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Look at the pretty screenshot on top! Or is it actually top ?

More Apple innovation, ready for knock-off by MS!

Given the filename of the image ("expose2.jpg") and the screenshot right above it that describes the new "Expose" feature, it isn't terribly difficult to figure out what's happening.

The "kind of scaled down" effect you see is the result of Expose, the new see-all-the-windows tool.

The new Expose control panel is shown in this image

The Safari-driven finder: look here. Looks veddy veddy Safari like to me...

Some of those images either look faked or I simply do not understand what is happening.

What's up with this image? If you'll notice, the menu bar across the top appears to be "normal" size, but everything else is kind of scaled down. Is there some new feature that lets you set the "magnification" of the windows rather than just their dimensions? Also notice that the windows are not scaled well at all. Reminds me of nearest neighbor as opposed to bilinear.

AFAIK, it's a violation of Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines to have several selectable items on the same line of a menu, such as in this picture, and this one too.

Lastly, this image shows the System Preferences window, yet the titlebar text is faded like it's unfocused. Unfocused windows in OS X have their titlebars made slightly transluscent. I hope they haven't changed this, it was a good idea.

Also, I didn't know they were removing many of the stiples from the UI. That would be very unlike Apple since users choke whenever the interface look even the slightest bit changed.

Some of those images either look faked or I simply do not understand what is happening.

What's up with this image? If you'll notice, the menu bar across the top appears to be "normal" size, but everything else is kind of scaled down. Is there some new feature that lets you set the "magnification" of the windows rather than just their dimensions? Also notice that the windows are not scaled well at all. Reminds me of nearest neighbor as opposed to bilinear.

AFAIK, it's a violation of Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines to have several selectable items on the same line of a menu, such as in this picture, and this one too.

Lastly, this image shows the System Preferences window, yet the titlebar text is faded like it's unfocused. Unfocused windows in OS X have their titlebars made slightly transluscent. I hope they haven't changed this, it was a good idea.

Also, I didn't know they were removing many of the stiples from the UI. That would be very unlike Apple since users choke whenever the interface look even the slightest bit changed.

Some of those images either look faked or I simply do not understand what is happening.

What's up with this image? If you'll notice, the menu bar across the top appears to be "normal" size, but everything else is kind of scaled down. Is there some new feature that lets you set the "magnification" of the windows rather than just their dimensions? Also notice that the windows are not scaled well at all. Reminds me of nearest neighbor as opposed to bilinear.

AFAIK, it's a violation of Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines to have several selectable items on the same line of a menu, such as in this picture, and this one too.

Lastly, this image shows the System Preferences window, yet the titlebar text is faded like it's unfocused. Unfocused windows in OS X have their titlebars made slightly transluscent. I hope they haven't changed this, it was a good idea.

Also, I didn't know they were removing many of the stiples from the UI. That would be very unlike Apple since users choke whenever the interface look even the slightest bit changed.

Some of those images either look faked or I simply do not understand what is happening.

What's up with this image? If you'll notice, the menu bar across the top appears to be "normal" size, but everything else is kind of scaled down. Is there some new feature that lets you set the "magnification" of the windows rather than just their dimensions? Also notice that the windows are not scaled well at all. Reminds me of nearest neighbor as opposed to bilinear.

AFAIK, it's a violation of Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines to have several selectable items on the same line of a menu, such as in this picture, and this one too.

Lastly, this image shows the System Preferences window, yet the titlebar text is faded like it's unfocused. Unfocused windows in OS X have their titlebars made slightly transluscent. I hope they haven't changed this, it was a good idea.

Also, I didn't know they were removing many of the stiples from the UI. That would be very unlike Apple since users choke whenever the interface look even the slightest bit changed.

I have the same issue and precisely in releation to web comics as well. Unfortunately all the autosizing feature does is shrink images that are too large and only when you are viewing an image, and not pages with images.

That being said, I have utterly despised the IE autoresize (I was forced to use IE and leave the feature on for a while) but I actually have it on for the time being in mozilla for the sole reason that I can quickly switch off and on the resizing by simply clicking on the picture where as in IE you would have to hover for quite a few seconds until a toolbar appears and then click a button in there.

I have the same issue and precisely in releation to web comics as well. Unfortunately all the autosizing feature does is shrink images that are too large and only when you are viewing an image, and not pages with images.

That being said, I have utterly despised the IE autoresize (I was forced to use IE and leave the feature on for a while) but I actually have it on for the time being in mozilla for the sole reason that I can quickly switch off and on the resizing by simply clicking on the picture where as in IE you would have to hover for quite a few seconds until a toolbar appears and then click a button in there.

Also, there is a thread on that very subject here, so you can get some help off of it.

Happy widgeting!

Also, there is a thread on that very subject here, so you can get some help off of it.

Happy widgeting!

Just so you know, you can interface with _any_ command-line application (A ruby app, for example) with the runcommand("commandhere"); call. So literally any programming language can be used with it. Check out my widget CPsUn for an example of this. There are many others out there, too!

