Workaround for Highlighted Text Problems in GNOME Apps when Using Custom GTK Theme

A zonColor theme user reported: 'When i select any zoncolor theme i can't read text when i selected it in evince pdf reader'.

After some investigations, I found that this is a known bug of some GNOME apps like Evince, Evolution, and maybe other too (see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=682435), so it will affects other GTK themes that do not include "new standard" in GTK theme color definition.

Those apps look for "the new standard" theme_selected_bg_color, theme_selected_fg_color, etc., instead of the standard, long time used "selected_bg_color", "selected_fg_color", etc (notice the difference, later ones are without "theme_"). This causing any theme that does not use "theme_*" color definitions in its css files will have problems with those apps.

Ubuntu in Debian Software Sources

Besides Ubuntu as an OS on my machine, I'm also using Debian GNU/Linux 7 Wheezy for months now. I'm enjoying using this latest stable version of Debian because it really is a stable version. I never encounter a single error while using it. That's the main reason why I choose to use it for some stuff I'm doing. If you are looking for a stable OS and have never use Debian before, I highly recommend to install and use it.

In Debian stable, I can get many software and applications which are complete enough (at least for me) for everyday regular tasks. Although for some applications I used to use in Ubuntu I have to find alternatives, but they are there. Software versions in Debian stable are a bit outdated compared to those in some other Linux distributions but that's not really a problem because most of the time I don't really need new features that comes with the newer version of most applications.

But today I was thinking of adding some more software and also to get some more up-to-date version of apps. I was adding software sources from Debian Testing (currently Jessie repo) by using the powerful Synaptic Package Manager app. Then I open the software sources utility to add lines to software sources list. While I was clicking tabs in Software sources window, I noticed something strange, but funny :)

Youtube Video Thumbnail Image Hotlink

Youtube, the most popular video sharing website owned by Google, is also one of the best content resources for web publishers, bloggers, and also app developers. You can easily embed videos available on Youtube directly on your websites or apps so you users or audience could watch videos without having to go Youtube video page.

Youtube also lets you put the video thumbnail images on your page so you can show them to help users preview the videos that might be interesting for them to watch. Here is the link format if you want to get Youtube video thumbnail images.

zonColor 1.6.5: Glossy Icons, Desklets, Modern UI, LXDE, more...

After some testing in 1.6 releases, I finally decided that zonColor is ready for a stable version of zonColor Themes Pack 1.6.5. This update is aimed to be compatible with latest version of various desktop environments (GNOME/GTK 3.8, Unity 7.0, Cinnamon 1.8, MATE 1.6, Xfce 4.10), along with additional features, theme components/templates, improvements, tweaks, and fixes.

One of differences in 1.6 compared to its previous releases 1.x, as previously noted, is in order to be compatible with GNOME/GTK 3.8, zonColor 1.6 introduces creation of actual GTK themes for color variant, rather than just make use of GTK-color-scheme feature that has been removed from GNOME/GTK 3.8.

For this release, I included some additions, one of them is new icons. Some people may like flat, square-framed icons, but me, I like icons that looks natural, 3D-shaped, shiny and glossy, and easy to be distinguished. This is a work in progress -- for now, I created icons for some apps, but for future releases I plan to create other icons too. And I also plan to include more than one icon template, so that users can have more choices of icon shape/style in creation of icon theme variant.