I fully expect that this is my fault and not Chrome's. I've been trying to make this theme from here: http://www.chromestyles.com/6-new-go...hrome-colours/ work.

The file address thing that the website gives doesn't work (and I did substitute the username).

So my question is this: how do I make a theme that is not directly from Chrome (because those work without me even trying =P) to apply to my browser?

Thanks!

my man, you're trying to use themes created for the wrong chrome version . you're not going to get a theme that old to work for your version of chrome (unless someone converts) . so again, no worries......you're not doing anything wrong besides trying to get a video cassette into a dvd player .

ohhh. Well at least I wasn't being a total doofus. Thanks for letting me know to quit fiddling with it =P

A general question:
Is a theme supposed to affect the background colour of the transient bar that appears at the left bottom of the Chrome browser window whenever we hover on a link or when a site is loading?

I just tried the Dolce & Gabbana theme (leopard skin pattern) but the darkening of the bar referred to above made the link being hovered close to unreadable.

Is a theme supposed to affect the background colour of the transient bar that appears at the left bottom of the Chrome browser window whenever we hover on a link or when a site is loading?

Yep. The status bars background colour is determined by the colour set for the toolbar and the text for the status bar is determined by the colour of the selected tabs text. It can be hard to balance them all to work sometimes.
at_dolcegabbana.crx
Heres the same theme with the selected tabs text made light.

Hi PAEz:

Thanks for the reply and even more thanks for taking the time to tweak D&G. I've downloaded the .crx but please explain what I should do with it! I will try on my own but in case I don't succeed???

My Portable Chrome has this path:
E:\PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable\Data\profile\Default
I don't see a Themes folder here: databases, extensions, local storage, plugin data, User stylesheets. That's it.

(I might add that I do 99.9% of my browsing using Sandboxie and only if something really works and I really like it do I copy the stuff to the real programme's dir. So that's how I know that a subdirectory Themes was present when I tried out D&G the first time around).

If a theme doesnt install automatically when you download it then click on it in the download shelf, or double click on the file in its directory, or drag the file onto chromes window.

Hi PAEz:

I just saw your solution but in the meantime I did something else (a bit freaky) but it worked:
I downloaded your .crx file to the hard disk.
I unzipped it with 7-Zip.
I moved the stuff that was unzipped into a folder called DnG.
I moved this folder here: E:\PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable\Data\profile\Default\Local Storage
Then I opened Chrome, went into Wrench, Extensions, and clicked on load unpacked extension and pointed to DnG. <<<<
This lengthy procedure worked though I must admit your solutions are quicker!

And many thanks for the white-colored font. Stands out in perfect contrast. No gripes now!

In edit: I forgot to mention that after Wrench, Extensions, I have to click on Developer mode

Hi PAEz,

One more request!

I managed to play with the manifest file and changed all the text from whatever was there to 255, 255, 0: the most solid yellow I could think of. It's a bit garish but it stands out well from the background.

But I'm having trouble with the bar that appears when we hover on a link. Even though the text colour has changed to yellow, I get the feeling that the "background" is actually the foreground in a somewhat transparent way and is overlaid on the text so the text appears a bit faint. Could you point out how to improve the contrast there? Perhaps, yellow (255, 255, 0) on a solid black genuine background?

In any case, thanks for the help so far!

In edit:
I managed! I fiddled with the "toolbar" colour. I changed it to 0, 0, 0 (pure black) and so now I get a nice (for me) contrast of yellow on black.