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Themes.org Reborn at Freshmeat
GSpot writes: "While doing my weekly surf to see if there has been any change in one of my favorite websites, themes.org is being redirected to themes.freshmeat.net and seemingly has been reborn yet again. The previous incarnation had a dreadful interface that was difficult to navigate and when it worked it was painfully sssssllllllooooowwwww. The current version is upon a first impression a much more pleasant experience. I plan on visiting often." Mirotrem points out this brief history of themes.org running on the site (written by Chris D.), detailing the moves the site has made to this point. (Freshmeat, Themes.org, and Slashdot are all part of the world-controlling conspiracy under the VA Software umbrella better known as the Sinister Andover Keiretsu.)
The previous incarnation had a dreadful interface that was difficult to navigate and when it worked it was painfully sssssllllllooooowwwww.
What, didn't like "Fetching Rover", or voting with marbles? How about The Scooter? Scooter? WTF?
To think this was a site to make "X Purty" - MS Bob is laughing at us from the grave.
Hey, I thought the company was called VA Software...
Self-serving story and self-serving poll both on the front page. Although this may be "News for Nerds," I would rather not have Themes.org overkill. Then again, maybe its a slow day.
What the hell was wrong with the old themes.org, not the previous one(what a disaster), but the one before? It was beautiful, each section had it's own theme(fitting, being a theme site), and in each section there were sub-categories, adult, people, anime, games, etc.. Now it's had two overhauls and has gained absolutely nothing from this. And where is the X resources section? Backgrounds, icons, tiles etc.? I'm just very sad, themes.org used to be an excellent site, the best themes site ever. Now it's just... blah. ;-(
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
What was wrong with the old themes.org? sure, do a rewrite, but keep it basicaly the same. Right now, I don't liek the freshmeat one for several reasons, 1, opening windows and taking away broswer compoments, like url bar?? grrr
Ya ya, I can easily enough get arround that. But still, what was wrong with the old site? It was painfully obvious no one liked the new, why couldn't they just reverted and used some brains on how to make that one better.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
There is also kde-look.org for all of your KDE theme needs. For those who use non-KDE desktops, still check it out for an excellent collection of wallpapers, many of which are very penguin-centric.
Damn you SlashDot Effect
the poll was advertising :)
--Gareth
themes.org
:P
themes.freshmeat.net
Mirotrem
brief history of themes.org
Sinister Andover Keiretsu
More on Graphics
Also by timothy
And I thought they know themes.org redirects to themes.freshmeat.net. Please correct the mistake.
geek page at KY speaks
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,
Bowie J. Poag
What i would like to see:
:)
:)
macos.themes.org
macosx.themes.org
Pity that apple's managed to disperse all work on reverse-engineering their themes format, so we won't see anything like that. Sosumi has been a lifesaver and i'm so happy with it, but it would be nice to have a couple of choices (beyond "look! it's aqua, but with recolored Close Window widgets! dammit, i'm looking for themes because *i don't like aqua and it hurts my eyes*, why would i want an ugly recolored version?), and it would definitely be nice to have a central repository that functions the way the old Mac Themes Archive used to.
I guess now that winxp also has a themes architecture, and that's been reverse-engineered with a bit more clarity than the macos themes architecture, you could make a winxp.themes.org too, but i don't really care about winxp, so oh well
Basically, this isn't too ontopic, but i'm just bringing this up because i would like to see a thread on trying to merge the macos/winxp and UNIX themes community, or at least just tap to see if there's been any recent news on the subject of Mac OS X themes, any new work on tools or the ongoing reverse-engineering of extras.rsrc or any themes developed recently at all. And this seems like a relatively germane forum to bring up the issue in. (Of course, i'm sure anyone with real information will keep quiet, to ensure The Man isn't listening..)
