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Someone else did too... but it also didn't catch on (maybe because it didn't ship as a standard feature).

But even with just it, peruse the scheme archive and tell me things like that notepaper theme are possible, even today with Windows 7. Can you theme the standard widgets yet in Windows? I know you can mess with the borders of windows, but can you make the progress bars look like they are being scribbled in? The buttons look like sketches?

With WindowBlinds, yeah.

What you could do with Kaleidoscope and a handful of other extensions far outpaced what you could do with themes (with or without additional software) in the comparatively aged version of Windows (and while this site stopped updating in the early 2000's, I was using it in the early 90's so we are talking about Windows 95/98).

Some stuff Windows didn't get till Vista, some stuff it still hasn't gotten. Unfortunately, System 7 was so long ago, there aren't many examples I can point to online these days. Like I said, Kaleidoscope was just the tip of the iceberg. It's hard to even know where to start to explain all the stuff you could do to customize the system that just weren't possible or were the realm of the hardcore 'hacker' in Windows due the difficulty.

But even with just it, peruse the scheme archive and tell me things like that notepaper theme are possible, even today with Windows 7. Can you theme the standard widgets yet in Windows? I know you can mess with the borders of windows, but can you make the progress bars look like they are being scribbled in? The buttons look like sketches?

Don't even get me started about how much fun it was to play with AppleScript to get things to do what you wanted, when you wanted, even if it was telling a game to send a screen shot to an image viewer, ask it to crop the image by some preset parameters, and then have the image program pass that along to the email program to send it to the mailing list for that game.

And I don't know how many times I messed around with ResEdit hacking away at application menus to rename, reorder, or just remove stuff to fit my needs, replacing icons, fonts, graphics with ones I liked better, and all without having to use my computer science degree for anything more than "ok, you are holding a mouse. click the button".

Seriously, there were games out there that were almost as 'expandable' as today's Oblivion/Morrowind/Fallout 3 purely because their data files were based off Mac resource forks and so you could just copy the file, edit or add resources to it, and load it back into the game and have everything 'just work'.

Apple is famous for its rigid control over its devices, in its quest to maintain user quality.

You know, the sad thing is, I remember a time when it wasn't true. When I preferred to use the Macs in the computer lab at the university over the PC's specifically because I could carry around a floppy full of extensions that all I needed to do was drop into the extension folder and reboot and have a machine that looked and mostly worked completely different from any other Mac.

Stuff like Kaleidoscope were just the tip of the Iceberg, with the fact that 'hacking' resources on the Mac was a trivial task, you could customize almost anything you wanted in your apps. This is stuff that Windows never had and still doesn't.

But then Steve had to go and get to the top of the hill, and it turned out that he was just a smarmier, better dressed Bill. That's sort of sad. Back when there really were two camps, really the only difference between the two was their fashion sense.

I'm not sure if the submitter is insinuating that Yahoo "Dashboard" looks suspiciously familiar to Apple's Dashboard on Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger), but we should be reminded that Yahoo Go/Yahoo Dashboard is in fact Yahoo! Widget Engine, which is in fact Konfabulator renamed.

And Konfabulator, by Arlo Rose (of Kaleidoscope fame) and Perry Clarke, was around on the Mac OS X platform first, until a Windows version was also released with the help of Ed Voas before Yahoo!'s purchase. In fact, if it weren't for the Windows version, Yahoo! may never have come knocking.

And it's easy to say that Apple ripped off Konfabulator to make Dashboard, but if we go back a step further...say, a couple of decades, we find that the idea of Konfabulator - little modeless applets that do useful things, like an address book or a notepad or a calculator or a little game - actually hearkens back to Apple's original idea of Desk Accessories.

It all comes full circle!

No, wait. That's not full circle. It all leads back to Apple. ;-)

For old mac people, it is something similar to Kaleidoscope, the theme utility for pre OS x Mac systems. Check http://www.kaleidoscope.net/ Really funny thing is, they are same guys coded Konfabulator which is acquired by Yahoo! I am not getting into that fight but it is widely said, the Tiger Dashboard is Konfabulator. E.g. Apple basically stole it. Fool. For older mac people, Desk Accessories. http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh &story=Desk_Ornaments.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Da te&detail=medium&search=desk

For old mac people, it is something similar to Kaleidoscope, the theme utility for pre OS x Mac systems. Check

http://www.kaleidoscope.net/

Really funny thing is, they are same guys coded Konfabulator which is acquired by Yahoo!

