Making Mint - Mate +Opera easier to see

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Darcy

Making Mint - Mate +Opera easier to see

Post by Darcy »

This is my first version of this tutorial and as such it can be improved upon or it may have errors, so be kind when telling me what I have done wrong.


Visibility For Linux Mint - Mate
Using wide screen, high resolution monitors
Basic Settings - Version 0.1.0



This first section will focus on settings within Mint 17 – Mate. These settings are good for people who are mildly VI (Visually Impaired). I do not use KDE because for some reason it continually crashes my PC and I do not use Cinnamon as a matter of personal tastes. I hope someone will take it upon themselves to apply these changes in KDE and Cinnamon and write a separate guide if necessary.

I start by assuming you are using a fresh install, that you have already installed the correct video drivers, installed updates, and are using the native resolution of your monitor.

I am using Mint 17 LTS with an Nvidia 450 GTS, Nvidia 331.38 driver on a 24 inch wide-screen (16x9), set at its native resolution of 1920x1080.


1) Basic Settings


Some settings you may notice are just my personal preference so feel free to set them as you wish.

Main Panel:

Move panel to top by right clicking on the panel (towards the center), click on “Properties”, set “Orientation” to Top.
Increase size to 34 pixels.
Click “Background” tab and select “Solid Colour”. “Colour Name” for white is #FFFFFF
Set “Style Slider” to Opaque.
Right click on the clock. Click “Lock to panel” to deselect it.
Right click on clock again, select Move.
Move clock to center of panel.
Right click on clock again, click “Lock to panel”.


Change Desktop Background:

Changing the background can have a huge impact on icon readibility. One thing to note is if you make the background a solid colour the desktop icon font may change colour after restarting your machine. In which case they may become totally illegible, so stick with an image for now. I find the wave image best for myself or you can download more images from the Internet. Just try to find images that are at least the resolution of your monitor, in my case 1920x1080. Let me know if you need help installing new backgrounds.


Right click on a blank area of your desktop.
Click on “Change Desktop Background”.
Click the images one at a time until you find the one most suitable for you.
Click “Close” when done.


Install Extra Themes:

We do not need these so we can actually switch to a new theme but with the extra themes installed we will have more options available when customizing the custom theme we are using.


Go to Menu-->Administration-->Software Manager
Enter “ mate-themes ” (minus quotes) into the search box
Hit enter if you are not already there
Double click on “mate-themes”
Click the “Install” button
Close the window


Fix the scrollbars:

As I'm sure you noticed the scrollbars are very narrow and do not have up/down arrows. This fix is more complicated than the other fixes in this guide but it is well worth the effort.

Using Caja or whatever your file manager is we need to open as root a system file to edit. Open “ /usr/share/themes/Mint-X/gtk-2.0/gtkrc ” (minus quotes), either make a backup copy of this file or write down the changes you make.


Scroll down and find these entries, they start on line 65:

GtkScrollbar::has-backward-stepper = 1 Change from 0 to 1 (Up arrow)
GtkScrollbar::has-forward-stepper = 1 Change from 0 to 1 (Down arrow)
GtkScrollbar::min-slider-length = 30 Leave alone
GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 28 Change from 14 to 28 (Scrollbar width)
GtkScrollbar::trough-border= 0 Leave alone
GtkScrollbar::activate-slider = 1 Leave alone

Click on “Save” and exit Caja

Logout and back in, suddenly your scrollbars are twice as wide and have up/down arrows.


Adjusting Fonts:

Go to Menu->>All->>Appearance
Custom Theme should already be selected.
Click “Fonts” tab
Change all fonts sizes to 13

NOTE: I changed all fonts to 13, use whatever you need but just beware that if you make the fonts too large you may get strange problems like text overlapping, or things being moved around and just making a mess.

Click “Details” tab.
Change “DPI” to 120. Once again don't go too high.
Change “Smoothing” and “Hinting” to whatever works best for you.
You don't need to change “Subpixel order”.

You will probably notice a couple of labels are now cut-off, just logout and back in to fix this. If it does not work it's because you have set font sizes or DPI too high.


Changing Window Border:

Go to Menu-->All-->Apperance
Click on “Customize”
Click on “Window Border” tab
Click on “Spidey” and close both windows

End of Basic Settings



Next: Browser settings for Opera, Firefox and Chrome.

NOTE: Read the next post for Opera Settings

Coming in the future: Installing accessible apps. Like Orca, e-book readers, voice recognition, speech to text, voice pod-casts and more.
Last edited by Darcy on Thu Jul 31, 2014 5:25 am, edited 2 times in total.
Darcy

Re: Making Mint - Mate+Opera easier to see

Post by Darcy »

2) Browsers

Although I have always used Google Chrome myself, then Firefox, I have become fond of Opera as it is highly customizable and easier on the eyes. Opera uses system wide settings which we set in section 1. Firefox is pretty good too, but Chrome almost totally ignores the settings resulting in small fonts on Tabs, Toolbars, and Menus.
For the best visibility and variety of settings I recommend Opera.

2.1) Browser Settings: Opera

Click the “Opera” button (top left corner).
Click “Appearance”.
Click “Buttons” tab.
Click “Browser”
Click and drag “Home” button to where ever you want it.
Do the same with “Reload”.
Note: You may already have “Home” & “Reload” on your buttons bar, In which case just click and drag them to where you want. If you end up with duplicates right click on the one you to get rid of and click on “Remove from toolbar”

Click on “Themes” tab.
In the bottom right corner above “OK” is the “Icon size” scaling control.
Click the arrow and set % to whatever you need. I chose 160%
Close the window by clicking on “OK”.

To set default zoom level click on “Opera” button
Hover mouse on “Settings”
Click “Preferences”
Click “Webpages” tab
Set “Page zoom” to your choice. I set mine to “180”
Change the “Background color” if you wish just note that the wrong color can make your pages look horrible or unreadable. Note the default color is #F7F7F7 in case you need to change it back.

Also on this page you can change your fonts.
Click the “Normal font” button (it should be on Dejavu Sans)
Change to a different font if you like. I left mine on Dejavu Sans and “Size” set to 16
Click on “Weight” button set to “Bold”
Repeat the above for “Monospace font”

Click “Advanced” tab
Click “Browsing” and enable “Smooth scrolling”
Click “Notifications”
Enable “Enable program sounds”

Click “Content”
Click “Style options” button
Click “Presentation Modes” tab
Under “Author mode” enable “My fonts and colors”
Click “OK”
Click “Fonts” and find “Minimum font size (pixels)” do not go to 16 or larger as this will cause text to be cut-off or overlapped. I set mine to 14.
Click on “OK” to close the window and save settings.

Click “Opera” tab and hover over “Toolbars”
Click “Customize”
Click “Toolbars” tab if not already selected
Enable “Bookmarks bar”

Click “Buttons” tab
Click “Browser view”
Click and drag zoom control button to toolbar
This control will enable to you set a zoom level for each website you visit, that is if the default we set earlier is not appropriate.

I think we are done the Opera section.
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