third party apps look bad

[Duncan]

Madhurya Kakati posted on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:10:08 +0530 as excerpted:

> hi. i am facing this problem since i installed kde 4.4. third party apps
> like firefox and xchat look really bad in kde. they dont have the
> smoothness like that on conqueror. why is this happening and how can i
> solve it?

What's happening is that only kde apps are getting the kde theming, 
colors, widgets, etc.  Depending on what you want, you can fix this at a 
number of different levels, tho it won't fix it for everything, mostly 
only gtk/gnome and qt (as opposed to full kde) apps.  That'll cover 
firefox (unless of course you use its own theming, firefox 3.6 is really 
emphasizing that now), but I don't believe it covers generic X apps, at 
least not to the same extent, nor will it cover tcl/tk apps, fltk apps, 
etc.

One solution is to use a common theme.  The curve theme was specifically 
designed for this, for instance, with gtk-curve and qt-curve variants so 
apps from both DEs are covered.  I believe there are other common themes 
as well, but that's the most well known one.  Depending on your 
distribution, you may need to install this separately.  I don't use this 
solution but a lot of people like it, and it's said to be reasonably 
configurable.

Or you can do what I do, just set the kde colors and check the box that 
applies those to other apps as well.  I don't worry so much about the 
widget styles, but with a couple exceptions, I use mostly kde apps anyway, 
and as long as the colors are reasonable (I have a strong "reverse" color 
preference, that is, light text on a dark background, so that's what I 
define as "reasonable"), I don't worry too much about widget style.

To do this, kcontrol (aka system settings, tho the old name, kcontrol, was 
less trouble as it's more accurate and less generic), look & feel, 
appearance, colors.  On the options tab, ensure that the "Apply colors to 
non-KDE4 applications" checkbox is checked, and hit apply if necessary.

-- 
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

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