Does anyone think it would be a worthwhile project to try to create one uniform format for themes containing all possible theme-related information, and then create a tool capable of converting that one uniform format into a theme for GTK or Enlightenment or Wmaker or Mac OS or whatever your system has installed, throwing out the information that's more complex than your theme system can handle? It would be a little more work to make such a theme system, but it would surely be less work than duplicating ALL those theme-making projects.. and someone could just develop this one mega-theme and distribute that, with no porting to take place.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Thanks
Any ideas on when the XDM themes will become available? Since rebuilding my desktop with SourceMage Linux, I have been looking for a quick way to make the xdm look purty. Themes.org used to have a great listing for xdm themes, but no longer. Any clues as they aren't on freshmeat?
i wonder how much of slashdot's income
comes from making plugs for websites. Next they
will be telling us to go see spiderman on fri
If you want to revamp a site, making it faster and prettier, more power to you! But why would you throw the site into another domain, instead of just keeping the known, loved and trusted host/domainname? Are we perhaps becoming too consolidation-obsessed?
26d6173bbc9af7cfdb7ce60600e6aded518bfe51acca9a84a
On a related subject: there used to be a great site at http://torment.ntr.net/xdm/ that had all kinds of cool xdm themes - really slick, beautiful stuff. Typically these themes were full-screen background images, paired with a modified xdm that was transparent, so that the login text appear to float over the image. Some themes also used a transparent xconsole positioned over an appropriate part of the background image. The themes were very impressive.
But one day, before I got the chance to download some themes, the site disappeared... hard drive crash or something cratered it. Since then I've looked for a mirror, or similar themes, with no luck. There was an xdm section at themes.org, but it didn't have anything interesting in it. I've come across some versions of xdm like xdm-photo, but never full themes.
Am I looking in the wrong places? Does anybody know of a mirror of the old torment site hiding on the net somewhere? Does anybody have any of the themes from torment to upload to themes.freshmeat? I'd really like to add some spice to my login screen.
--Jim
People keep complaining "i want the older design back".. some people like the new one. I think it's kind of pretty, but i miss the sorted "sections" (anime scifi etc)
Why can't they just offer both? Both the new design and the old design, i mean. If you have a properly abstract database system, which i assume these people do, it should be relatively easy to do. Hell, this is being done by the Blockstackers people, go find Nate and have him explain how he did the themeing in the Everything2.com web engine. His system is clever, abstract, and doesn't hurt your functionality at all. Shouldn't one of the main advantages of database-backed websites be that you can offer a range of options of frontends to the same content to your viewers?
Can't we just have themes for themes.org?
What's the big fight over?
Does /. EVER get news as it breaks? This is like a week old.
I'm all for some good themes for Linux, as it is my only OS that I use exclusively on my box for about two months, after getting fed up with windows.
But browsing through some theme sites, like kde-look.org, the most downloaded and better rated themes are OSX or Windows look-alikes... I want a good looking GUI, not a clone of some other GUI. For that I might as well have stayed with Windows, or sold my PC and bought a Mac.
I never cease to stop admiring the keramik kde style. It's simple, good looking and best of all, original...
I hope that the revived themes.org has themes with all the things I want to see in a theme.
Of course, IMHO...
How about carrying themes for Apple's Mac OS X? Expanding the platform reach is never a bad thing...
One British National Party seat in Burnley and counting...
2002-04-16 03:42:18 themes.freshmeat.net (articles,news) (rejected)
I submited this news a few weeks ago, but I guess I was too quick on the gun.
The new site is way way way way way way better though. Good job!
The above is not worth reading.
am glad they finally did something with the garbage heap that t.o had become. I remember back in the day when t.o was a very neat place with some talented people running the show. Then they turned into something really, really, bad....(worse than the OLD fat, dieing on the toilet Elvis). Freshmeat has always been cool --- thanks to the Freshmeat team. And to the people that let t.o die in the first place --- what rock are you all under? The aquisition by OSDN should have made you better -- not killed you. But at least it probably sold a few panner ads for the rubbernecks that would drive by to look at the carnage.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Yet after some time, it was no longer a secret that only one person - the "reviewer" - set the marble rating according to his or her taste. The reviewer who constantly rated my themes didn't like my style (as it differed quite a bit from his design), so I didn't have any chance to get more than 4, at maximum 6 out of 10 marbles. Other submissions which more or less imitated a reviewer's style got 8, 9 or even 10 marbles even if they were at most average or a remake of a former theme.
Very soon the number of daily submissions decreased significantly, and many people complained about the unfair rating system. I made a few more themes even before themes.org became unusable but refused to submit them before the reviewing system gets redesigned.
