How to change background/font colour on desktop icons?

[burpnrun]

With the default 2010.12 Xfce desktop, the desktop icon text is black within a grey, rounded-corner box.  Is it possible to change this to remove the text box entirely and to have the text appear in, say, white without the bounding box?  I'd even be willing to change from the default Oxygen theme to something more PCLOS 2009/7-ish, if that's simpler.  TIA.

[longtom]

Since I don't do icons on desktops I don't mind that.  There is XFCE 4.8 in the pipeline as well which might just address this.

In the meantime I'd suggest to go to the Settings Manager > Windows Manager Tweaks > Compositor.  That changed it for me.  Worth experimenting I reckon.

[greywolf]

With the default 2010.12 Xfce desktop, the desktop icon text is black within a grey, rounded-corner box.  Is it possible to change this to remove the text box entirely and to have the text appear in, say, white without the bounding box?  I'd even be willing to change from the default Oxygen theme to something more PCLOS 2009/7-ish, if that's simpler.  TIA.

You include the required changes in a file in your $HOME folder called .gtkrc.mine - here is an excerpt from mine:

# user added stuff

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
    XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 0

    base[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
    base[SELECTED] = "#5050ff"
    base[ACTIVE] = "#0000ff"

    fg[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
    fg[SELECTED] = "#ffffff"
    fg[ACTIVE] = "#ffffff"
}

This sets the transparency (alpha) factor from 0 to 100 % and the colors you want for background and foreground. You can substitute any color you want, that is in the current palette, for those in my file. You then include this line:

include "/home/<YOURUSERNAME>/.gtkrc.mine"

in the .gtkrc-2.0 file in your $HOME folder.

log out log back in.

looks SO much better,
greywolf.