GNOME theme engine designer Andrea Cimitan has implemented support for transparent widgets in the Murrine GTK theme engine, bringing Vista-like translucent glass effects to the GNOME desktop.

Cimitan used RGBA colormaps to implement the feature and says that, with only 10 or 20 extra lines of code, translucency can easily be added to other theme engines that support RGBA.

The work that Cimitan has done with the Murrine theme engine since its initial creation often demonstrates the power and flexibility of the GTK widget toolkit. The Murrine theme engine offers advanced features like striped scrollbars and rich gradients.

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