You must be really new to Linux.
I'm just glad the fucking "marbles" rating scheme is gone. How incredibly lame. Ooooooooh! I've got SEVEN marbles!
;)
Not to mention the petty little ratings wars that it spawned.
Nothing like slashdot, of course
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
...but the logo looks like a scrotum (my girlfriend remarked on this as well). Actually, the core reason was that there was such slim pickings on the site but visiting it from this link I see they've actually started fleshing out the offerings.
;)
Gotta do something about that logo, though, before those image recognition filters block the site from my companies proxy
AC
you make your font size as small as it can go. Cause right now, the whole freshmeat site is quite un-attractive. Go ahead and mod me flaimbait. I already have -1 karma. =)
Get Firefox!
> Freshmeat, Themes.org, and Slashdot are all part of the world-controlling conspiracy under the VA Software umbrella
I know this was said in jest but it kinda struck me. For news, themes, and software these are three fantastic sites. I know we all lamented when /. fell under the control of a corporation but altogether things have worked out quite well. Although /. can't be said to be identical to when it was privately owned, it sure hasn't been forced to make too many concessions. I think the staff at Slashdot, Freshmeat, Themes.org, and even VA Software deserve an honest "thank-you". Sappy I know, but well-earned.
Stick to KDE-look for your KDE themes, themes.org doesn't even have one KDE 3.0 theme
XDM at house.cx They have docs and some themes, like those you talk about with things placed in funny areas (B5 ones, for example).
It's been some time since Slashcode 2.25 has come out (which has the ability to import themes), yet I have not found any slash themes. It might be a good idea to add a themes section to freshmeat (or maybe sorceforge, or even on the slashcode page).
Browsing the site, I saw several Aqua-esque themes for Window Maker. How long until Apple decides to bully them into censoring these images?
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
You know, when your masters at VA tell you to get some eyeballs on another of their sites, you might want to communicate and decide who is going to do it, rather than all rushing off to plaster it all over slashdot.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
Slashdot Slashdotted by Slashdot. Since FM sits in the same cage as /., and slashdot slashdotted fresmeat, might the traffic of everyone whacking freshmeat slow slashdot down? A self-slashdotting.
Evidently not yet. If it does, well, see you at Exodus!
I know it won't happen with their feed, but it would be worth seeing. I'm waiting for those guys doing their build out in the adjoining cage to whack something and forever be pariahs for causing the Great Blackout of '02.
I like music
I just checked what was changed on the site really quickly, but found it great. I used to wait for a long time for the homepage to load, now on FM it was loadead in seconds. I just need to make sure the themes can be downloaded and not be 4k all of them.
I feel like the only person on the planet who actually liked the themes.org that was born post-crack. Sure, it had lots of images on the site but that's why browser cache (or better still, caching proxy servers) exist! It takes two or three pages and then the site is quite snappy and looked good.
Sure, there were still problems but those problems were never going to be fixed esp. considering the extreme lack of communication from OSDN with the staff, so long as the rumours of them being usurped still floated.
What I found the biggest problem with that site was, was it was updated very slowly and I think because it took so long before it came back, the people creating the themes had given up and found other sites like deviantart.com, skinz.org, customize.org, and so forth. So there was little content, rarely being posted, and people wonder why it sucked?
The new freshmeat version bugs me more than any previous incarnation of themes.org. Themes appear on the main freshmeat page and clog up the already over-clogged apps site. If you look at a screenshot, you get a tiny 3"x3" picture that's only marginally more viewable than the thumbnail, AND if you hit the close button - BOOM goodbye Mozilla - regardless of how many other pages you have open in other tabs.
On the bright side its nice they were able to reuse the freshmeat code for this purpose, its a testament to the good design and work Scoop has put in over these many years.
Matt
E17 is improving drastically.
I think you all should check out a few of these pictures
http://desktopian.org/e17/screenshots/
Theres an example of themes. I'm Glad Themes.org is back, now we have a place to show off our linux desktops and help kill the whole "Linux is hard to use" myth.
