Making Titlebars And Window Decorations Bigger

[Pleng]

OK so now we know how to make scrollbars finger friendly the next thing to get us on our way to a fully touch friendly XFCE is to increase the size of the title bars and window decorations.

Before you start: make sure you have set your default GUI to minimenu while you are making the changes. I didn't manage to fluff anything when I did this, but if your fluff up XFCE so bad it wont boot then it'll be a lot easier to fix if you still have a bootable system. We'll be backing up important files as we go so you should be able to recover very easily.

The size of the title bar and window decorations are determined by the size of the images that are used in the theme, so we need to physically increase the size of these. You might like to do this on your Pandora, but it will be a lot easier if you use a computer.

Firstly, If you are unsure of what theme you are using then click on Settings-Window manager and find the highlighted name in the Theme list. Remember this!

Now, in Thunar, click on file system and navigate to /usr/share/themes. Find the folder for your theme and copy it to the root of your SD card.

Using GIMP, or whatever your preferred image editing application is, you now need to stretch the images located inside the copy of the /{your theme}/xfwm4 folder (on your SD card). The images we are interested in are:

• close-... .xpm
• hide-.... .xpm
• maximise... .xpm
• title.... .xpm (yes, all of them!)
• top-left... .xpm
• top-right... .xpm

Adjust them to a suitable size. For the title, top lefrt and top right files I decided to double the height and keep the width at its current size. For all other files (the buttons), I doubled both the width and the height.

Now, with the sd card in place boot your Pandora into minimenu (you will not be able to replace the files while XFCE is running). Press select to get the system menu and open a terminal. In the terminal type:

sudo cp -r /usr/share/themes/{yourthemename}/xfwm4 /usr/share/themes/{yourthemename}/BAKxfwm4

this creates a backup of the files which you can revert to if anything goes horribly wrong. Now we're ready to replace the theme's files with the updated ones. In a terminal type:

sudo cp /media/{your sd name}/{your theme name}/xfwm4/* /usr/share/themes/{yourthemename}/xfwm4

All done! Type exit to quit the terminal and load up XFCE. Your new finger-friendly theme awaits you. You can now set your default GUI back to XFCE if you wish (you DID change it to minimenu, didn't you?!)

I've attached a picture of my finger friendly version of the Fbx theme,

 

[SomeGuy99]

I think Phatch could come in really handy here:

http://photobatch.stani.be/

I used it to batch convert all my wallpapers to 800x480. You can make your own list of actions then save as a script - for example, make one called 'double size'.

I've just checked, and it supports xpm.

Because Patch is a python program, we might even be able to run in on the Pandora itself. B)

Hmmm... if you combined Phatch with a selective shell script (ie, identify the different parts of the skin based on filename)... you could probably convert all your skins at once (probably a good idea to make the script back up the originals somewhere).

 

[xopher]

Very nice, thanks!

 

[sebt3]

Thanks for this.
I'm looking the other way around :
is there a way to have no border for maximized apps ?

 

[Pleng]

you can do it in minimenu, but I imagine it would require quite a bit of work to make XFCE in the way you describe. Hmm I wonder if its possible to make XFCE use matchbox's window manager so that all apps run fullscreen...

 

[todd]

Thanks for this.
I'm looking the other way around :
is there a way to have no border for maximized apps ?

Certain app's do this on their own. Alt-F11 is probably one of the most used key-combinations on my Pandora these days: thinking about mapping it onto something easier like the Pandora button.

Midori has a fair "fullscreen" mode. Terminal can be configured thusly. My favorite new discovery is gedit. I prefer vim when I have a real keyboard. But gedit has what I want: multiple documents in tabs and good modeless editing. And it does a beautiful fullscreen, with just a pixel or two around the edges for a border. (and now a fat scrollbar, too!)

Alt-D minimizes everything. Some app's respond to Alt-F9 to minimize only themselves.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

A faster way to resize on a PC, using ImageMagick :

Copy the folder of the theme you want to resize, ie

cp -r Fbx Fbx200

Go inside, then :

for i in *.xpm; do convert $i -resize 200% $i; done

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Just wrote a custom script.
You can adjust each category.
Tested on one theme only.
Tell me if it misses something.

#!/bin/sh

for i in bottom*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in close*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in hide*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in maximize*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in menu*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in shade*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in stick*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in title*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in top*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in right*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done
for i in left*.xpm; do convert $i -resize 250% $i; done

 

[xopher]

Can you post your resized files for lazy people?

Spoiler

I did it finally, thanks for the script...that was enough for lazy people.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

My pleasure.