elementary OS

Are the scrollbars in Feya supposed to be so thin?

Asked by JoaoH

Are the scrollbars in Feya supposed to be so thin?
Every time the Elementary theme is updated I have to edit /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-2.0/gtkrc <GtKScrollbar ::slider-width = 6 > to ...GtKScrollbar ::slider-width = 13 in order to be able to see the sheet tabs on Libre Office sheets and adds scrollbars to all Libre Office apps and Firefox. Unfortunetaly that only works on GtK2 apps.

Are the scrollbars really supposed to be that small? They are useless when they are that small...

Joao

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kay van der Zander
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Best kay van der Zander (kay20) said : 		#1

Hello,

yes the scroll bars are supposed to be that small. i can image that you can not click and slide to scroll.
it is difficult with thin scroll bars.

to change it run this command in terminal:
sudo scratch-text-editor /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css

press crtl f and find GtkRange-slider-width note scrollbars has to be above in the text like this:
/************
* Scrollbars *
************/

make it like 6 or 7 that should be big enough.
then log out and log back in and it is done.

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Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb) said : 		#2

LibreOffice Calc 4.4 should no longer interact badly with themes using thin scrollbars. Check it out.

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kay van der Zander (kay20) said : 		#3

Hi adolfo,

That LibreOffice suit had a bad interaction with themes. Can not be controled by elementary developers.
You need to make a bug report by LibreOffice and maybe it get fixxed.
look at this :https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugReport

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JoaoH (joao-machado-family) said : 		#4

Thanks kay van der Zander, that solved my question.

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JoaoH (joao-machado-family) said : 		#5

After upgrading to the final release of Freya I honestly tried to work with and live with the very thin scrollbars, I have to honestly say that this needs to be changed and quickly. The scrollbars are effectively useless when they are this thin, I am sorry, they just are. I understand that this is an aesthetics decision, but the real world use it is a horrible decision.

When aesthetics encroaches on functionality it is a step backwards. My wife was going nuts trying to make fine incremental moves using the scrollbars, and I understood the frustration, so I have manually modified both the GTK2 and GTK3 themes, but I am sure this will have to be done every time there is an update.

For those that want to make the scrollbars larger, I settled on 8 value for GTK3 and 10 for GTK2 themes;

GTK2
sudo scratch-text-editor /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
   Change this value:
          GtkScrollbar ::slider-width = 6 > to ...GtkScrollbar ::slider-width = 10

GTK3-(Use above method from Kay)
sudo scratch-text-editor /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css

press crtl f and find GtkRange-slider-width note scrollbars has to be above in the text like this, should be line 1619;
/************
* Scrollbars *
************/
set value
-GtkRange-slider-width: 8;