It’s time to write documentation for the Murrine’s options: the development version in git is really advanced and could emulate an enormous number of styles thanks to the new options and features over the previous 0.90.3 stable release.
But, my time is precious and, as I am not payed to do it and the donations stopped 
, I can’t invest the same efforts I did in the past.
So, waiting better days, I decided with Kenneth from Ubuntu to open a page in the Ubuntu Wiki (later to be moved on live.gnome.org and on the official Murrine website), where themers could help writing a great documentation of this amazing (not because I am the author 
) GTK+ engine.
Other major tasks before a new release is to improve RGBA support on few sides… I will definitely look into it in the future, when it will be possible!
If you want to support me in the development of the engine and new themes you could always sponsor me 
I am thinking about writing down a list of the donors, what do you think?
Posted in Donations, English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 2 Comments »
Small post, just for the guys who don’t follow me on twitter.
For Ubuntu Lucid the desktop team started working on a patch which enables RGBA colormap by default, and adds client-side window decorations capabilities as well.
That means transparency to your applications and much more 
Murrine will try to follow this trend, maybe slowly because I’m busy with other things, but something will happen.
For the braves, here’s the link to the bug.
Of course, donations to Murrine are always welcome!
Posted in Compiz, English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 10 Comments »
UPDATE: should be out soon http://download.gnome.org/sources/murrine/0.90/
I’m still not sure but maybe I will publish a Murrine development release in this weekend (with development I mean it won’t be called 1.0, maybe 0.90 or similar).
I’d like to have it included in Jaunty, because ubuntu is actually shipping an old bugged svn snapshot and I’m a bit tired of closing bugreports about that obsolete version.
If you have some last requests, please take a look at that post.
Posted in English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 2 Comments »
I’ve sad news for you all.
This year I will be at the university during the weeks and, since I don’t have a laptop, I’m actually forced to stop the development of Murrine, Clearlooks and all other projects in which I put my effort. I hope you can help me to not have to stop working on Gtk+ software.
Please Help Me
At the same time, being a student, I don’t have the means on my own to buy a laptop, even a cheaper one. So I am asking for your help by means of a donation. Only with a laptop I can continue to organize the work needed for a fully functional system-wide transparent RGBA mode in upcoming GNOME release as well as following your requests and adding features.
So, if you enjoyed my work these past years and you want to keep these things alive, or if you just want to give me your personal *thank you for creating Murrine* or *thanks for the Clearlooks restyling* please consider a donation. All funds received will be used only for supporting the development of my free software projects.
I don’t know how much I can achieve from this, netbooks start at 400$ and if I get more I can hack on more advanced effects
I’ve opened a new section in the Murrine’s website, Feature Requests, where the most popular features could become a reality when I can code again. It is like my thank you for your donations. In that way you’re sure you’re donation will be used to the development. And after donating you can see some of your dreams implemented
By the time I’m writing the post there are seven pending features:
But these are just a few, with your donations I can implement them and what you like!
I would like to thank everyone will help me.
Status of the Gtk+ RGBA support
For the guys who missed my
first RGBA revolutionary post, they could see
how a Gtk+ engine could be transparent
Enabling RGBA
inside applications was a test, but the real goal is to set RGBA system-wide, so
every Gtk+ interface will have this channel and all of its benefits (
not only transparency, but also rounded menus, fancy tooltips, notifications and visual effects…).
- To achieve this there was a bug in the system tray which was fixed in trunk few days ago, and another patch pending in gnome-panel that needs approval.
- Got it, the next step is to write a small patch for Gtk+ in order to give the user a xsetting or an environment variable to enable/disable the RGBA visual/colormap. There was a discussion months ago, I ask Gtk+ devs for their opinion on this topic.
- Reached this point, we need to start testing applications, and submit patches to the applications that behaves in a wrong way (for example Gnumeric or Abiword), or poke Xorg guys if we will find new Xorg bugs.
If everything is ok, GNOME will be fully capable of using RGBA colormaps for its themes (wow a rounded gnome-panel!)
Summary of Murrine Projects
One of my dreams is to involve more and more people, and coordinate a group of talented themers/artists with the common goal of creating visually-satisfying and high-quality themes using and improving Murrine engine to its best.
- Murrine: Since the latest stable release (0.53.1) I’ve rewritten the code two times, I’ve fixed bugs, I’ve simplified the code improving the rendering speed, I’ve added a huge number of new options and now, thanks to the Clearlooks style code it is really modular and supports different styles like Glossy, Classic, Gummy, Inverted for Clearlooks. For example: writing a new style for next Ubuntu releases is possible without a rewrite, I just need to add the new drawing code, choose a name for the gtkrc option, and map it If we ever had released a 1.0, this would definitely qualify for a 2.0.
- Website: First of all don’t forget to register to the Murrine Website, a place where you can easily submit your themes, send your mockups, request your features, download per-application RGBA patches, ask questions to themers, vote your favourite contents! More sections could be added, email me if you have an idea.
- Murrine-Themes: From September I’ve asked lucazade to start developing a high quality set of themes for the next-gen Murrine release, using options to achieve original looks while providing an usable everyday visual experience. This project, called murrine-themes and hosted on launchpad, it is still far from being high-quality, but I’m sure that in his hands and in your hands (if you want to participate) it will be a must-have complement to the engine.
- Contest: The best themes published in the Murrine Website could be part of Murrine-Themes!
