How to change the background color of a gtk.MenuItem()

Question

For a pop-up menu made in Gtk, I would like to have the first menu item as a header. Preferably its background should be white. Since---according to the documentation---one cannot change a gtk.Label's background colour, but rather must change its container's background, it seemed to me the gtk.MenuItem itself should be modified.

However, I have tried the following in vain:

menu_item.modify_bg(gtk.STATE_NORMAL, gtk.gdk.color_parse('#FFFFFF'))

This would work for a container as gtk.EventBox, but for gtk.MenuItem it does not. What's not working here above and what can I do to have this gtk.MenuItem background white?

PS: i'd rather not use any .rc file for this.

Answer 1

Here is a sample that puts the "exit" menu in white when mouse hovvers over it. Hope it can help you !

#!/usr/bin/python

import gtk

class PyApp(gtk.Window):

    def __init__(self):
        super(PyApp, self).__init__()

        self.set_title("Simple menu")
        self.set_size_request(250, 200)
        self.modify_bg(gtk.STATE_NORMAL, gtk.gdk.Color(6400, 6400, 6440))
        self.set_position(gtk.WIN_POS_CENTER)

        mb = gtk.MenuBar()

        filemenu = gtk.Menu()
        filem = gtk.MenuItem("File")
        filem.set_submenu(filemenu)

        exit = gtk.MenuItem("Exit")
        style = exit.get_style().copy ()
        style.bg[gtk.STATE_NORMAL] = exit.get_colormap().alloc_color (0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000)
        exit.set_style (style)

        exit.connect("activate", gtk.main_quit)
        filemenu.append(exit)

        mb.append(filem)

        vbox = gtk.VBox(False, 2)
        vbox.pack_start(mb, False, False, 0)

        self.add(vbox)

        self.connect("destroy", gtk.main_quit)
        self.show_all()

PyApp()
gtk.main()

To do this, I play with the "style".