When you start it up, it says something to the effect of "I'll walk you through the startup." and then does a number of things WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. First, it creates a ~/Documents/widgets directory. It doesn't warn me about this until after it is done.

Guess we'd better also string up Adobe (Acrobat), Oracle (Corporate Time), Qualcomm (Eudora), Apple (Final Cut family), Microsoft (Office), and Connectix (Virtual PC) for putting things in ~/Library/Documents...

Then it launches a bunch of mini-apps; again, it does not ask me if this is ok.

That's the authors' judgement call about how to start the application. Your comment would be the same as saying "Microsoft Office started the PROJECT GALLERY without my permission!"

I ended up in a state where I had all these weird things on my screen

The setup assistant tells you it's opening up a few sample widgets for you, just to get you familiar with it. It also tells you that you may close any or all of them.

and no application in my dock/ This thing is running but I have no way to shut it down. I had to open Terminal to kill the app.

LOL! The setup assistant also tells you that Konfabulator is controlled and accessed via its menu extra, which is represented by two little gears on your menu bar. It's got a "Quit" option right there.

This thing breaks the entire Apple human Interface guidelines

No it doesn't, as everything you've said so far is wrong.

it sticks applications in the users Documents directory which should never be done

They're not applications at all. (You could also argue that this, and quite a bit of the other stuff placed in Documents, would be more appropriately placed in ~/Library, but that's another discussion altogether.)

and to add insult upon injury, it only runs clocks and stuff -- there is no way to write your own application that I could see.

Oh, this is especially hilarious! You apparently didn't look at Konfabulator's website at all, nor did you take two seconds to look at any of the widgets, which are all just text JavaScript code that can be rewritten or modified in any way, nor did you see the fully documented reference for creating widgets, nor did you apparently even READ the post you responded to! Do you think that it's through some magic that the widget library exists? That there is no way to write code, yet people somehow manage, by miracle of miracles, to be doing it?

Konfabulator: USELESS and HARMFUL.

Your post: USELESS and HARMFUL.

It's a great gui program for windows, which does just what you'd expect, it skins the windows interface, all of it. There are hundreds of differnet skins you can get from places like the se. Its not free software, but the trial doesn't seem to expire, you just get a pop-up everytime you boot up or change skins, but an added bonus is it doesn't take up much in the way of system resources, unless your running some gaudy skin with animations everywhere. Some of the skins do have all the bells and whistles crap you seem to be complaining about, but others are very minimalistic. Also many skins have added features, like a clock in the window, winamp controls at the bottom edge of the window, buttons to launch noptepad, browser etc. Another cool feature is the roll up, right clicking on the top bar of a window, or clicking on the first button(roll up, minimize, maximize, close), rolls the window up into the top bar alla macOS. Another cool program that could ad some funcionality is Hoverdesk, the trial expires after 30, and i didn't have the time to completely configure it for myself, but with some time it seemed to me like it could make a really fucntional alternative gui. I know this sounds like a shameless plug, but i really love windowblinds.

Thats a misleading article.

They don't want you messing around with the functionality of the widgets. You know what? I agree with them.

Esp. since you can run other window managers under Darwin (uh .. right?), you still have choice.

And this article says nothing about them trying to prevent the kind of 'tweaking' most Wintel users use - namely, performance, setup, etc.

I don't have any problems with Apple trying to kill utilities that tweak the UI. There's still choice, and there wasn't in OS9.

As for Jobs saying, "Themes are dead", is he on crack? Or by dead, does he mean, "They're dead, because I killed them on this platform."?

W/o a quick way to cycle through my tabs,
CTRL+PGUP, CTRL+PGDN
w/o being to have a tab be automagically reloaded,
they're working on that.
you can currently set bookmarks to auto-check if the site contains unviewed content.
w/o a keyboard shortcut to close the tab,
CTRL+W
I dont see why opening multiple windows and using the WinXP group programs feature isn't any better.
there's an extra click involved, you can't see the names right away, and all the reasons you mentioned above.

maybe I can w/ a theme, but I can not quickly move and re-arrange my bars like I can in IE. Luckily there is a google bar (kinda) for moz now, but since it has to sit stacked w/ the other bars and I can not combine, I don't use it.
phoenix can do this, mozilla themes currently don't (yet). you can shrink but not move or put them side-by-side. try the pinball theme, as it is very compact.

Would it be so wrong to add in what is needed so IE pages render correctly?
yes, because this has already been done to the extent that the standards are not compromised.

Mime types. It is really anoying to click on links like .rar, .wmv, etc. and just have the file not downloaded, but opened in a new window or tab. I see where I can add such mime types, but this should be done already.
this is being worked on. you can hold shift then click to immediately download.

I am the only user and its really anoying having to enter a password every time to save the time of entering a password.
there's a preference to set this so that you need only enter it once per session (and iirc sessions don't end with quicklaunch on). it's good to note that there should be an option to never need enter it. somebody should log that into bugzilla.

