[kde-linux] Increasing the intensity of mouse-over

[Duncan]

Pablo Sanchez posted on Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:42:18 -0500 as excerpted:

> Howdy,
> 
> I'm wondering how to change (increase) the intensity of the mouse-over
> which appears to be associated with:
> 
>    System Settings | Application Appearance | Colors |
>       Colors tab | Selection Background
> 
> For example, at the moment I have a very nice (IMO! :) `Selection
> Background' (#B0C4DE).
> 
> However, if I bring up `System Settings' and mouse-over any of the
> icons, the mouse-over color is extremely light.  I'd like to increase
> this intensity while maintaining my `Selection Background'
> 
> Any ideas?

Argh!!  I had a nice very detailed reply almost ready to post, and lost 
it in a system crash due I believe to a recent mesa update (which I've 
now reverted)!  So I'll try again, but this time without quite the same 
level of detail, tho it's still some explanation, along with some other 
general color module hints.

Try setting hover decoration color.

FWIW the tooltips and help text is quite detailed for the colors module, 
in part due to the maintainer's (Matthew something, IIRC) patience in 
working with me to help make it rather clearer when I complained about it 
in the late 4.2 and early 4.3 era (tho I don't think the improvements hit 
until 4.4 as it was I believe after string-freeze for 4.3), after I 
complained about it then.

KDE color settings are quite complex, divided into five sets (common 
colors being a summary of the five, change that drop-down for the others) 
based on widget type, with each set having a dozen "color roles", plus 
the active and inactive titlebar colors set only at the bottom of "common 
colors".  Even then, the background colors for most roles aren't directly 
configurable, but rather, set automatically based on the text-color for 
that role and the normal background.  That allows for a few less settings 
(a five times a dozen plus a half dozen more is already quite a few!), 
but complicates the situation somewhat as there's not immediately 
intuitive indirect results from changing some of the settings.

The general rule, however, is that for all the color-sets, check the text-
on-background previews at the bottom to make sure they're all readable, 
and you should be fine.  (Since common colors is a summary, if you change 
anything there beyond the titlebar settings, be sure the corresponding 
previews on the other sets still all show readable text, too.)

Selection is its own set of color-roles.  Focus decoration is the box 
that surrounds the widget with input focus, and hover decoration is the 
box surrounding the widget under the mouse.  So if it's mouseover effect, 
that's the focus decoration, in each of the five color sets separately, 
or set it for all five at once in common-colors (but as I said, best to 
check the hover box on all the individual sets to be sure it's still 
readable, if you set it for all of them at once using common colors).

Meanwhile, note that the configured style (the module before colors, 
here) and for some styles (like the default oxygen), certain style 
configuration options (configure button beside the style dropdown 
selector), affect colors as well.  In particular, if you're using the 
oxygen style, the menu highlight setting affects the color for that.  
Here, I use a 'reverse' color scheme with dark backgrounds already, so 
use dark color doesn't work (I'd need a use light color option), and 
subtle selection color (I believe the default, tho I'm so customized I 
often forget what the defaults were!) was TOO subtle, but plain selection 
color works quite well.

Also, desktop effects such as window translucency and dim inactive 
interact with the colors settings too, particularly for inactive 
windows.  If you use those desktop effects, you may wish to tone down the 
effects for inactive in the color module.  Similarly, if you don't have 
those desktop effects active, you may wish to strengthen the effects for 
inactive in the color module.

And of course plasma (the desktop and panels) has its own entirely 
separate color theme.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman