Making Panels, Tabs and Menus Transparent in Ubuntu|Anything About Everything

Here is another tutorial on how you can personalize your Ubuntu desktop. There are a lot of parts on your Ubuntu desktop that we can customize. Have you noticed that the color of your panels are different from your desktop background? Are your drop-down menus in solid color? We can change that with some simple configurations. Your desktop will look something like this:

First, you must have the CompizConfig Settings Manager installed. If you don't have it installed you can install it using Synaptic Package Manager or in terminal with:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Now for the tweaking time.

Transparent Panels

To make your top and bottom panels or whatever panels you have transparent, simply right click on it and choose Properties.Go to the Background tab choose a solid color that is the same as your desktop background. Then slide the Style tab to Transparent until you reach your desired transparency.

Transparent Window Borders

To do this you need to go into the Configuration Editor. Go to Applications> System Tools> Configuration Editor.

If you don't have it there, you can type in terminal:

gconf-editor

Go to apps> gwd and edit the following:

metacity_theme_active_shade_opacity

metacity_theme_shade_opacity

Make the value from 0 to 1 or if its not applicabble just set it to True or check on the box.

Transparent Drop-down and Popup Menus

This is where you will need the Compizconfig Setting Manager. Go to System> Preferences> Compizconfig Settings Manager. Go to Accessibility and check on Opacity, Brightness and Saturation.