I'm probably missing something obvious here but I just cant find an effective way to change the look of the taskbar.

I have downloaded skins and window styles for gnome and applied them, even used emerald themes but in the end, none of those change the taskbar which remains a boring white with black text.

I know I can set the color to black in properties but then the letters are invisible. I cant find a way to change the font color to white just for the taskbar

Even better would be a full skin for the taskbar instead of just color change. I have searched for such things but for some reason I just cant find any info

I've always been able to change the look of it somewhat by changing around the Metacity themes. However, if you want to give it a background or something, right-click, select Properties. In the Background tab, select "Use Image", then click the drop-down box to choose a BG image.

Aside from this, I've never really played around with it much, especially since I switched to Avant Window Navigator instead of the standard panel.

Yeah I should have mentioned I know I can use an image. But I still cannot change the font color, so a dark image prevents me from reading the letters.

I want to use a vista style black taskbar. I still haven't found how to do it. I have tried different metacity themes. They don't touch the taskbar except for the foot icon at the far left