Chapter 7: Metacity

H

I want to apply my background color to the Cinnamon theme, so in the Mint-X-Sand-Gold/cinnamon/cinnamon.css file I will go to line 155 and put in my background color.
.popup-menu-boxpointer {
    -arrow-border-radius: 4px;
    -arrow-background-color: #ca942e;
    -arrow-border-width: 1px;
    -arrow-border-color: rgba(40,40,40,0.3);


TIP: After making a change to cinnamon.css, there are several ways to refresh Cinnamon to display the change.
  1. Open System Settings > Themes and switch to a different Cinnamon theme, then switch back.
  2. Press Alt-F2 for the run dialog and enter rt (which I think of as "Refresh Theme").
  3. Press Alt-F2 for the run dialog and enter r (refreshes all of Cinnamon, not just the theme).


That takes care of the background for the Menu and the Calendar and the right-click menus, but I don't want to look at that grey Panel, so I need to edit lines 312 and 313:
    background-gradient-start: rgb(246,246,246);
    background-gradient-end: rgb(206,206,206);

I already know the RGB for my background color is RGB - 202,148,46. The background-gradient-start is at the top of the Panel, and I would like that to be a slightly lighter color.  At  http://www.color-hex.com/color/ca942e  I see that the next lighter tints are #cf9e42 (RGB - 207,158,66) and #D4A957 (RGB - 212,169,87), so I will try both of those to see which I prefer. After comparison, the second choice will do for now.
    background-gradient-start: rgb(212,169,87);
    background-gradient-end: rgb(202,148,46);

I am left with grey Window List tabs that I don't like, but they can wait until I get serious with the cinnamon.css in the Cinnamon chapter.

At this point, my preparation is done. In Nemo, I will right-click on the .themes/Mint-X-Sand-Gold folder > Duplicate. That creates a backup copy - so if I mess things up, as I am prone to do, I can fall back to this point.