarball containing the modified Dust theme and the firefox.css : Dust-brighter-20080918.tar.gz

• I'm not crazy about the new scrollbars. The mixture of 3d and shine really doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the theme.

  • I agree a bit too 3d, I liked the old ones better. However, I love the new menu/toolbar gradients, they are just enough. Very nice. --nickuni

• Metacity gradient should be a little bit smoother, scrollbars should have less contrast (but I love black color) and insensitive text should not have shadow (maybe unsolvable?). Everything else is perfect (september 17)

• This has a clear GO from me!! It's sooo much nicer than the original Ubuntu theme. I'll test it more these days and give more feedback, but so far it looks like a winner

• First, I just wanna say I love this theme. If Dust becomes the default, it will be the first time I've ever used the default Ubuntu theme. I've been watching the development with bated breath, and am very happy with how it has progressed. The only thing I can say is the new (17th) scrollbars look out of place. The style should be closer to either the titlebar, or the menu gradient. I LOVE the black, and that they stand out better than most themes, but the glossiness seems out of place. BUT, I hope that you keep them simple and feature-less; I'm not a big fan of scrollbar "grabbers" in the middle. Also, in regards to context menus, I really like how the the selection highlights in FF are edge-to-edge. The ones in the theme gave a small border. Lastly, speaking of the menu gradient, it is 100% spot-on, please keep the latest one! Thank you for all your hard work in making Ubuntu super sexy! -- n-layne

• You should set a background colour when you use pixmaps because QGtkStyle looks wrong without that. QGtkStyle looked right with "Dust - September 16".
  • Where exactly does it look wrong? Can you provide a screenshot? Currently, there are pixmaps for the menubar, toolbar, and scrollbar. -Kido
    • Ok... I updated from SVN, it is ok now sorry :-/

• I'm getting errors extracting the Dust-20080920.tar.gz tarball. Anyone else? --nickuni

  • Yep, i get an error too.
    • Uploaded a new one, please try it. -Kido

      • No joy... Same errors. The issues seems to be with Dust Aurora. If I open it in with file-roller, and extract Dust and Dust Borderless, they work fine. -- n-layne

        • I repackaged the whole thing (same contents). I hope this works now. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-20 17:36:20

          • Strange, it also doesn't work here. Btw, the words in Firefox's "Add Bookmark" dialog are hard to make out.

            • The archive is re-broken with the latest update. ("* More neutral color scheme") it was working the when rico re-packaged it. -- n-layne

              • Reverted. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-20 19:50:23

• Does the Icon set shown in Update (Sept 1): Icon concept actually exist or is it simply a concept mockup? If so where can it be found? Cheers for this theme by the way, its a really nice piece of work. -- illuvator

  • The icons are still a mockup. -- n-layne

• There have been a few usability issues that have bugged me about this theme. Please see the image for detailed info. #3 and #4 are my personal preferences:
  1. The check boxes and radio buttons should be white instead of black.
  2. Insensitive text should be lighter.
  3. Button focus should be made better.
  4. Tabs have too much padding, and take too much space. This is especially noticeable on smaller screens.
  5. I don't like the new scrollbars either. They are too wide and stand out too much, overpowering the other elements of the theme.

  I have already made the above changes in my gtkrc file, so if you would like to see it please tell me. Otherwise, you have done what I thought was once nearly impossible: create a beautiful, sleek, and professional gtk theme. Thank you very much for this and keep up the good work! http://img175.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dustimprovegd4.jpg --sz07

  • Thank you. I've always though of these changes but I wasn't sure on how to do them! Please link your GTKRC here or send them to me (my email address is on my launchpad page). Also, consider this my asking for your permission to merge these changes into the theme. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-21 07:10:03

  • That's good, please post your gtkrc here for people to test. Thanks. -- Cpt-Falcon 2008-09-21 11:29:03

    • OK I added gtkrc-20080921. Most of the important changes that I have made have been tagged with [SZ07] and followed by explanations. I made some changes to the scrollbars and sliders too that I did not have time to change back to the default. I don't know what, if any, bugs there are (I just made this today). Lastly, you are free to do as you wish with the changes; I would be happy if these changes became a part of the official theme. --sz07
    • Working on it. I'm not sure about using clearlooks for the buttons, though--wouldn't that make the theme too slow? We currently have murrine and pixmap parts to the theme already. (I'm adding it anyway, since pretty focus rings are pretty.) -Kido
    • Wow, I love all of your changes! I can see disabled context itmes, again... The only thing I would say--and this is a personal taste thing--I hope they don't use the scroll bars. The old ones 99% good, just too glossie. I think a flater version of what was there would be great.
    • Kido: I don't like the idea of using another theme engine either. Three engines might be too much but we'll have to wait for feedback on performance (although I don't notice any slowdown on my machine). The thing is, I don't know if it's possible to get the same/similar effect using the Murrine engine. If anyone knows how to get a similar effect in Murrine, please tell us. Regarding the scrollbars, the changes I made were just experimental. I didn't like the outcome because it doesn't match with the theme. Personally, I would like to see some really good murrine scrollbars, or if that is not possible, then pixmap scrollbars. If they do decide to keep the new scrollbars, I hope they do make them less glossy, as you point out, and maybe a bit thinner too. --sz07
• I just downloaded the new release (20080921) and everything works fine so far, except that I get an error when extracting the archive (I have to manually extract the folders). This may sound like I'm nitpicking but I noticed that the insensitive text looks too prominent now (its different from the settings I used) but that just may be my personal preference. Oh, and thanks a lot for the Firefox theme.

