beginner inkscape user.

[hah3day]

we discovered inkscape 3 weeks ago, and have been haunting YouTube for instructional videos, and have learned a lot. but we have had two observation that bug us and we have not found an answer.
1:  in the videos by Nick  he has a black background behind his tool bars,  how did he do that?
2:  in the Nick video logo, he stacks the shift+ctrl+a and the shift+ctrl+f to the right side of the screen,  I can not do that only one shows at a time   It does not interfere with the lesson but it distracts in the understanding of inkscape. 

I am running inkscape 0.92.4 

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

For Windows, and for the current version of Inkscape, it's not easy to get a different theme color (dark gray).  However, in the upcoming version 1.0, it will be easy to do.  I guess 1.0 should be out within approx a year, more or less, very ballpark estimate.

For the sake of those of us who don't use key shortcuts, just for future reference, please say the name of the dialog or command, or whatever it is.

Let's see....  Shift + Ctrl + a  is....  Aha, Align and Distribute.  Shift + Ctrl + f  is Fill and Stroke dialog.

So most....I think almost all dialogs can now be docked.  But when you say "stacked", I think you might be talking about a particular arrangment of docked dialogs.  Unfortunately, it's not only tricky to make it work, it's hard to explain.

I can make a quick video to show you some controls, and then you can play around with it, to try to make it work.  I don't have a lot of luck with it.  But maybe you will?  Or maybe someone else can explain. 

By the way, you can find tons of Inkscape tutorials listed on the home tab of this website.  Nick's are only a small part of all that are available.

I'll be back with the video shortly.

[brynn]

Ok, it's a very short video.  The most important part to notice, is that when you drag the dialogs around in the docking area, you see a dashed line rectangle which indicates how the dialog will be displayed, when you finally drop it.  Sorry it's kind of hard to see on my dark theme color.

I like mine always stacked on top of each other, so you have to move it around until the dashed line is how you want yours.

As you can see, you can have them stacked, or side by side, or a little bit of both.

Also note which bar you need to drag, to arrange the dialog.  Not the window titlebar, but the bar just below it.

Oh, and also, there's a 3rd choice for arranging the docked dialogs, besides stacked or side by side.  The 3rd option is to have the....I hate to call it the titlebar....  It's not the window titlebar, but it's sort of like Inkscape's titlebar.  They can be stacked up.  Maybe that's what you were  asking about?

Here, let me make a new video, to show that.....

[brynn]

Ok, this shows what I think you might be asking for.

[Moini]

As for the theme: see Nick's post about it: https://logosbynick.com/inkscape-92-dark-theme-windows/ - note that the icons file should be placed in your personal Inkscape icons folder, not in the program installation path.

[hah3day]

great help all,  thank you very much.    Inkscape is a fantastic free tool for vector design.  I am so lucky, I was tempted to buy adobe illustrator,  now I do not.