After discovering the Wide Borders and Big Buttons theme for XFCE, I looked a little further into the whole theme design thing, and discovered that adding a .themes folder in /home/user would let me install a theme without having to mess with root access in /usr/share/themes
I also found that a lot of the standard themes have their borders and buttons defined as .png and .xpm files for each part of the image that makes up a folder. Sort of like a weird jigsaw puzzle.
So I wondered what would happen if I copied the folders with the png and xpm files into the /xfwm folder of one of the standard themes.
I copied the WideBordersBigButtons theme folder from /usr/share/themes to /home/user/.themes and also copied the Clearlooks theme folder and renamed it to Clearlooks-RAD. Then I copied the .png and .xpm files into the appropriate places in the /Clearlooks-RAD/xfwm4 folder, opened Settings > Appearance and checked that I had a 'Clearlooks-RAD theme showing.
It worked! I could swap from the WideBordersBigButtons theme to the Clearlooks-RAD theme, and while it changed the colours etc to those of Clearlooks, it kept the Wide Borders and the Big Buttons in the top right corner.
But there was more. Out of curiosity I checked some other themes, Like Mint-Y and Mint-Y Dark. They changed, and for some reason they kept the wide borders and different buttons.
And after several reboots no matter what theme I apply, it has wide borders.
I don;t know how, or why, but the change has persisted even though I only installed one theme (by copying its files to the /usr/share/themes folder) and changed files in one theme in /hom/user/.themes.
OK, I finally worked out why my thick borders became persistent across themes.
Choosing a 'Style' in Settings > Appearance > Style, changes the looks of a particular Window theme.
Choosing a 'Theme' in Settings > Window Manager > Theme Changes to a particular THEME.
Where I was getting lost is that some Styles or Themes are listed in BOTH Appearance > Style and in Window Manager > Theme. Which is a little weird.
However choosing WideBordersBigButtons in Settings > Window Manager > Theme will apply the wide border persistently and let you change 'Styles' in Appearance.
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