I am not getting into that fight but it is widely said, the Tiger Dashboard is Konfabulator. E.g. Apple basically stole it.
Well, it became freeware OS X/Win32 tool in hands of a giant like Yahoo, I think everyone is happy.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/

I just wonder the face of guy when he first hears this projects name :)

For those who aren't familiar, the old Kaleidoscope gave you the ability to drop "skins" over the OS 9 finder and OS, to the point where you could go with a complete BeOS or any number of completely outlandish looks and feels.

Half of the results weren't amazingly useful, exactly, but it was so easy to develop a new scheme that you could easily tinker around and produce yout own flavor. The archive of schemes pretty much says it all.

Never, ever, ever going to happen. A huge part of Apple's strategy is extraordinarily stringent brand recognition and everything that goes into that. It's brilliant (and standard, BTW) marketing for a niche, cult brand, and it will never change, so get used to it.

If you spend any time with Apple products (software especially), you will realize this pretty quickly. Although, even though it was the bane of Apple's existence at the time, I used to love Kaleidoscope.

Too bad it looks like my Mac circa 1999. http://oncee.blogspot.com/

Close, but no. Aaron was written by Greg Landweber. Greg and Arlo worked together to make Kaliedoscope.

Close, but no. Aaron was written by Greg Landweber. Greg and Arlo worked together to make Kaliedoscope.

Arlo Rose use to work for Apple in their Human Interface Design Center and took a voluntary layoff. He then started his own little company and later launched Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope is a theme rendering engine for Mac OS 7 to 9.1. Apple later turned out a similar application to Mac OS 8, "Appearance Manager", which took a dig into his possible user base. Some people decided against getting Kaleidoscope (with it's hundreds of themes) and waited for Apple to turn out more than one theme or at least the tools to create Appearance Manager compliant themes. Two additional themes floated around ftp servers for awhile but since Apple never officially released them they were difficult to find. Well, "Platinum" was the only theme ever released and many felt Apple "strung" users along so Kaleidoscope would die off. (There's a lot more to this story and this is just a quick overview.)

Fast forward to today. Apple will soon be releasing Mac OS 10.4 aka "Tiger" with a program called Dashboard (although Arlo claims that Dashboard won't be out until next year). Dashboard is an application that allows users to have small javascript apps on their desktop that will access their calendar, different style clocks, control iTunes and lots of different things. The problem is is that Arlo has had similar and very popular program out for a year and a half called Konfabulator. Dashboard and Konfabulator both use small javascript "widgets" to create desktop applications. To many it seems Apple once again has used it's position as the creators of Mac OS X to snuff out another programmer that has a popular addition to their OS.

I'm not saying that Apple stole anything or did anything legally wrong but IMO they should've tried to work with Konfabulator. Maybe they could've bought some limited rights or bundled a stripped down version instead of just stepping on it. To me many of MS's past tactics and Apple's in this case are quite similar, and IMO unfair.

(FYI: I only know what has be put out on the net about the Dashboard vs. Konfabulator issue. Maybe they did try to work something out and the deal didn't go through. Apple hasn't said much about it, not out of the norm for them.)

Arlo Rose use to work for Apple in their Human Interface Design Center and took a voluntary layoff. He then started his own little company and later launched Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope is a theme rendering engine for Mac OS 7 to 9.1. Apple later turned out a similar application to Mac OS 8, "Appearance Manager", which took a dig into his possible user base. Some people decided against getting Kaleidoscope (with it's hundreds of themes) and waited for Apple to turn out more than one theme or at least the tools to create Appearance Manager compliant themes. Two additional themes floated around ftp servers for awhile but since Apple never officially released them they were difficult to find. Well, "Platinum" was the only theme ever released and many felt Apple "strung" users along so Kaleidoscope would die off. (There's a lot more to this story and this is just a quick overview.)

Fast forward to today. Apple will soon be releasing Mac OS 10.4 aka "Tiger" with a program called Dashboard (although Arlo claims that Dashboard won't be out until next year). Dashboard is an application that allows users to have small javascript apps on their desktop that will access their calendar, different style clocks, control iTunes and lots of different things. The problem is is that Arlo has had similar and very popular program out for a year and a half called Konfabulator. Dashboard and Konfabulator both use small javascript "widgets" to create desktop applications. To many it seems Apple once again has used it's position as the creators of Mac OS X to snuff out another programmer that has a popular addition to their OS.

