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Some time ago, I switched to a dark theme, which results easier on the eyes. One of the open source programs I made some time ago, uses a series of togglebuttons to select items, and I now notice, that with this darker theme, there is no difference at all between a 'pressed' and 'unpressed' button.

Thinking it was a theme issue, I tested a series of themes, and found that not only dark themes seem to ignore indicating button states. In fact, of about 10 tested schemes, only 2 did show a (discernible) difference.

FlatStudioDark theme: enter image description here

Adwaita theme: enter image description here

I could edit the CSS file of the theme, but that wouldn't help others who install the program. I could distribute CSS with the program (either installable or as resource), but that would probably raise compatibility issues with installed themes.

Can anyone suggest a viable way to address this?

(I know there is a very similar question, but it's not gtk3)

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jcoppens
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    Good question, and I'm not sure there's a good answer. Perhaps the best course of action is to file bugs with the individual themes. Surely other applications will be affected by this as well. – ptomato Jun 07 '15 at 02:23
  • @ptomato Yep... The thing is, with all the changes happening with gtk3 in each version, is that many of the theme designers are just giving up. There are very few up-to-date themes at the moment. – jcoppens Jun 07 '15 at 04:44
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    If this is really a problem I think that you could ship your CSS with your package (in your package folder), and then load it when launching the application by exporting [GTK_THEME=elementary](http://askubuntu.com/questions/78088/can-i-apply-a-different-gtk3-theme-from-the-main-one-to-an-individual-applicatio). Probably before exporting the variable you should detect if the user is using a dark theme, for that you could try getting the theme colors. [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27962577/get-font-color-of-the-current-gtk-theme/27981847#27981847) question may help you for that. –  Jul 03 '15 at 11:12
  • @rsm That's a nice idea! Yes, it *is* a problem. As you can see in the example above, I rely on the fact toggle buttons should provide feedback on their state (and I think everybody else does too). So, really the theme that should be corrected, else every app would have to include the CSS, and not only for dark themes light themes frequently fail too. – jcoppens Jul 03 '15 at 14:17

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