GTK+ Forums

Ok, I know I can use themes to make things look different, but I don't want to change my users environment, can I build my application in a way that the tabs will look different in my application, without changing their other applications?

This is probably a noob question, but my research online has gotten me so confused on the topic, that I feel I have no choice but to ask.

Thanks in advance.

This can be a huge and general problem.
How to make nicer something what is nice enough?

So, is there a way to make only my application use a theme, and not upset the user's environment?

Yes gtk3 can implement css for styling http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.0/GtkCssProvider.html. As this is cascading there is a hierarchy where the more specialised instances (e.g. css provided in your code for just your program) have precedence over the more general (e.g. those defined by your OS's themes).
Note however that even though you won't break the style of your OS by using gtkcssprovider, it will mean that your program's appearance is not consistent with the rest of the desktop environment. Probably not that big a deal as the rest of the desktop environment isn't necessarily self consistent anyway. One thing to watch out for is to try and not change style issues that tend to vary between platforms and OS's. e.g. netbooks and desktops ideally should have differently styled environments and if you set any of these particular style then you lose the ability for this to automatically vary for your program on the environment level.

Thanks, I will look at this after work tonight, its not like I wan't to vastly change the look, I want the tabs to be smaller, more like firefox's etc, you know, more sleek, because GTK is very bulky by default appearance.

Thanks again

-Leam

I just posted an example of styling a GtkNotebook with Gtk3 and CSS. It's in the forum Section: "Gtk+ Tutorials & Resources"