I'm not saying that Apple stole anything or did anything legally wrong but IMO they should've tried to work with Konfabulator. Maybe they could've bought some limited rights or bundled a stripped down version instead of just stepping on it. To me many of MS's past tactics and Apple's in this case are quite similar, and IMO unfair.

(FYI: I only know what has be put out on the net about the Dashboard vs. Konfabulator issue. Maybe they did try to work something out and the deal didn't go through. Apple hasn't said much about it, not out of the norm for them.)

Arlo Rose use to work for Apple in their Human Interface Design Center and took a voluntary layoff. He then started his own little company and later launched Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope is a theme rendering engine for Mac OS 7 to 9.1. Apple later turned out a similar application to Mac OS 8, "Appearance Manager", which took a dig into his possible user base. Some people decided against getting Kaleidoscope (with it's hundreds of themes) and waited for Apple to turn out more than one theme or at least the tools to create Appearance Manager compliant themes. Two additional themes floated around ftp servers for awhile but since Apple never officially released them they were difficult to find. Well, "Platinum" was the only theme ever released and many felt Apple "strung" users along so Kaleidoscope would die off. (There's a lot more to this story and this is just a quick overview.)

Fast forward to today. Apple will soon be releasing Mac OS 10.4 aka "Tiger" with a program called Dashboard (although Arlo claims that Dashboard won't be out until next year). Dashboard is an application that allows users to have small javascript apps on their desktop that will access their calendar, different style clocks, control iTunes and lots of different things. The problem is is that Arlo has had similar and very popular program out for a year and a half called Konfabulator. Dashboard and Konfabulator both use small javascript "widgets" to create desktop applications. To many it seems Apple once again has used it's position as the creators of Mac OS X to snuff out another programmer that has a popular addition to their OS.

I'm not saying that Apple stole anything or did anything legally wrong but IMO they should've tried to work with Konfabulator. Maybe they could've bought some limited rights or bundled a stripped down version instead of just stepping on it. To me many of MS's past tactics and Apple's in this case are quite similar, and IMO unfair.

(FYI: I only know what has be put out on the net about the Dashboard vs. Konfabulator issue. Maybe they did try to work something out and the deal didn't go through. Apple hasn't said much about it, not out of the norm for them.)

Mmmm... http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/PowerWindows.html .

I like the Duality theme changer, too.

As more people create quality themes, the value of this sort of utility keeps growing. I bought a Kaleidoscope license way back when -- alas, MacOS 8.x - 9.x only -- the tons of excellent themes made it worthwhile.

Yup. See the parent of the post that you responded to, which I also wrote -- I mentioned that artists are definitely appreciated on many open source projects.

Matter of fact, this is one area where the Mac community has a wealth of folks -- good graphic designers -- and the Linux community desperately needs people. There's lots of good code for Linux, but lots of good *art* for the Mac. Take a look at the themes that have been created for the Mac over the years on kaleidoscope.net, and you see what I mean -- great stuff. Icons, widget decorations, splash screens, desktop backgrounds, in-game-art/movies/models, website art, skins...the list of stuff that projects need good content for goes on and on. Artists are definitely not second class citizens in the OSS world.

Check out the 3rd-party utilities and web sites to get what you'd like:

• ThemePark : Theme design utility
• Duality : A theme changing and checking utility
• Catalyst : A theme creation utility (recommended for use with ThemePark)
• MetamorphX : Another theme switching utility
• ThemePark : Theme design utility
• ResExcellence Themes page : Get your OS X appearance themes here

Wired, I'm afraid, is looking for a conspiracy where none exist. The team at Kaleidoscope is working on an OS X version of their classic (and Classic) appearance app.

As a former Kaleidoscope user, I can tell you that it, and just about any other "tweak" or "hack" app broke after most any update (from the System 7 days right up to the latest Classic). This isn't anything new. Apple is constantly updating the interface (Jaguar has quite a few interface changes, behind the scenes).

No conspiracy, sorry!

jrbd

"Does anyone else remember when a 3D button or smooth corner window was something that was only seen in science fiction movies?"

You know, many of those scifi movies were just using Kaleidoscope (or Aaron) on a Mac at the time.

