How to make selected tab in terminal more prominent

Something about the color scheme changed in 11.04, and now it's very difficult for me to tell which tab is the selected one.

On my screen, the colors look more similar the further down I slouch in my chair (i.e. angle of view).

If I change the color scheme the problem is solved, but that solution is too extreme for me. Is there a way to just change the color of the selected tab in terminal, or otherwise make it more prominent?

UPDATE: In 12.10 the accepted solution doesn't work. Can anyone fix it?

Solution 1:

For 12.10–15.04 you can create a CSS theme for GTK 3.0 as explained in this comment by Kees (kees-vanveen) on the bug report posted above by Alessio.

1. Create the file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

2. Paste this as the contents using your desired color:

   TerminalWindow .notebook tab:active {
       background-color: #def;
   }
   

3. Close all Terminal windows and relaunch the application to see the change.

Solution 2:

I'm not that much of a theme hacker, but here's a quick fix:

Create or edit the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 to include the following:

style "gnome_terminal_notebook"
{
  fg[NORMAL] = "#00ff00"
}

widget "*TerminalWindow.*.GtkNotebook*" style "gnome_terminal_notebook"

This will turn the text color of the active tab green. Not very beautiful, but should give you a start.

You could also lighten up the highlighted tab by replacing the fg line with:

bg[NORMAL] = shade (1.25, "#3c3b37")

The downside: this will also make the inner borders brighter.

Note: This will influence every theme you choose in the appearance properties, so don't forget to undo those changes when using another theme.