How can I edit GTK+3 themes (preferably with a GUI)?

Question

I have a project in which different pages on a website will load into one wrapper; when clicking on a page link, the content is that page is loaded into the wrapper instead of the user being taken to a new page. The site is being built with PHP and MySQL, and the page is not supposed to reload. Apparently, it's supposed to be one smooth motion.

I've run through a few options that don't quite cut it. I've considered just including all files and having them within divs with no display, so that when a page is selected JavaScript will update the div display to visible. The problem with this is that it forces ALL of the pages of be parsed, which just means superfluous database queries and a resulting slower page load time.

Another thing that I have tried is to start an AJAX call when the page link is clicked. The JavaScript will pass the page name to a PHP script, which will them set a session variable ,$_SESSION['page_name'], equal to the page name passed. Using this, I can then do something like this:

                            //assume $page is equivalent to $_SESSION['page_name']
            if(isset($page) && file_exists("pages/$page")
            {
                require_once "pages/$page";
            }

But this requires the page to be refreshed in order to work. I am trying to get this all done without the page reloading.

So now I'm a bit stuck. Any suggestions?

Solution

I copied a the theme from /usr/share/themes that is close to fit my needs to /home/user/.themes. After copying the folder I removed the settings for the window-managers that I don't use. Now I used that copy to edit the appearance of the theme.

I changed the gnome-shell.css file in the folder of the specific window-manager. (here gnome-shell folder of course) So far I played around with the size of the icons and their spacing in the application overview. The file itself has a few comments which hint to functionality and to the purpose of the parameters. Just look there and play around... if you mess it up just replace it by the original theme. Hope that at least leads into the right direction.

Comments

[danjjl]

Duplicate of askubuntu.com/q/61567/22537?

[Daniel]

This is not a duplicate. I am not asking how to install custom themes here. I am asking how I can customize my themes. That is, change a color, for example. Particularly, I'm looking to see if there is a GUI interface for such actions. This is not the same question as the one that has been linked.

[daisy]

You wanted to make a GTK and metacity theme ?

[Daniel]

I would rather not make one, but edit one that already exists. And I'd rather have a gui interface to edit it, and not have to learn a markup language and edit text files.

[Jason Southwell]

I edited your question a bit (for clarity), let me know if it's okay.

[Anonymous]

Gtk3 is themed using CSS files. If you use gedit, you get syntax highlighting.

[Daniel]

Yeah. And I know CSS, but going into CSS files and figuring out what each color is supposed to be attached to is still kind of... tricky.

[Daniel]

Thamks. I mostly got it to work. There's an odd red glow around some input boxes, even though there's no red anywhere in the stylesheet I made, but it's at least significantly better than before.

[Daniel]

NOOO! My minesweeper theme still involves lots of gray.... and so do context menus in programs other than unity itself. Crap. I need to find more of these css files, buried somewhere, and figure out what I'm doing wrong...