Third party utility SmoothType by Greg Landweber has existed since 24 June 1995. And now offers the same Subpixel Smoothing (as invented by Apple) as the ClearType found in Windows XP.

Adobe Type Manager has also provided anti-aliasing for a while.

Apple had a skin removed because the effect resembled an _internal research theme_??? This carries things a bit far.

The story is much larger than that. Back in the early 90s all the talk was about Copland, some of which would eventually become Mac OS 8. One of the technologies Apple was previewing was the Appearance Manager, which was intended to make OS-level look-n-feel themes available for the user.

(Incidentally, as far as I know, Apple was the first company to talk big about a customizable user interface. I am NOT certain, by any means, but I heard about Apple's Appearance Manager plans long before I ever heard of Windows Explorer themes, or Winamp skins, or any of that other stuff.)

Apple obviously spent some time working on appearance themes; there are three that I remember seeing in Apple marketing materials and prerelease documentation and all that: Gizmo, Hi-Tech, and Drawing Board. The pencil-sketch theme that the great grandparent referred to was based on Drawing Board.

Along the way, a couple of things happened. First of all, the Copland project simply went Tango Uniform. Enough things went bad that the project as a whole was cancelled, although some of the technology made it into Mac OS 8 and 8. One of the things on that list was the Appearance Manager, and appearance themes.

At the last minute, the themes were pulled. I don't have any inside info, but here's my speculation: Apple's reputation was founded on the consistency and user-friendliness of their OS. They spent years and years-- and tons of money, to be sure-- developing a great user interface. Themes would have made it possible-- nay, even easy-- for third parties to throw away all of that hard work, and to make the Mac OS ugly or difficult to use. It just didn't make sense. For the hardcore user out there who was into customization, there was still Kaleidoscope.

So, for whatever reason, built-in appearance themes never made it out the door in an OS release. But they did make it out the door in tons of marketing info and developer documentation. And the Gizmo, Hi-Tech, and Drawing Board themes were all over that documentation in dozens and dozens of screen shots.

Apple still owns Gizmo, Hi-Tech, and Drawing Board. The fact that those appearances were never included in a released product doesn't mean Apple should necessarily give up their exclusive rights to those ideas. We've talked about it before; if Apple doesn't protect their trademarks (of which the Mac desktop-- even an unreleased desktop-- is one), US law dictates that they lose the exclusive right to those trademarks.

So given the facts, Apple did the only thing that made sense: they asked the developers, politely, to go get their own ideas and quit stealing Apple's. And the developers of these various themes have, thus far, complied with that request. Who knows? Maybe if one of those guys found a lawyer willing to work on contingency, the courts would end up revising what a company can and can't protect as its own. But so far that hasn't happened.

Apple's still fairly hung up about form over function.

That's too much of an oversimplification. Apple's hung up on the overall user experience. See, a Mac is capable of more or less the same stuff as a PC with Windows, or one with Linux. There's not much that a PC can do that a Mac simply can't, or vice versa. Apple's focus is on one thing: let's make using our computers as easy and pleasant as possible. Let's take the common tasks and streamline them to the point where people enjoy using our computers. That's why we get things like iTunes and iPhoto and iMovie released for free. They're basically included in the price of your Mac, because Apple believes that most people will eventually be interested in messing around with digital music, pictures, or movies. So they tried to make it as easy as possible.

The appearance thing is the same deal: overall user experience. I suspect that Apple did the math and decided that customizable appearance themes would detract from the user experience more than they could add to it. So they canned the idea.

I still don't see a problem with the way Apple does business. Sorry.

The only renderer I've seen that is better than FT2 is BitStream's FontFusion (found in QNX RtP) and the only reason I like it better is because it is less heavy-handed with the anti-aliasing.

I have to say that the rendering in the GNOME screenshots I see is, while better than none in some ways, ass ugly in other ways.

My personal favourite antialiasing engine is the one in the Macintosh shareware control panel SmoothType, which does a great OSX-style job of rendering fonts, and is surprisingly fast too.

before and after screenshots as examples. The FT2 rendering seems similar, but there's just something ugly about it that rubs me the wrong way.

Certainly, FT2 blows away Windows' font rendering. Compare Arial in FT2 to Arial in XP, and you'll notice that FT2 renders the text visibly more clearly.

