Comment 178 for bug 403135

Never filed a bug report, hope this is correct. I've been tracking this
and not seen this mentioned (that I can remember) so perhaps it will
shed some light.

I have solid backgrounds on my Firestarter, VLC, and Banshee icons. I
have since installed RGBA transparency on Ubuntu 10.04. Once in use the
three above tray icons were corrected in appearance - that is, they
gained a clear background - and all other icons were screwed up. The
icons that were fine, like Miro, Network Monitor Applet, Parcellite,
Dropbox, and so on all gained a dark gray background.

Since this was even uglier than before I blacklisted the notification
area from using rgba transparency and everything returned to "normal".

I'm no expert, but the before mentioned "alpha transparency issue"
appears to be simply a difference between Ubuntu's pseudo transparency
and the "real" transparency of rgba. I have found no way to make the
two work together in the notification area, it's one or the other I
guess, but it's a clear line to the prblem. Maybe in 10.10, when Ubuntu
will supposedly have rgba by default it will be fixed?