Clearlooks Compact Gnome Theme
Update: Here is a Human Compact Gnome Theme based on Ubuntu 8.04 available for download.
Comparison
Move your mouse over the image to see how the dialog looks like with clearlooks-compact. The buttons and spacing are smaller, which results in much more visible space for the actual content.
More Screenshots
Here are some more screenshots that I have taken with Clearlooks Compact enabled. Especially the Eclipse shot is great, there the theme really shines. It is even more compact than the Windows XP look.
If you are curious, I have used Tahoma, size 9 for the application font, and the MiscFixed for the sourcecode.
Download & Installation
Installation is extremely simple, in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) you can do it this way:
- Click System > Preferences > Appearance.
- Drag & drop the link Clearlooks Compact into the Appearence window.
Beware that this is just definition of the clearlooks control spacings. That means you have to have the clearlooks engine installed (which you most likely have, it is the default theme of Ubuntu). To change back, click on the currently active Theme, choose “Customize”, and select other controls instead of “Clearlooks Compact”.
History
I will regularly update this page when I update the theme with a new screenshot and the development history:
- April 11th, 2008
- Small panel menu
- November 11th, 2007
- Major update: Smaller handlers sizes, smaller scrollbars, no scrollbar spacing, less overall padding, and some more.
- November 7th, 2007
- Now even more compact by reducing the default icon size to 16×16 pixels.
- November 4th, 2007
- First release of Clearlooks Compact.
47 Comments
Trackbacks
- Clearlooks Compact
- Clearlooks Compact ahorra espacio en el escritorio « Tuxlink
- Major Clearlooks Compact Update by Martin Ankerl
- Martin Ankerl » Blog Archive » Compact Theme Update
- Martin Ankerl » Blog Archive » Clearlooks Compact Update
- memperluas space gnome | kholis@home
- Martin Ankerl » Blog Archive » Human Compact Gnome Theme
- patrik.cqure.net » Blog Archive » Running 8.04 on the Eee
- Compact Ubuntu « Nifty tidbits
November 5th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Love ur work there, man!
Me too, hate the clearlooks themes, and ubuntu default theme too. Wasting to much space (like u said).
ps: u still can make it more compact. There still a plenty space between ‘Name’ and ’save to folder’ section. And ‘browse for other folders’ and ‘directory view’.
thanks!
November 5th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Hi ts, glad that you like the theme. Making it more compact is difficult because I have already decreased most of the spacings to zero, as far as I know more cannot be done without hacking the clearlooks code or modifying the application itself.
November 5th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Thanks for this work !
Do you think the scrollbars could be thiner ?
November 5th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Its possible to make them thinner, but I don’t really like the look of it. But you can easily do this yourself: edit ~/.themes/Clearlooks Compact/gtk-2.0/gtkrc, go to line 19, and change the line
to 12 or something like that.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
wow, nice work. same here, never liked the huge interface elements. now if someone tells me how you can get rid of the button images (e.g. save, cancel) i’m a happy man.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
radio, edit the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and add this line:
Then you at least have smaller icons which should get you smaller buttons.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
What Fonts you used on these sample picture?
It’s look like Tahoma in windows XP, isn’t it?
November 8th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
exactly, that’s tahoma, size 9.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
thank you
November 8th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Great theme!
Thanks a lot!
November 10th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Hi,
Great man! Please keep up your good work. I really would like to see a screenshot of Windows next to one with Ubuntu and see no difference in space-waste!
Do you think this will be possible at some point? Perhaps there are hacks that go beyond the capabilities of clearlooks?
November 15th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I really like your font, can you please, please, tell what you are using ?
This is the only thing refraining from doing the permanent switch to Linux….
November 15th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
John, I have already written this in the article, right after the screenshots
November 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
nice job!
i think your opinions are extendable to gnome/kde themes in general, they all wast lot of space.
keep this good work!
December 14th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
It works perfect for Ubuntu. Now I also have Suse Linux on another machine with KDE. Still I am running Eclipse which is GTK. Is there a way to apply the new Clearlooks anyway so all GTK applications look properly? How?
December 17th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Nice work, indeed.
There is a small problem with context menu: when the right mouse button is pressed and kept, we can see the first position of the menu highlighted. Normally, I used click-and-release approach, so many times the first menu position is selected unconsciously.
This effect doesn’t appear in Ubuntu’s default Human theme. For me it looks like 1-pixel-to-much-of-optimization.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Excellent work, thanks.
