Have you tried using Panel Preferences? You can access these quite easily by right-clicking in a panel and selecting it from the rightclick menu (there's often a menu entry for the particular item where you right-clicked but you don't want that for this purpose).
When you open it you'll see three tabs and the one named Appearance lets you configure the panel quite extensively. You'll see that Background defaults to 'use system style' but you can replace that with a solid colour or a background image. If you opt for solid colour you'll be able to adjust that further using the Alpha Channel and Opacity options also displayed in the Appearance Tab.
Some variations for individual items is also possible by selecting the Items Tab, then highlighting the item you want to adjust and clicking the settings option on the right hand side (displays as a cogwheel on my display but other icons are used too - tool tips help!).
Panel configurations can offer you hours of innocent fun! I hope this is of some help.
Thanks for the reply, I thought I tried everything, so I went back an checked again and documented the steps here as a double check and to highlight what I did just in case I missed something.
When I right-click on one of the WS switcher work spaces a context menu opens and I get 3 items:
Properties-This relates to the actual WS switcher and has Number of Rows, Show Miniatures, Switch using Mouse Wheel and a Workspace Settings button.
The Workspace Settings button opens up a Panel with two Tabs: General and Margins
General has the number of workspaces and the names, Left click on a name allows editing the name, right click on the name does nothing. There is no color setting on the margins tab, and neither right or left clicking on the image don't do anything.
Panel > Panel Preferences opens a panel with 3 tabs: Display /Appearance / Items
Display: Relates to the whole bar, not the WS Switcher and is only for orientation, measurements and hiding, but no color.
Appearance: Has a color setting, but it's for the whole panel (task bar), and it is set to red.
Item: Has the settings for all the items on the task bar, if I select WS Switcher and edit, I get the same entries a Properties above.
So if there is a setting it is very well hidden. Does anyone know what the WS Switcher component is- i.e. is it an ini/xml/text file with parameters that configures the behavior of the component, or is it an app (actual code) that gets attached to the running desktop?
Also: Maybe should be a separate post, but once I get this desktop the way I want it, is there any way I can copy the configuration to another machine. I'm using LL in VMs as it is very lite and good way to get an extra layer of protection when surfing the web. Regular revert to snapshot gets rid of any crud if I do get infected, and the malware has to breach the container before it can do any real damage - not perfect, but it should get rid of 99.9% of automated hacks.
it has items related to this component, #of WS, WS Names and Margins but NO color. This entry is the same as Panel > Panel Preferences > Items > Workplace Switcher > Edit
