Background gradient improperly oriented on vertical panels

[LarryGrover]

Binary package hint: light-themes

Vertical panels that use the theme background (ambiance or radiance) look weird: the gradient is oriented vertically (appropriate for a horizontal panel), but it should reorient horizontally when the panel is vertical. I will attach a sreenshot showing this.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Mar 8 13:52:04 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: light-themes 0.1.5.4
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-15.22-generic
SourcePackage: light-themes
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-15-generic i686

[Kenneth Wimer (kwwii)]

This is not a bug in the theme but rather a bug in gnome-panel

[Jeff Craig (foxxtrot)]

I would disagree with this being not a theme problem. If you make the size of the panel bigger than the default 24 pixels, then the gradient begins to repeat, which looks off.

Perhaps the answer is that gnome-panel needs to support gradients as a background option (instead of only doing solid colors or background images), or image scaling options, but as it stands, the light-themes begin to have fairly glaring visual problems if you don't use the defaults from the Ubuntu install.

[Gabriel Bauman (gabrielbauman)]

Also an issue with horizontal panels set to more than 24 pixels in height.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

When you create a vertical panel the panel background for the horizontal panel is used. This looks awful. Wasn't there a way to provide a separate background for vertical panels? In that case you only have to turn the gradient 90 degrees.

[M (mzmcgrat)]

This happens because theme designers "cheat" by creating their desired panel look as an image. As far as I know, there is no way to theme vertical and horizontal panels individually in a gtk theme. If the theme designer does not use an appropriate image, you get problems when the panel is larger than the image, as in comment #5. If you don't use a solid color for the panel background, you get problems with vertical panels. This really is just one bug in a long list associated with vertical Gnome panels, which is a shame since they make sense to use with widescreen displays.

[Otus (jan-varho)]

Note that changing the default application font size from 10 up to something like 16 causes panels to expand, making this bug apparent. That is a very common scenario and may be an accessibility issue.

[Vish (vish)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream.
Once submitted upstream , do report back here with the upstream bug number.
Thanks in advance!

[Vish (vish)]

Thanks for sending upstream.

[cerz (robert-finis)]

Just noting that this bug will affect a lot of netbook users- those narrow screens make vertical panels a necessity.

[Vish (vish)]

Lets leave this bug only for vertical panels , Bug #532309 is for horizontal panel scaling issues.

[David Given (david.given)]

This is still extant in Maverick.

[Alberts Muktupāvels (muktupavels)]

It is theme problem...

PanelToplevel.horizontal PanelWidget {
// style for horizontal panel
}

PanelToplevel.vertical PanelWidget {
// style for vertical panel
}