- Murrine Configurator: Two Australian guys started developing a new kind of configurator, hosted on launchpad, compatible with every engine, that will make Murrine theming fun as a video game If you are interested in joining the development or starting a configurator optimized for Murrine (it will be better of course, seen the high number of options), ask and you’ll be part of this great theming crew.
- Bazaar Playground: Murrine is first of all free software, why don’t play with the source code? There’s also a launchpad mirror, where you could play with your own branches! And why not, good modifications could be merged!
If you want to talk directly with the few guys that populates the chat, if you want to keep track of the development, don’t forget to join! We are (well, there are just few guys actually) on Freenode, channel #murrine. Add it to your autojoin!
Status of the Official GNOME Theming Projects
The “Clearlooks restyling” you’ve seen from 2.19 was done to achieve an enjoyable professional look, while being original (Clearlooks is not a copy of OS-X or Vista). A theme that could be used for years without getting annoyed
I don’t have in mind another restyle for Clearlooks, but there are a lot of minor things that require always a bit of work: starting with bugfixing to some gnome-panel theming (which will require more work). Two things that were planned for 2.24 are a compact theme (for small screens) and a dark theme for Clearlooks. I would really like to help more Benzea on this side, he is totally praiseworthy.
I would like to provide another good set of free wallpapers, at least in the gnome-themes-extras package.
Another thing in mind, but I won’t personally code for this, is colorscheme support for Gtk+ themes! You choose a theme, click on the color section of the appearance capplet, and select through a combobox or a listview the colorscheme you like. As well as storing a new one.
Donations are important to keep me inside the GNOME Art Team.
Spread the Voice
This post is really important because it’s a summary of the future Gtk+ theming, where I consider Murrine as a great tool for artists and themers. Please spread the voice on Digg and other social websites so everyone could learn from this.
Posted in Donations, English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 16 Comments »
In the last few days I’ve rewritten the drawing code for the second time since the last stable release (0.53.1), now the code is much more modular and permits easy additions/tweaks in the widgets appearance.
Adding a glaze style like this requires less than 20 lines of code for ALL the widgets and both RGB and RGBA mode!
This means that mockups are really appreciated.
Of course please donate if you want to help me in the development, for more/faster features
Posted in Donations, English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 17 Comments »
To show all the possibilities given by the development versions of Murrine, and the new options it will support, I’ve thought about some kind of contest/brainstorm, where the best themes will be part of a separate package that will be out with the next release of Murrine.
The Goal
I’d like to see themes that uses all the new features, gradients shades, contrast, etc etc… to provide an original theme package, a not a simple colorscheme set
Themes should be submitted in the Murrine website, after registering. That will give access for optional voting and similar things.
Donations
Unfortunately this year will be really hard for me and I’ll have less spare time to code with the same free effort I had in the last years. So please consider donating, thinking that I’m a student and I can’t get money from my own due to the little spare time I have, that I’d like, if possible, to spend on free software: murrine, rgba stuff, gnome-do, clearlooks and much more
I really like to write a complete documentation for the development version of Murrine, as well as writing new cool themes for gnome-do!
Thanks for all your help!
Posted in Donations, English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 3 Comments »
Today is the 3-C day: Chrome Cream Candido!
Since I would to show you the new contrast function, I’ve done 3 new themes that are using it to draw their widgets.
They require the latest Murrine SVN snapshot. Emerald themes are included.
You may not like them, they were created just to show the contrast function, not with the goal to be a killer-theme
Also, as they have a low contrast, you need to use a great LCD monitor to enhance their feeling, so in some CRTs they might look very odd (I hope not!)
As always, download is available in the Murrine Themes Gallery.
Posted in English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 34 Comments »
I know that there are a lot of things that could look better with murrine, starting for example from tabs…
So here’s an anonymous, no registration required, mockup-submission-service for murrine:
http://murrine.cimitan.com/node/add/mockup
So, please send all your ideas! (starting from notebook/tabs… eheheh)
Good luck!
Posted in English, GNOME, Murrine, Themes | 9 Comments »
Unfortunately many people don’t use bugreports, maybe because they came from Windows where bugreports are not present and not encouraged. This post is just about this: please use bugreports.
If you find something that you don’t like, something that you think that can be improved, or if you just have an idea, use the bugzilla!
For example: there are some glitches when using a dark gtk+ theme with the murrine/clearlooks engine and…I’ll attach a screenshot…
Or: I would like to have an option to change the progressbar style on my murrine themes…
Or even more: I have made a mockup for the tabs/notebook of murrine, here it is…
So, please click here to send a new bugreport for murrine (development version, svn).
Eheheh… I love the GNOME’s bugzilla logo from andreasn (ops) alberto
Posted in ArchLinux, Compiz, English, GNOME, GTK, Icons, Metacity, Murrine, Themes | 12 Comments »
…or maybe you prefer help me with Murrine getting things done faster!
Due to lack of time I haven’t updated the code in the last few months, but If you want to help me we can start working on it from october.
The amazing stuff I’ve added from 0.53.1 in the development trunk guarantees a great flexibility in terms of *new styles* that can be added easily, so if you have some ideas or you are dreaming an innovative new style there’s no reason to keep it private in your mind.
I would really like to have a big community around Murrine and its website, there are a lot of things that can be done.
The channel is of course #murrine, in irc.freenode.net.
Comments are welcome too!
Posted in English, Murrine, Themes | 9 Comments »
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