FT2 indeed does have beautiful antialiasing, though I can't say whether XP does or not. Most of the fonts Windows uses (in my experience) are not antialiased (MS Sans Serif for example), nor are the common file sizes (12 pt or something), so unless it's changed big-time in XP (which wouldn't surprise me) you don't gain a whole lot from MS Antialiasing.

On a related note, anyone know of antialising render engine replacements for Windows 98?

--Dan

-Remember when some users got together and tried to make a theme creation app for the Mac?
Yeah, and there's lots of those kinds of apps still thirving. Just because a company has a right (and obligation to investors and employees) to protect their intellectual property in 'look and feel' does not mean they are an 'evil corporate dictatorship'

-Remember when Apple didn't want to let their users upgrade their machines?
No, and neither does anyone else because that buggy firmware update was fixed the same month. Save the conspiracy theories for /. story submissions, OK?

-Remember when some people made Apple parody sites?
Yeah, and like any popular company there's more hilarious parody sites than ever before.

-What happens when you want to upgrade your video card?
The same thing as what happens on the Wintel side of things: you go out and buy another from ATI, Matrox, an Nvidia card, whatever. There are fewer choices available to Mac owners, sure, but that's through no fault of Apple in trying to woo gfx card manufacturers.

The Mac user experience is highly customizeable; it's less so on the hardware side than software but since Apple has adopted many open standards like AGP ports, PCI busses, ATA HDs, USB & other interfaces, etc etc it is getting less and less 'dictatorial' yearly. Just buy a standard HD for instance and slap it in. By the way Y-Crate, have you ever actually used a Mac lately?

There is an Extension called PowerWindows that will do that with live dragging of windows in MacOS 8/9. You can adjust the level of transparency too

Excuse me but hasn't the Kaleidoscope already done this for years, like since OS 7? I remember using it on a Mac Color Classic for crying out loud. It even works on OS 8 and 9.

Apple has been promising themes since the first glimpses of Copland hit the news media (read: Mac magazines). At the time, everyone thought it was a great idea... let the user decide how they want their interface to look. This was when the "Platinum" look that OS 8 and 9 currently have was initially released. There was a "kiddie" scheme and another "Techno" scheme, in addition to the Platinum one. Some of the fonts from those schemes did make it into OS 8.

At any rate, Copland promised this and Apple denied it to us. However, the Appareance Manager calls were there, and developers slowly implemented them (some wrote their own, which defeated the whole purpose). Then Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose wrote Kaleidoscope and brought themes to the Mac, thanks to the Appearance Manager hooks (which they wrote, IIRC).

But Kaleidoscope has been a third party product, and has had its various conflicts with programs. Had it been an Apple program, there would not have been these problems, as developers would have written their program to support it.

Now, with their Carbon base, Apple will finally have full Appearance Manager support under OS X, and they have a much greater ability to force companies to write 100% Appearance Manager compliant apps (this is good). Apple wants to have a coherent user interface (whether it be Aqua or something else), and now it is finally available in the Appearance Manager.

However, while themes are something that CAN be done, they will likely not be. Again a third party developer will have to come along and write an app to allow themes. My guess is that Kaleidoscope will be updated for OS X. Maybe not... but one can only hope.

This brings up an important issue. Apple may have a patent (in fact, the patent is from the Copland era), but if they don't use it, don't they lose rights to it?

With Windows XP built for themes, and OS X using the Appearance Manager, Apple needs to include themes with their final product.

This patent was filed in May 1998 by Ed Voas and Arnaud Gourdol, at least one of which I believe worked on the third party Kaleidoscope theme-switching apparatus for Clasiic Mac OS. However, it appears (from looking at the documents) that the patent ownership was recently transferred to Apple. I know at least Ed Voas went on to work for Apple, specifically contributing to the Appearance Manager software in Mac OS 8.

- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu

... this makes no rational sence.

Now, I am a Mac user and have been for more than 10 years. I began learning Linux and WinNT/9x about 4 years ago, and even though I've prefered Linux, I always liked the way the Mac looked more than anything windows or X had to offer. Sure, I liked to hack the way that my mac interface looked and felt (woohoo, RedEdit!), but for the most part I've ended up going back to the classic Apple Platinum since the very first Kaleidoscope theme and beta releases of MacOS 8. And now my Macs running Linux PPC all have the Aqua theme with Helix Gnome running on them.

