Pidgen is suddenly hideously ugly

[rpgdemon]

So, I was playing around with some open source stuff that used the gtk framework, and suddenly, BAM. Pidgen becomes hideously ugly. I assume it's because one of the other stuff I was using changed the defaults of the gtk framework, or the settings that pidgen might have changed?

Does anyone know the defaults/how to fix it?

[rpgdemon]

Pidgin, rather. I spell gud.

[synkr0nized]

What platform are you on?

Can you change Pidgin's theme or anything?

[rpgdemon]

I'm on Windows 7, and there's no theme or anything to change to/from. I installed some other stuff that used gtk, and then it decided to become ugly. I tried reinstalling the gtk environment stuff, to no avail.

Everything looks like red hat linux, for lack of a better descriptor, the dropdown menus/buttons, et cetera.

[synkr0nized]

Ohh, that's right -- even in Windows they rely on using the gtk theme to "skin" the program. Hmm.

Looking over Pidgin's pages, have you given this GTK theme thing (http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Pidgin#win32_gtk_theme) a shot***?
I don't have Pidgin installed outside of Linux environments (where it just adopts whatever theme I select for my desktop shell) and have not mucked about with it in Windows. I honestly don't like it outside of Linux -- it's a nice program, but it's also blocky and kind of bland. I prefer Trillian in Windows (and at times screwing with Miranda for a few weeks and then going back) and AdiumX in OS X. Anyone else who has used it in Windows may have much better advice or thoughts on the matter as a result.

So before this happened, I'm guessing it looked similar to Windows itself? I assume they drop a Windows-like GTK skin/theme in with it on the Windows install, and the selection of theme has been changed by something else you installed to a more basic one (or that whatever you installed had a gtk install, like Pidgin does, that overwrote the theme data).


*** Here may be better instructions (http://samuelhaddad.com/2008/02/16/sick-of-pidgins-look-and-feel/); it's from 2008 but uses the mentioned GTK theme tool and points out that you'll have to re-read the config to apply changes.

Likely you could head into wherever GTK+ is on your system and manage your theme configuration, but without looking it up I cannot offer any help or ideas where to go.

[rpgdemon]

Yeah, my main problem is that I don't know what the theme that it -was- using, so I can't change it back.

[synkr0nized]

So change around to other ones and try'em out?

Perhaps uninstalling all gtk stuff [unless you need it] and Pidgin and re-installing will work out, as well.