Change color of “tab header” in ttk.Notebook

Question

Gretings!

I want to change the color displayed in a tab header, created using ttk.Notebook. After search for a while I've found that to change the style of ttk widgets, we can use ttk. Styling, because Notebook apparently do not have configuration options to change its colors. However, I only found how to change the background and the foreground of a NoteBook object, but not how to configure the "tab header", whose background is either white (when selected) or grey (when not selected).

Anybody can help me with this?

This is the code that I have for now, related with what I'm trying to do

import Tkinter as tki
import ttk

...
##Other code. Not relevant here
...

#create tabs and associate the apropriate frames to it
tabs = ttk.Notebook(parent.master)
ttk.Style().configure("TNotebook", background=mainWcolor, foreground='green')   #configure "tabs" background color

paramsFrame = tki.Frame(tabs, bg=mainWcolor)   #frame with control parameters
comsFrame = tki.Frame(tabs, bg=mainWcolor)     #frame with communication parameters.
ssInfoFrame = tki.Frame(tabs, bg=mainWcolor)   #frame with start and stop messages and procedures

tabs.add(paramsFrame, text = "Control")
tabs.add(comsFrame, text = "Communications")
tabs.add(ssInfoFrame, text = "Start & Stop info")
tabs.pack()

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can try creating a custom theme.

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk

root = tk.Tk()

mygreen = "#d2ffd2"
myred = "#dd0202"

style = ttk.Style()

style.theme_create( "yummy", parent="alt", settings={
        "TNotebook": {"configure": {"tabmargins": [2, 5, 2, 0] } },
        "TNotebook.Tab": {
            "configure": {"padding": [5, 1], "background": mygreen },
            "map":       {"background": [("selected", myred)],
                          "expand": [("selected", [1, 1, 1, 0])] } } } )

style.theme_use("yummy")

note = ttk.Notebook(root)
f1 = ttk.Frame(note, width=300, height=200)
note.add(f1, text = 'First')
f2 = ttk.Frame(note, width=300, height=200)
note.add(f2, text = 'Second')
note.pack(expand=1, fill='both', padx=5, pady=5)

tk.Button(root, text='yummy!').pack(fill='x')

root.mainloop()

---

EDIT

The most detailed ttk documentation is from the tcl/tk world

eg.

http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/ttk_notebook.htm

For some useful python-based examples, you can grab the pyttk-samples package from http://code.google.com/p/python-ttk/

Answer 2

I had been using Oblivion's answer for some time, but I encountered an issue where the open/save dialog button outlines disappeared and Checkbuttons in Text widgets never appeared to be checked (even when they were checked). So, I translated the theme code into some style configuration and such to solve the problem (it solved it). This will let you change the tab bar color, the tab background/foreground and the active tab background/foreground. Plus, it won't cause issues with the rest of your chosen theme. It's essentially the same code from the theme translated over. So, really, Oblivion deserves most of the credit.

Style().configure("TNotebook", background=myTabBarColor);
Style().map("TNotebook.Tab", background=[("selected", myActiveTabBackgroundColor)], foreground=[("selected", myActiveTabForegroundColor)]);
Style().configure("TNotebook.Tab", background=myTabBackgroundColor, foreground=myTabForegroundColor);

Edit: Apparently, this solution doesn't work in Windows. I tested it in Linux (a number of versions of Xubuntu).