• Would be great if somebody ports this theme into a white one. Same style, but white...would look so much better and would be better usable. Black themes look stylish in first place but when you have to work with them all day its not the best choice. White will allways have a better contrast. You wouldnt use a black peace of paper to write on neither...-- christoph-burgdorf

  • A white Dust theme might be an interesting fork project. Regarding black themes usability, I actually find them more usable if done correctly. For example, if you have solid white text on solid black, then yes, that can cause strain. But if you pick the right colors (i.e. less black bg with less white text) as Dust does, then usability is greatly improved because there is not a very stark contrast. And if you look at themes made for the visually impaired, you will find that many are white text on black bg. --sz07

  • A lighter version is in the roadmap. At the moment though, the focus of development is polishing the main dark versions of the GTK and Firefox themes. But a lighter version will definitely come soon. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-09-22 09:10:59

    • This should be in the extras package now. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-10-06 22:37:14

• Some applications show a strange white border around menus and iconbars. Take a look at lybniz. Here's a screenshot: http://ubuntu-pics.de/bild/3522/bildschirmfoto_SUW7hu.png -- chrissss

  • I also see a similar white border in the gcstar application that's installed in the repos

• FF theme feedback: The theme looks great, and all the menus seem to display fine, now. However, this theme doesn't work with Fission: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1951 If you set an image to be used for the progress bar, it doesn't display. Also, on websites that offer installable search engines, the search button does not light up. IE: www.digg.com. Lastly, the context menu for the address bar is oddly colored and styled. Other then those three issues, it's great! -- n-layne

• I preferred black toolbars

  • Some applications still sport dark toolbars such as Nautilus, Epiphany, Evince and such. If you want dark toolbars by default, it's available in the extras package. -- rico-ambiescent 2008-10-06 22:37:14

    • There should be a bug report for problematic applications, not a default theme hack.

• I know this has been said before but this is really really good... I especially like the lighter "Dust Sand" theme. I tested it with Eclipse, OpenOffice (Writer, Spreadsheet, Presentation), Rhythmbox, Movie Player, Firefox, Nautilus ... everything looks good, really good. The only tow things I would change are the wallpaper and icons. I know there are a lot of discussions for icons, and I'm sure that will be changed. and for wallpaper I HIGHLY HIGHLY VERY HIGHLY recommend http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/5184/ibexvz6.png. It's light, makes sense, is brown and artistic. I don't see what more could we ask for. Also If we could also have a dock by default that would be even better, but I know all the criticisms about looking like OS X and all that jazz. But that's fine, I can add AWN myself. Please please please make this the default for Ibex, unless something is really really better than this. Also, I think the GION icons mentioned above looks really good for ibex as well. I don't know how others may like it, but i feel it's different than anything out there. The link for it here again: http://art.gnome.org/themes/icon/1340. Here are two screenshots of my Desktop: 1) http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/118208/My%20Desktop/DesktopScreenshot.png. 2) http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/118208/My%20Desktop/Screenshot.png -- Xubean

• This looks quite nice. Making a black theme to work is hard work, but seems to work with this theme. I liked it enough to make myself install it and the latest murrine engine. This is more stylish than what I have been seeing in Linux distributions on average. I hope that default Ubuntu look would be as stylish in the future. This style requires a matching wallpaper. I will try these proposed although I would need a higher resolution versions, as my desktop is 1680x1050 (laptop screen) + 2560x1600 (30 inch Dell). -- Karoliina Salminen

• This theme look near to perfection in dark themes. It doesn't bother me while I'm on the internet (with any pages), nor while I'm editing some local text files. The ONLY problem I've found is that Netbeans toolbars' look too big. The screenshot shows the problem => http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/578/printscreennetbeansxi5.png. Hope you can fix this. Otherwise, it's the best dark theme I've ever used on my machine. Congrats, you've found yourself a fan here.

• I really love you theme, guess it can be default theme for Ubuntu. The one thing I don't like it's hard to work with virtual desktops. There should be bright border between desktops. As for icons set, now I'm using "black-white 2 Style" ( http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/black-white+2+Style?content=72619 ), but they are to gray. The best icons will be the same as here but with one colorful element on each icon (like on firefox icon you can see colorful earth). Also there is no black/white tray icons which add especial atmosphere to the theme. Hope someone can modify "black-white 2 Style" for the DustTheme. At last wanna ask question - is it possible to modify theme such way than gEdit and Terminal tabs looks like firefox tabs ? does current theme engines support this feature? coz this can make DustTheme very very consistency. -- bmind

  • Check this out, I realized firefox like tabs in Gnome-terminal http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=terminalik3.png but Gedit don't want to work correctly for now -- bmind

• the workspace switcher is so dark that u cant differentiate between the workspaces. something that looks like in the willibex theme would be great... --macv
• hi, i'm trying to edit the color of the windows list in the panel, the highlight color is the selected items color, but i want to change it to something brown constantly , how do i do this? i'm not sure which to edit in the gtkrc --macvr
• handlebox in system tray can hardly be seen, please make it a bit brighter. -- pclouds

• When will there be an update? - wersdaluv 03:49 PM Tuesday, December 02 2008

  • Hi. I've been busy. Maybe there will be an update soon, but it will most likely be just bugfixes. -Kido

• I have just tried Dust for the first time and I love it! Congratulations on a terrific theme! -- theaney 2008-12-11 12:12:12

• I love the theme, but if you could share the background you have in the screen shot of the old greyed wood, I'd love to use it. -- pruhnke 2008-12-31 14:59:00