Now... Apple... Steve, baby, talk to me. Why is this wrong? Why can't I and all the other people out there who like both their Macs and their Linux actually have them both? For that matter, why support MKLinux and then not let those of us who use it or another distro make it look and feel as Mac like as we want? We are running it on your machines.

*shrug*

Kaleidoscope is made by Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose, and kicks ass.

They ripped the interface right from a Kaleidoscope scheme for Macintosh.

You should be able to use gcc. You will be able to access the unix command line, though the utility for this will not be part of the standard install. Being able to drop Aqua and interact directly with Darwin would be cool (at least to most readers here).

AFAIK, Apple is not making OS X skin-friendly. You may see themes comparable to what currently exist in OS 9. You can bet on a third party coming out with something, though. Kaleidoscope is very popular with Mac users.

Darwin can be compiled for x86 hardware. Apple has never made any claims about OS X being available for x86. Don't make any assumptions any time soon.

if you're interested in making cool fake OSes on a mac, check out kaleidoscope.net or on windows, check out litestep.net. these are both really nifty theming engines for their various platforms. of course, if you're lucky enough to be running X, just go to themes.org and take it away...

the bottom line is that most modern OSes can be customized much more than is first apparent, so if you want more little bells and whistles and neat stuff, you can probably get it with a little tinkering...

Enjoy!
--

---
And, if they were a little more informed they'd know they'd know about chrome!
---

...and the most informed of all will sneer derisively at the concept as chrome can never perfectly replicate the intricacies of an operating system's native widgets (look or feel), and as soon as the user decides to use a system-wide theming program such as Kaleidoscope (or the built in MacOS theming system) Mozilla looks awfully out of place.

Sorry, but Chrome is a poor excuse for native UI widgets. Even if you can match the look - not always possible - the behavior is usually pretty shoddy.

(And it's going to be even worse when MacOS X hits...)

- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

---
Are you high?
---

Nope, although I've probably got enough caffeine in my system to kill a horse. I doubt that's making a difference, though.

---
To me platform consitency would mean it looking the SAME on most platforms.
---

Umm... Most people who use a given OS use it exclusively, or mostly so. Even if they don't, it's a good bet that they are intimately familiar with the widget set and capabilities of the operating system they use most of the time. Why should we diverge from accepted user interface standards? Should we return to the day when each application had its own user interface? I hope you're not seriously considering such a movement.

---
When I load mozilla on NT it pretty much (minus the window manager) looks the same. that is pretty friggen consistant.
---

But, it's not consistant with the rest of NT. It's certainly not consistant with the MacOS UI. If you install something that performs global changes on the UI (ie. Various themes, Kaleidoscope, etc) then those won't work either. At the very least, this is a pretty blatant duplication of code/effort. At its worst, it's externally inconsistant with the rest of the OS. Bad UI design.

---
Get your head straight and stop dissing a project you most likely know nothing about really.
---

Actually, I do know a bit about the project. I've even done some early work on one of the more popular skins that you can use with it. Check MozillaZine's ChromeZone if you'd like.

Perhaps you should refrain from commenting on something (or in this case, someone) you know nothing about?


- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

Pretty much. If you use the toolbox for your app, it looks like a Mac application. Furthermore, third-party add-ons like Kaleidoscope override the toolbox so they change the appearance of the standard items in all applications, not just one.

The pathetic thing about Netscape 6's "skins" is that the application doesn't respect my Kaleidoscope theme. Instead, it gives this ugly Windows-oid appearance. So to customize the look of this "wonderful, flexible, customizable" application, I can't just use the tool I already have - instead, I'd have to develop a special skin just for it, an imitation of the theme I use for the rest of the OS. If I want to switch themes, I have to (or someone has to) create a new skin too, just for Netscape. Imagine what it'll be like if every application decides that it's too good to use the system settings, it will have its own special customization language instead. Feh.

I'm always amazed at the crap that gets produced for kaleidoscope for the Mac. How many people *really* want a bright pink window border? :)
Actually, the thing that amazes me is the amount of time that people take to make their MP3 player skins: just how much time do you spend *looking* at your MP3 player? IMO, the best GUI is the "invisible one": once you learn the few basics, you should never spend any time looking at the GUI, just using it. So, I find the vast majority of skins and themes quite stupid: they all force the user to look to much at the pretty graphics and distract from simply using the damn computer. Though I did make myself a desktop picture, simply because patterns weren't doing it for me anymore.

