(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I have been using Puppy for a little while now and I must say that I am very impressed.

I recently downloaded and started using the latest Puppy 4.00 Beta, and upon first use I was pleased to see the work done on the new Gradient-grey default theme for JWM.

I did however see for a small area that could be improved, and that was the tabs and button graphics. They have no borders around them, which creates a rough feeling to the overall UI.

What I have done however is simply make grey borders around the small graphics that make up the tabs and buttons. The graphics are just the small PNG files labeled "tab1", "tab2" and "tab3" and are located under "/usr/share/themes/Gradient-grey/gtk-2.0".

To see what I've done, just replace the files with the ones below.

Hi,
I somehow missed your post earlier on, but just now I stumbled upon it.

That's great, I'll download them and see how they look.

I noticed that the vertical scroll bars look a little odd in Puppy. I'm guessing they use the same pictures as those above. If you look at the horizontal bar, it has a nice 3d shaded effect to it. The vertical bar should also look like that, but because the graphic hasn't been rotated it looks like a very long and gradual color gradient..

But apart from that - I think Puppy 4 is a huge step forward in the aesthetics of Puppy. It looks so much more polished than 3.01 - I think there's much better consistency between the different elements of the UI.

I'm adding a screenshot to make my comment clearer. See how the vertical and horizontal scroll bars look different? The horizontal one has a nice 3d effect, the vertical looks a bit odd..

yangmusa wrote:I'm adding a screenshot to make my comment clearer. See how the vertical and horizontal scroll bars look different? The horizontal one has a nice 3d effect, the vertical looks a bit odd..

The problem is design choice is a relative thing: what you may find nice-looking,it looks like c*** to other people.
I think the horizontal one looks ugly and out of place (I hate that glossy artificial look),while the vertical one looks very nice,somewhat like the scrollbars in the Opera 9.50 default skin.
A much better idea would be to have the ability to choose between those two styles.

Just my $0.02,
Panzer

Another thing I would like to see fixed is the 'Top' process lister. When you run 'Top' from the 'System' menu,the window background is gray (looks bad) ,unlike when you run it from rvxt when it looks much better and more readable on a white background.

Another annoyance is the Hotpup mount icons are placed too low on the desktop,so their text gets obscured by the taskbar.Moving them up has no effect (the icon placement gets restored after a reboot)

Another more serious bug is the hotpup drive icons setting doesn't work.I can't disable the process or change any of the settings.Upon apllying the settings,the wizard complains of a corrupt config and restores the original one.

And yet another of those more serious bugs: The same thing (corrupt config and auto-restore to previous settings) happens when you use the JWM Config Manager.The only setting that works correctly is the removal of the commandline launcher system tray button.But even then there's a new bug: after the removal and restart of JWM,the JWM manager still thinks JWM isn't restarted.

And another one: ALSA mixer doesn't remember its settings after a reboot.Also the version of ALSA included in Dingo is very old and needs to be updated.

And finally the last problem: I can't seem to find the monitor APM / Power settings in Puppy 4.0 Beta? Are they gone in this beta? So can anybody tell me how to set the monitor -not- to shutoff/blank every XX minutes and turn off all other power management features (as in 2.17.1)?

panzerpuppy wrote:A much better idea would be to have the ability to choose between those two styles.

How boring the world would be if we all liked the same thing!

But at least it seems you agree they should at least match each other, no? That's really what I meant - the two scroll bars don't match. Never mind if you happen to like the particular design, because that can presumably be changed easily enough.

4.0 b2 is such a big improvement.Barry managed to squash most of the bugs in this beta.I find this version the best performing and most stable puppy ever - it's almost ready for a final release.

What's fixed in this build:

- Xine is -finally- working in (true) fullscreen mode with Xv video acceleration
- Upgrade from 398 (frugal) to 399 went smoothly without any errors or deleted data,unlike the previous beta
- Hotpupd is (mostly) fixed.
- The JWM settings wizard now works perfectly

and what's not (more bugs and things to improve):

- After an upgrade some desktop icons are misplaced and ALL shortcuts to .exe files created on the desktop from the .wine directory are deleted
- The vertical and horizontal scrollbars still look odd (different shading)
- The text under the Hotpup drive icons is still covered by the taskbar
- ALSA Mixer doesn't remember the settings after shutdown/reboot
- Not being able to select anything higher than 1600x1200 in the Xorg wizard [Xorg] when booting live (with pfix=ram).Oddly,higher resolutions are available only via TV-Out.
- No DPMS/Power management settings wizard ?
- ALSA mixer and drivers not up to date (2 versions behind) ALSA 1.0.16 is a -massive- update.
- Minor cosmetic stuff: Top process lister background,the citrus theme icons,...

yangmusa wrote:I'm adding a screenshot to make my comment clearer. See how the vertical and horizontal scroll bars look different? The horizontal one has a nice 3d effect, the vertical looks a bit odd..

Hi I was just wondering about your screenshot, I seen on the taskbar that it has a battery monitor and that its working, was that included with dingo or was that something you added, and if so do you have a link to it?
I don't use laptops but my Fire Hydrant users do, So something like that would be a great addition to the series. Thanks for your time
ttuuxxx

the battery monitor is asapm it is in dingo
the pet is in the repository at ibiblio
you might want to check out the dingo startup scripts to check the logic used to decide whether the monitor should be started or not

HairyWill wrote:the battery monitor is asapm it is in dingo
the pet is in the repository at ibiblio
you might want to check out the dingo startup scripts to check the logic used to decide whether the monitor should be started or not

thanks HairyWill
I'll look at it right now

found it in .jwm-tray
<Swallow name="asapm">
asapmshell -u 4
</Swallow>

Frankly I don't like the gradient scroll bars, with or without borders. It confuses where the scroll control area is. I'm constantly clicking above or below it, which yanks my my page instead of scrolling it like I meant to.

Flash wrote:Frankly I don't like the gradient scroll bars, with or without borders. It confuses where the scroll control area is. I'm constantly clicking above or below it, which yanks my my page instead of scrolling it like I meant to.

Ya changing the scroll bars is easy for somebody who does graphics like myself but others might find it very diffecult, Thats the only part I don't like about the theme, I think everything else looks excellent.
maybe I'll make a pet patch for people, hmmmmm I'll start on it.
ttuuxxx