White Panel Text

Alot of people don't know that you can overwrite your current theme with a certain file in your home folder. If you notice in the above screenshot, I have white text on the panel while everything else defaults to black. To achive this, simply create the file .gtkrc-2.0 and place it in your home folder. In it, place the following code:

style "panel"
{
fg[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
}
widget "*PanelWidget*" style "panel"
widget "*PanelApplet*" style "panel"
class "*Panel*" style "panel"
widget_class "*Mail*" style "panel"
class "*notif*" style "panel"
class "*Notif*" style "panel"
class "*Tray*" style "panel"

Now you can use dark panel backgrounds with light colored themes. To refresh the panel type killall gnome-panel or just exit to GDM and login again.