Because there is currently no option to change the text color it can be difficult if the background of the panel is too close to black. Fonts can already be changed in the preferences; why not enable users to change the color of the font as well.
This is also a problem with all the applets in the whole panel, including CPU activity entity, the workspace switcher, the clock, the window list and even the notification area - none of them consistently adjust for dark backgrounds. At work I have a dual quad-Xeon desktop running Xubuntu 14.04, just like my Phenom II x6 at home, but at work, all the text and other displays work fine with a dark background - the text is white, the workspaces are darker, the clock is white on black, the window list is dark with white lettering and the notification area has a black background with lighter icons. At home, this just doesn't happen - everything is black on white/transparent, and the other items are just hard to see. I have to make the panel a lighter color, and even at 60% transparency it looks hideous. The notification icons are still almost impossible to see unless I make the panel very light and fully opaque. I want it to blend in with the background, with white on dark, not dark on whatever. I can supply lots of screenshots if you like.
(From bug 11114:) In Xubuntu 14.04 (xfce4 4.10), the panel's response to the background varies wildly. At work I have a dual quad-Xeon machine with two screens and the nVidia driver, and a dark background. On that machine, the panel and all its elements are set to colors that work well with a dark background. See https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-3x0QT9-7fIUlhiNVRrVWFVcDQ/edit?usp=sharing However, on my home desktop, which is a Phenom II x6 machine with the same OS and the latest nVidia driver, the panel refuses to adjust and insists on black lettering with glaring workspace switcher and window list and impossible to read icons in the notification tray. See https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-3x0QT9-7fIVWdQX2hCRmxPT1E/edit?usp=sharing for example. Even if I change the background to the same color as at work (blue 20 instead of green 20), it makes no difference. See https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-3x0QT9-7fIVGNCRGZhNGpucVE/edit?usp=sharing. The only way to make the panel show what I need so I can see it is to color it with a very light color, and that not only clashes with the background, it strains my eyes.
The patch attached on Bug 9487 solves this problem. @MR ZenWiz, this is datetime-plugin, not clock-plugin. If you wish, you can open a bug at Xfce panel -> Clock buglist.
Mass-reassign all bugs from florian@ to goodies-dev@, thanks for the maintenance work! (and sorry for the bugmail spam..)
I think that this is a duplicate of #9487, for which a patch has been provided. (However, afaik the patch has not yet been merged.)
Yep, closing as duplicate. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 9487 ***