Every time I wanted to highlight something, and then copy it, the gestures decided I wanted to close Moz. I could have saved this with a modified key, but then what is the point of the gesture if I have to hit my keyboard?
set the gestures to your middle mouse button (scrollwheels work) or right mouse button. problem solved. (hello, optimoz, please change default!)

One last thing that relates to this article is speed. After I have moz open and have gone through a few tabs and few windows, I check mem usage and Moz is using over 40megs and is running 20-30% cpu usage. IE never did that.
IE definately always does that. it's embedded into windows and thus its resources are all buried in everything. mozilla does go a bit overboard, but not as much as you think.

see also mozilla's keyboard shortcuts.

> This all started with Apple's QT 4 player, which completely broke the highly regarded Apple Human Interface Guidelines and was put onto the Interface Hall of Shame just for that. Then Winamp came out, creating one of the first in-app skinnable applications, which is cool, but led everyone to release skinnable apps, such as Windows Media Player, and a lot of similar ones on the *NIX side.

Actually, WinAmp 1.2 (the first to have skinning) came out (April 8, 1998) a while before QuickTime 4 did (preview release: May 1999.) kjofol had app-level skinning in a media player even before this, before the author was hired by Nullsoft.

There was a pretty vibrant Windows skinning community in 1998, mostly because of things like LiteStep.

> I'd rather see more effort here with Moz and other programs to provide this, though with much effort, than to keep on reinventing customization wheels that are inconsistant with the OS's customization.

But many other people like app-level skinning.

When showing off a new desktop, at least put a decent skin on Mozilla.

I recommend Pinball .

Your preferences may differ.

In the latest release of the pinball skin, the active area of the drop down buttons is reduced in favor of bigger back and forward button targets. Please note that themes which are available from both DeskMod and MozDev are usually more up-to-date on DeskMod because there is no automated upload interface for the MozDev theme site.

I liked pinball but the backwards and forwards buttons seemed flaky because they wouldn't work unless you hit them correctly. I then found the orbit theme here and like it better.

I love the smallness and cleanness of the pinball theme, but it hasn't been updated to have the icon for a new tab yet, and its based on grey-modern instead of regular modern, which makes it look ugly in win2k.

I've switched back to LittleMozilla recently, now that its no longer all purplish, and he re-widened the scrollbar.

I couldn't agree with you more. Fortunately, the theme you asked for is available. Fool your friends with this IE skin for Mozilla and hide your embarrasing open-source habit from the world.

Though it's not perfect in feel, the look it pretty darn close. I find it much more comfortable to work in the IE skin on Windows and I barely _notice_ that I'm not browsing using IE (at least in Windows 2k... when I'm in XP, alas, I notice, but barely).

Then again, platform emulation will just never be perfect with XUL, it's such a kludgey tool. I HATE non-native widgets thrown all over the place on my platform of choice.

The issue is, WHY is something very similar to this skin the default for Mozilla on Windows?

here you can find some other screenshots of gnome 2, enjoy!
screenshots

pretty, isn't it? ;-)

just in case you are wondering where those wallpapers come from, I guess some of them are from deskmod , or a similar site, but I could be wrong...

I really like the Pinball skin. It's attractive and unobtrusive.

Pinball is pretty good. The Trek LCARS themes are a bit too garish, though.

Did you try switching to the Modern theme?

Or take a peek at some of the other available themes to find something you like?

flog(if(horse=="dead")then return horse);

Some alternatives to "Themes.org" are Deskmod, Skinz, my own site, System 26, and numerous other sites in the skinning community. They all accept and support Linux windowmanager themes, as well as KDE and GNOME themes, and have been around for quite a while now.

Cheers,

Its not mentioned by Microsoft or in any help files, but there are replacements for the explorer.exe shell in existence that effectively function like putting a new window manager up on Windows OSen. I can't find the official website but here's one that will give you the general drift for LiteStep,
a shell replacement for Windows I know of offhand. My OS of choice is Linux, simply for stability/usability's sake, but there are other desktops available to Windows users beyond the ugly win32/explorer shell.

I dunno, those kde3.x shots compared to my desktop shot .. I'd go with mine.. However I'm biased :)

The Windows (as in, Win32) customization scene has been around for a long time.

There are many programs out there that allow you to change their interface, sometimes only in how they look (WinAmp), but other times in how they act (K-Jofol).

Within the past few years, there have been a number of "shells" that have come out that allow you to ditch explorer (the start menu / taskbar / desktop combination) and use your own interface, like an X-Windows window manager.

Microsoft is trying to have the best of both worlds - a standardized user interface, with the ability to change it all. Personally, I don't think it's gonna work very well, but that may be just because I used to be on the Litestep development team.

Obligatory links:
Skinz.org
DeskMod
Litestep.net
desktopian.org

And those link to many more...

In case you haven't already seen them, I have posted an active mirror at www2.deskmod.com/macss.