How do I change the background and foreground colors of the following: the main menus, the inspector comment cards, and the binder’s document selection highlight? I can’t find these options in the Options dialog under File > Options > Appearance. Thanks.
Funny, I just worked on this with another poster last night. To change comment color, right-click on the comment card and pick a new color. According to the manual, the new color will become the default color going forward, until you right-click and change it again.
I don’t have Scrivener in front of me, so can’t help with the other ones at the moment.
Great. This works. But, is there a way to set the default text color within the comment cards also? I changed the text color in one of the cards and created a new comment with no luck. I even restarted Scrivener. And I had no luck searching through the user manual either.
Ok. No hurries. Take your time. Thanks. 
I have a feeling I will need to define all this in an external file and import it. Anyone’s help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
BTW, the extras pack zip file that accompanies the user manual had example files for which I don’t understand their uses.
The comment card font can be changed Options > Editing > Formatting, but I couldn’t find any way to change the text color.
The extras pack was developed for Mac Scriv v3. I have no idea how much is applicable to Win Scriv beta at this time. My guess is that, if you open the projects in the extras pack, they will explain how to use the example files.
Thanks for getting back to me. I tried this and still the font or color change to the formatting does get applied to new comment cards. And hopefully, others will chime in to offer ways to change the background/foreground colors for the main menus and binder document selection highlight.
Background and foreground colors for the main menus are changeable via themes, I believe. So far as I know, there is no other way from INSIDE Scrivener. You can change the menu font, font style, and size (File | Options [F12] | Appearance | General (first line on the side panel)).
Now, that said, the theme files are editable, but I cannot recommend it (A scrtheme file is a zipped archive of 4 other files, all of which are editable with a decent text editor [notepad does not qualify]).
You an ALSO start Scrivener with a kind of script file which changes the colors of various programmed elements, but I can’t recommend that either (tried it with mixed success). That’s essentially what the themes duplicate, in a more user-friendly way.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I don’t see any options to modify the font at this location.
Can you please point me to a resource that teaches me how to create my own .scrtheme files with my custom settings? I know I can just open up the zip archive and modify the settings in the contained files. But, I don’t think I would know what they are referring to. And where are the built-in .scrtheme files located in Scrivener’s install directory? I can’t find them, including in the AppData > Local > LiteratureAndLatte directory.Thanks.
Thank you for the screenshot. That modifies the font family for the menus and the format bar. But, how do I change the background/foreground menu colors and the binder selection hightlight color?
I would really like to make my own .scrtheme files and have greater, finer control over the type and number of visual changes to the UI. Any help, such as pointing me to the right learning resources, would be appreciated. Thanks.
I don’t think they (L&L) are there yet for a tool to roll your own themes. Truthfully, I think the themes are still in an alpha state that was thrown out to satisfy a “we have it in Windows to match the Mac”. There really hasn’t been much theme-related bug fixes since they were released due to fixing other bugs with a much higher priority.
Ok. I’ll stay tuned.
But, I’m still stumped as to where the built-in .scrtheme files were stored on my computer when Scrivener RC was installed. I’d like to be enlightened on this. Oh wait, it’s a zip file. My bad. I shall do a quick search on my PC.
UPDATE: No luck. The only zip file that’s in Program Files > Scrivener is the tutorial.zip file.
Switch to a theme that is close to what you want. Export the theme as a file. Edit that file. Import the theme back into Scrivener. Problem solved.
Pure genius! I didn’t know you could export it. Thanks.
Bummer! After opening the exported .scrtheme file in Notepad++, I got a bunch of garbled output like this:
PK D“¯PDìÖ< test.xmleÁ‚0Dï~E³wAoZ8hüñ…XZé6DÿÞ
A÷¶³o²32´FôðÜ8«h›lHÀ–®jìUѹ8®w”g+y*}ÓÃÂ5Zp¶q~TauEHpxš¸´¿ÑHŽ.a®½É¤c–éBþÒwmF0.2ý(3Æã3ƒ…qºR´wÆy¦ÉÏñÁŒš²§Ëð±cúWòPK D“¯Pž”9¬ œ test.qssÅYKoÛ8¾/°ÿA¹µ€½N¤[0·lÝKnƒöP"k³‘I-IÅ.‚ýïK‰z’m = 9œù¾™O|L7Œå¤xýý·DýËXÎ8(`Ž¥Äo$>Ê·÷z&…Ùó–³’¢¥m”B;#Ææà]qLË JZ#ù³m´ä‘R€ÛâXÿWýØ|‘P–âò×HT˜KÌ)”xiÆ·mö½5|´<Ùs:eR²=Xw%‡Tc*Ç¡ ..........
Seems like it’s an XML structure. I shall open with an XML editor and report back.
UPDATE: No luck. Says invalid entry in line 1, position 1 and fails to open the file.
Face palm! I just realized .scrtheme is a zip file. Opened with Winrar and all is good. Time to edit away. 
EDIT: Some pref settings are assigned the value @ByteArray followed by [i]\x1\xd9\xd0\xcb\0\x3\0\0\0\0\x3\x16\0\0[/i] etc. And others are assigned @DateTime, or @Variant, etc. I’m going to research this unless others can save me some time. 
There’s a .pal, .qss, and a .prefs files. I’m leaving the .prefs file alone for now and editing the pal and qss files instead. I’m putting off editing the .prefs file for a rainy day. Thanks for the help all! 
You don’t open the .scrtheme file; you rename it ot .zip. Then extract the files from that zip and edit them. Then put the newely edited files back into the zip file. Then rename that zip into .scrtheme and that’s what you import back into Scrivener.
Actually, I was able to open the .scrtheme file directly with WinRar without renaming it to a .zip file. Then I extracted the files, edited it, and re-imported the edited theme to test. Now, I just have to learn the syntax used in each file within the zip archive (.pal, .prefs, and .qss). Shouldn’t be too hard with google’s assistance. Thanks.
Open it with 7zip. There are 4 files inside that are plain text. You can edit those.