Pope

I tend to think that if Apple doesn't do it themselves, there will be a Kaleidoscope clone (or native Kaleidoscope itself) for OSX. Greg Landweber has an enormous amount of energy...

- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

Plug and Play? For years before Windows featured Plug and Pray, you could plug almost anything into a Mac and have it work right away. Why doesn't MacOS have themes yet? Kaleidoscope has been around for years, and has the same functionality as WindowBlinds, as far as I can tell. And, MacOS 8+ has (unfortunately) undocumented support for "Themes" built into the operating system.. Anybody remember "Architect"?

Maybe another slashdotter can remember the series of schemes that were jeweled? I can't remember the names.

But... assuming it is. When MacOS 7 was out, a program was released called kaleidoscope that allowed people to retheme the MacOS. There were some themes done that Aqua looks suspiciously like... So Apple should be sued... I can't find links to them right... But they had that whole crystal/jeweled look.

(Disclaimer: I didn't go to MacWorld, myself, this info is second hand) My boss was describing some of the new functionality of Aqua... and it sounded a lot like stuff in the Unix world... (although I suppose they could have gotten a lot from NeXt)

At any rate, Apple shouldn't be so uptight. Good design is good design and should be copied. No one can copyright an idea... that's what patents are for :-) But, then again, no one can patent a visual design.

I'm waiting for an Aqua Kaleidoscope scheme for the Mac OS.

Kaleidoscope (for Macs) does the same thing.

Kaleidoscope (for Macs) does the same thing.

The positioning is the primary problem, IMO. One of the big gripes (among many) I have with Windows is that all the window-control widgets are on the same side! It's far too easy hit one you didn't mean to.

I hope there's some way to configure that. If not, the next version of Kaleidoscope will surely see schemes exactly like MacOS X with the exception of the widgets being placed as they currently are...with the close button far away from the others.

So if Apple were REALLY interested in human-machine interface instead of branding and marketing, they would make slick interfaces with the uber-configurability of G/E and beyond...

This was supposed to be implemented in MacOS 9.0 (well, OK, it was supposed to have been implemented in Copland :-)) as "Themes" for the Appearance Manager. Indeed, MacOS 9 betas for a long time shipped with various Themes, which did allow for very far-reaching customization of the GUI, far more than what is possible with, say, Kaleidoscope. This was apparently nixed at the last moment (by Steve Jobs Himself, the lore goes). Since it was never officially included, no reason was given, but the thinking goes that such Themes would have made helpdesk support a complete nightmare, as one would not be able to describe UI elements generically. Anyway, I suppose comes back to the difference between full customizability for power users, and providing a good, generic solution for, eh, "normal" people. :-) We'll probably see some Kaleidoscopish for MacOS X too, although I am not familiar with Aqua's patching mechanisms.

In the end I much prefer the ability to configure my own look and feel from modern WM's to anything apple has produced. Trust me, there is a major difference in philosophy from Unix users and macintosh users. Unix users are not going to flock to Mac OS X because of the look and feel.

What makes you think you CAN'T do this on a Mac?

http://www.kaleidoscope.net/

Probably MORE schemes for Kaleidoscope than there are themes for any Unix WMs. Sure the source is closed, and the authors expect $25 of your hard-earned cash... Open-source has yet to make inroads on the Mac. Still, the main scheme editor is none other than ResEdit, which is free (as in beer).

Apple's own implementation of this feature fell somewhat short, so they dropped it. There were few complaints.

--B

When is Linux going to learn how to anti-alias fonts, similar to what SmoothType (" http://kaleidoscope.net/greg/smoothtyp e.html") does for the Mac?

With all due respect, there is a big difference between Enlightenment themes and professional graphic design. A good graphic designer would have more of a sense of balance and restraint, an instinct which tells them when to add and when to subtract. Good graphic design is like Japanese art: the negative space is as important as the figure (perhaps even more). And chunky chrome frames, glowing skulls and half-naked women holding swords are not most people's definition of "restraint".

For examples of what professionals would make of the technology, have a look at Kaleidoscope. It's a Mac program, so there are almost certainly graphic design professionals among the few hundred or so scheme authors. And some of the schemes look very elegant.

-- acb [not a designer by profession, though a fan of good graphic design]