Jon, the gradients do NOT work. At least not the way I want them to be. Look again at the original theme screenie. These are NOT the colors I picked for the toolbar. And, like moj says, they change with mouse overs. Since the problem remains when using BB's native toolbar, bbleanbar is not the culprit, maybe the core is. Just a thought. What do you mean by plugins with red squares? These are bbleanskin's window grips.
Here's the deal.. If the menu renders incorrectly then the gradients are broken, or at the very least.. incorrect. The menu's render with the exact gradient code of blackbox, where all the style items and everything style related is defined. There is no wiggle room with the menu's, no questions.. If you told me that I have the colors out of order in the menu's - I could fix that and would accept that..
Now for the real issue.....
A lot of plugins have their own gradient rendering code (Look at what I posted the other day(!): Post 7) which means that they need to be updated when you add colors, gradients, or anything style related.. or.. they need to be rewritten so they don't need these updates, like I had mentioned in my earlier post. The gradients ARE NOT broken, the plugins are broken. Now, I really don't care for bbLeanBar - which translates to not a very high priority for me, and I look at LeanSkin as something that will need to be rewritten for Windows 8 support. In either case I, or someone, needs to determine whether to fix these plugins for the short term, or long term..and I made no progress on either because I spent my evening proving the issues were not in the blackbox gradient code, but rather that the issues existed in the plugins.