Programs scroll/slider-bar inconsistency in Freya

Question

Nice OS, gang :-) Really enjoying it. Running 64-bit Freya, AMD II X2 Regor, Radeon Linux graphics. If possible, could anyone please take a look at this pic of my two screen desktop:

(broken image removed)

Notice on the left screen that Firefox, Terminal and Nemo (open in that order from back to front) all have that infuriating narrow, slim scroll/slider-bar. On the right screen, notice that Chrome, Geany and LibreOffice have the fat scroll/slider bars. I am fairly proficient navigating my way around Linux (6-7 yr user now), as I had already modified the settings in /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-2.0/gtkrc and /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css, respectively, to eliminate the narrow scroll/slider bars. As you can see, on some programs the changes sticks and worked, on others it didn't. Weirdly, this does not seem to be a GTK-2 vs GTK-3 dependency problem.

On the other 64-bit Linux OS-es I run (Debian-Jessie, Ubuntu Trusty, MX-15, Peppermint, and many versions of PuppyLinux), whenever I edit the above files (gtkrc and gtk-widgets.css), all programs then behave and the scroll/slider-bars are properly reflected. But, for some reason, in ElementaryOS Freya, no matter what I do and/or change in the above respective "Themes" files, still some things (programs) are reflected with those razor thin scroll/slider bars that are impossible to quickly grab.

Could anyone please point me how to remedy this? Please note I do have ElementaryOS Tweaks also installed, and it makes no difference with the aforementioned problem. Some programs still open with the razor scroll/slider-bar even after changing scrollbar width inside Tweaks.

Thanks for any help and/or pointers.

P.S. After I get this solved, I only have one question left, a question that seems again related to the ElementaryOS's window manager and why it insists on opening many programs up in full screen when you first launch them from either dock on either screen. Mainly it is a concern on Screen 1, as continually opening up a program in as large a screen as possible renders my Screen 1 top line Conky (HD, RAM & CPU monitor in the same line as Freya's top taskbar) unviewable (see pic above), whereby where I have to click the program's upper right minimize button to bring that program back to a normal size that I want. The window manager seems to remember my preference for some programs opening size and yet forget many others. How in heck does Freya 64-bit differentiate between not remembering & opening some programs to the max and yet remember the opening size for others (and, pleased note, this is NOT a Chrome specific issue) and opening them without taking up the whole desktop space?

Answer 1

Just wanted to come back and give an update on this problem. I found the answer to this is: go to your /user/share/themes/elementary/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css and open it as root (in order to make changes to it).

Once you open gtk-widgets.css, use the term 'slider-width' and within the gtk-widgets.css file it should popup no less than five times. Here is each entry and what I changed them to, to get some really, fat, juicy scrollbars for everything else inside ElementaryOS that the first fix didn't handle (in my original post):

.scale { -GtkScale-slider-length: 22; -GtkRange-slider-width: 62; -GtkRange-trough-border: 16;

.scrollbar { background-image: none; border-style: solid; -GtkRange-trough-border: 2; -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: false; -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: false; -GtkRange-slider-width: 40; -GtkScrollbar-min-slider-length: 30;

.scrollbar:backdrop { -GtkRange-trough-border: 5; -GtkRange-slider-width: 10;

.scrollbar.slider:insensitive { -GtkRange-slider-width: 10;

GtkSwitch { font: 1; -GtkSwitch-slider-width: 68; (this last value is what was changed in my original post, but it never worked for everything (i.e. like Firefox, etc...see above pic...turns out the other 4 values needed changed too)

Please note you can play with these figures to get what you want. For me, since I have a huge desktop screen, I like scrollbars that are so fat that you can see them from 40-50ft across the room and that also, btw, take less than a micro-sec to grab and do what you want with them ;-)