axeorcat

Transparent panels are great in principle but they are not very readable in GNOME with black text.

Luckily GNOME widgets can be customized in a common way, as long as you know the right class names.

Just edit your .gtkrc-2.0 file in your home directory (create it if one does not exist) and set the colors that work for you. For example, a bright white text for inactive buttons and a blackish text for the active button is set as follow:

style "panel"
{
  fg[NORMAL]               = "#ffffff"
  fg[ACTIVE]               = "#0f0f0f"
  bg[ACTIVE]               = "#C0C0C0"
}
widget "<strong>PanelWidget</strong>" style "panel"
widget "<strong>PanelApplet</strong>" style "panel"
class "<strong>Panel</strong>" style "panel"
widget_class "<strong>Mail</strong>" style "panel"
class "<strong>notif</strong>" style "panel"
class "<strong>Notif</strong>" style "panel"
class "<strong>Tray</strong>" style "panel"
class "<strong>tray</strong>" style "panel"

Thanks to gnome support