There are a number of hidden options that cannot be set by the Xfce Settings Manager; these require use of a text editor.
xfdesktop
.
The colors of the icon text and the icon text background, as well as the opacity of the icon text background and icon layout can be customized by putting directives similar to the following in your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file:
style "xfdesktop-icon-view" { XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 75 XfdesktopIconView::selected-label-alpha = 100 XfdesktopIconView::ellipsize-icon-labels = 1 XfdesktopIconView::tooltip-size = 128 XfdesktopIconView::shadow-x-offset = 1 XfdesktopIconView::shadow-y-offset = 1 XfdesktopIconView::shadow-color = "#ff0000" XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-x-offset = 2 XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-y-offset = 2 XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-color = "#00ff00" XfdesktopIconView::cell-spacing = 6 XfdesktopIconView::cell-padding = 6 XfdesktopIconView::cell-text-width-proportion = 2.5 base[NORMAL] = "#00ff00" base[SELECTED] = "#5050ff" base[ACTIVE] = "#0000ff" fg[NORMAL] = "#ff0000" fg[SELECTED] = "#ff0000" fg[ACTIVE] = "#ff0000" } widget_class "*XfdesktopIconView*" style "xfdesktop-icon-view"
The first four entries set the opacity of the rounded text background (allowed values are from 0 (totally transparent) to 255 (totally opaque), and whether or not unselected icons get their labels ellipsized (truncated) to fit on one line. (The 'selected-' version controls the opacity of icons that have been selected with the mouse.) The tooltip-size determines how large the image preview will be when the mouse is hovered over an icon (allowed values are from 0 (not shown) to 512, values larger than 256 may cause poor image quality however.)
The second six entries can be used to enable a text shadow to be painted with the icon labels. The offsets are in pixels. Setting them to 0 (the defaults) will disable the shadows entirely. Again, the 'selected-' versions apply to icons that have been selected with the mouse.
The third four entries set spacing and sizing for individual icons on the grid. The 'cell-spacing' property specifies the spacing between each 'cell' in the grid of icons. The 'cell-padding' property sets extra padding placed around each icon+text. The units for these two are in pixels. The 'cell-text-width-proportion' property specifies the maximum width of the text label underneat the icon, as a multiplier of the icon width (so for 30px icons, '2.5' would leave a 75px wide area underneath for the text).
The fourth three entries set the color of the rounded text background.
The final three entries set the color of the label text. See above for the differences between NORMAL, SELECTED, and ACTIVE.
There are some hidden xfconf
settings that cannot be set by the Desktop settings application. You can edit these settings under “xfce4-desktop” in xconf
. For more information, see the xfconf documentation.
The entire list of xfconf
options for xfdesktop
can be found in the README.