Hey all,
So hopefully this is the end of my spamming the themes section of the forum… I guess I’ve eventually achieved what I wanted to do, that is, fixing Bolimage’s awesome theme Aurora Nuevo Flat so that it is fully compatible with Budgie and its applets. Indeed, one of Budgie’s great strengths, and in particular of its implementation in Ubuntu Budgie, is its ability to morph into very different desktop layouts thanks to its applets. However, Gnome 3’s themes don’t always fit well on Budgie; and so, some adjustment work is needed, in particular to make sure that applets work the way they should.
Why Aurora Nuevo? Personally, I’m not a fan of light themes that are pure white, dark themes that are pure black, and mixed themes with black-then-white backgrounds (although text contrast is necessary). Right now, Budgie’s staple themes like Qogir or Pocillio tend to fall into that category. I find those somewhat eye-straining.
As you can see on Aurora Nuevo’s gallery, this theme instead makes use of soft pastel accent colors and light grey menus for a smooth, easy-on-the-eyes experience. Here’s a screenshots gallery of my Budgie-optimized version. There are 6 accent colors (blue, green, grey, orange, red, violet), two variants (dark / light text and panel items) and two screnshots per color variant (unmaximized windows with transparent panel / maximized window), hence the 24 screenshots.
Now, what did I exactly adjust in this Budgie version? By default, Aurora Nuevo Flat doesn’t work well with Budgie panel and some applets, which have inconsistent size or color. I drew on code from the Materia and Pocillo themes to provide a clean and well-functioning Budgie integration.
Head there to download my Budgie-optimized version of Aurora Nuevo Flat.
Additions to Aurora Nuevo Flat
Here is the changelog as compared to the base version of Aurora Nuevo Flat:
-Budgie panel’s background is colored as per the accent color (Blue, Green, Grey, Orange, Red or Violet) in use.
-each color has two variants, Light and Dark, which affect the color (black or white) of panel items as well as text in headerbars, titlebars and menubars. When using pastel background colors, it is unclear whether text should be dark or light-colored to maximized legibility and minimize eye-strain. So, I provide both options for the user to choose.
-the panel now supports transparency and should respond to the corresponding Budgie setting. Beware, though, when using dark panel items on a transparent panel: with a dark wallpaper, panel items may not be legible at all.
-the panel now supports border shadows and should respond to the corresponding Budgie setting.
-most applets provided with Ubuntu Budgie should now be properly integrated into the panel. In particular, Global Menu and Pixel Saver should be cleanly integrated, legible and good-looking (toggle “use theme styling” to “on” for Pixel Saver). Raven Trigger no longer prevents the panel from being downsized.
-the color of menu bars has been changed to the chosen accent color. This helps with supporting Global Menu integration and, as a by-product, also has the user see more of their chosen accent color in Firefox (when setting theme to system default in Firefox, the tab bar is colored following GTK menu bars).
Installation
Simply extract Aurora-Nuevo-Flat-* folders to ~/.themes for user-only installation, or to /usr/share/themes for system-wide installation. Then, use Budgie Desktop Settings to set your theme (“Style” entry then “Widgets” drop menu).
If using a dark panel items variant, you may want to change the icon of Budgie Menu to something dark. To that end, the archive provides ubuntu-budgie-app-launcher-dark.svg which is simply Ubuntu Budgie’s menu icon filled with black. Any dark icon could work, of course.
Sources
Aurora Nuevo: pling page and source.
Special Thanks
This theme is 99% derived from Bolimage’s awesome work on Aurora Nuevo. As for Budgie ajustments, they would not have been possible were it not for the templates provided by nana-4 and the Ubuntu Budgie team in Materia and Pocillo.
Comments and remarks
If you notice something doesn’t behave, let my know in this thread and I’ll see what I can do.
) . Something as simple as a new theme makes these people smile).