The only thing I now like more on Eclipse in Windows is the package tree (basically tree control). The compact clearlook with small Tahoma fonts is still much less compact comparing to Windows.
Is there sth that may be done about it or as you mention couple of post above that the spacing in more places is 0 so some kind of hack is needed.
Anyway, great thanks.
December 27th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
I have been searching this kind of theme for ages. It seems than Gnome developers don’t really care about small resolutions…
Works fine on Linux Mint 4.0
Great Job, thanks!
December 28th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Looks good, thanks.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Thank you for this theme.
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Hi:
First of all, this theme is awesome - not only does it look great, but it has given me back space in the UI that I didn’t even know existed
I was wondering if you have any plans to make a Clearlooks Compact GDM Theme and Clearlooks Compact Splashscreen? I think that would provide a very complete package and make things more consistent.
Thanks
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Hi, glad you like the theme. I don’t plan anything right now, because being a real minimalist I don’t use gdm and splashscreen at all
January 15th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Thanks a lot for your work !
Espectially fantastic, and doesn’t affect usability for heavy keyboard shortcut users like me.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Great work! I have suffered from that for a long time.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Hi:
I love your theme (it saves so much space :D), but I have a few problems that I hope you can help with.
1) I am using Ubuntu 7.10, and sometimes, when I click the Applications, Places or System menus, they have these scroll arrows at the top and bottom (i.e. the whole menu isn’t visible, you have to scroll up and down). However, when I click those menus a second or third time, they appear normally (i.e. the whole menu is visible, with no scroll arrows). Any idea what is causing this?
2) Normally, when something gets mounted in /media, it appears in the Places menu. However, whenever I mount more than one thing, a new menu item appears called “Removable Media”, and then all of the things which are mounted under /media appear there instead. How can I change this back to default theme behaviour, where everything appears in the Places menu, with no sub-menus?
3) Sometimes when I am opening up things in gEdit from the command line, I get warning messages concerning “GtkOptionMenu::indicator_spacing” and “GtkOptionMenu::indicator_size”. Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact message in front of me, but do you have any idea what it might be?
Cheers,
Anon
March 16th, 2008 at 2:28 am
Martin Ankerl,
Perfect work for a 15″ monitor at 1024×768. This was the one last thing I was searching for Eclipse and now here I am, saying goodbye to Windows (yuck!) once and for all.
Keep up the good work!
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Hi! This looks like a great theme, hopefully I will have … reason to install it shortly for a specific use.
Just a very brief note: the mouse-over image in the Comparison does work in Internet Explorer (6.0), in Windows XP SP2. At least it works just fine for me here at work, and a very good comparison it is too!
Regards,
/Emil
April 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Thanks for the theme - great work! I’m using it on Xubuntu on eeePc, and GTK apps are now much better to use. Many dialogs now fit on the screen which didn’t before.
I think it would be nice if this theme was available in Ubuntu repositories. It is certainly a good way to make the desktop work on small screen.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Great job. Thank you very much.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Could you “port” Clearlooks Compact to fit the human colours (aka brown). Blue is too cold for me, I like the warm Ubuntu tones. But the original Clearlooks takes way too much space away.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Hi steve, I am working on a Human Compact theme based on the ubuntu 8.04 theme. I will write a blog posting about this in the next few days.
If you want you can mail me at martin dot ankerl at gmail.com then I can send you what I currently have.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:37 am
i got failed use this themes on application which need admin auth (aka sudo) such as synaptic, gparted etc.
same as steve. i wait for ubuntu human compact themes
thx
May 13th, 2008 at 7:57 am
I will post a Human Compact theme based on Ubuntu 8.04 tonight. I have had it for a week or so and it has exactly the same spacing as Clearlooks Compact.
Update: done! see http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-theme/
June 14th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
im failed install it on debian etch with gnome 2.14.3
June 14th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Hi kholis, I have used it in It works in Ubuntu 7.10 and Ubuntu 8.04, I don’t know which gnome versions work
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Jesus dude!!
Thanks!
You are a life savior
best theme ever!
June 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Hey,
but when I need to execute a application with root-rights (sudo) the Theme is messed up. Is the only way to fix that starting the gnome-theme-manager as sudo and to change the theme there or is there another way?
I really like your theme but I’ve got one problem though.
When I use the theme under my normal user account everythings works finde and looks great
Greetz,
CracKPod
June 30th, 2008 at 11:31 am
@CracKPod
just extract it to /usr/share/themes instead of ~/.themes, it work for me.