Its hard to configure, but its easy to install and use, it DOES have a GUI, and the GUI is better than XP (even if its alittle bit slower due to xfree)
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What I don't get is why OSDN decided to cuts its *volunteer* staff. First, developing for themes.org was a pain as it was. They had a VPN and wouldn't give access to new comers, even though I feel I'm a part of the community enough to be trusted. But if that wasn't enough, they decided to cut their *volunteer* staff. Which included developers and maintainers. They might start asking for volunteers again, but a lot of the staff I talked to were a little bit bitter and I doubt they will be rejoining. So Chris (who seemed like a nice guy the couple times I talked to him) decided to develop it on his own, which took months even though it seems he's just using the freshmeat code.
I think one of the mistakes was getting a company to set the deadlines. There was an occassion "No later than this" date, but since it was all volunteer, people wouldn't make long decisions on whether to go out a saturday or develop all night for nothing. So I guess the choices were "Cut the staff", "Pay the staff", or "Stop letting the company make the deadlines". I guess they chose 1 and 3.
I didn't spend much time on the project, but kept an ear out on things, and never got an explaination for this. So I would like to know, why the staff was cut?
Now, I'm not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth, but is the sarcasm really necessary? It is common practice for journalists to acknowledge up front any potential conflicts of interest, just so that the reader is on the right page. Slashdot readers were right to point this out, and whining about it is frankly not appropriate. You do claim to be real journalists every now and again, so let's stop acting like we're in kindergarten, hm?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I'm curious... how was the original themes.org hacked?
and if you have trouble downloading several themes like i did then you can always get your themes the fastest way possible with the link below.
o rg /
http://telia.dl.sourceforge.net/mirrors/themes.
Software Freedom Day!.
I remember when looking at the old themes.org that I would look at a lot of themes, but have to download each one individually. It was such a pain that I just gave up on the site. Not that I don't want to see the credits of who created the theme and the description, and seek out just the right theme, but it became tedious to implement them. It would have been great to check out all the themes, then download them all in one go.
Why doesn't someone just package up all these themes and add them to a distribution? I think it would make Linux really popular with people if there was LOTS of customization you could do to your computer out-of-the box. I mean, really put EVERY theme in, and EVERY screen saver and EVERY splash screen. Or maybe every one that passed a simple published QA process.
It went back to the site layout that works and doesn't suck as opposed to the disney-like suck based one that never actually worked correctly. Good move themes.org!
I took a look at a few dozen themes, including the "most popular". My god there are some no talent people putting this crap together! Someone please take away their theme editors before they repeat their crimes!
Here's a very simple formula you must learn:
programmer/geek != artistic talent
Just so you don't think I am all negative. There were a few very nicely done themes, but the majority are utter crap or a clone with the basic colour changed.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I stopped visiting t.o when other t.o users would post screenshots of their IRC sessions while talking smack about my themes.
Yeah, I'm bullied easily. But there is such a thing as constructive criticism.
> Themes appear on the main freshmeat page and clog
> up the already over-clogged apps site.
If you want to see software without themes, use software.freshmeat.net. For just Palm stuff, use palm.freshmeat.net, etc.
>If you look at a screenshot, you get a tiny 3"x3"
>picture that's only marginally more viewable than
>the thumbnail, AND if you hit the close button -
> BOOM goodbye Mozilla - regardless of how many
> other pages you have open in other tabs.
I have no idea what you mean here. I'm using Mozilla 1.0RC1, and I don't have any problems with the close link. Also, all of our screenshots are sized to 640x480. At a user's suggestion (make suggestions! We listen!), we switched to cropping screenshots rather than sizing so that more theme detail could be seen.
This is new, and there are still a few kinks in it. If you've got problems or suggestions, send us an e-mail.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
It looks great, Autechre. Given the amount of time I watched Liedra enter themes I feel almost as pleased about the launch as you should be. :)
Rather nice of Chris DiBona to neglect the people who busted their ass behind the scenes for most of Themes.org's useable lifespan (1998-2000) in his recent "history of Themes.org" article.
What about the guys who were administering wm.t.o, bb.t.o. e.t.o, kde.t.o, and other subsites? Did these sites run themselves, Chris?
For the record, I used to be one of the site maintainers during t.o's heyday. In the year and a half I contributed, DiBona was never involved in any aspect of development process, did none of the planning, none of the maintenance, none of the administration, and none of the backend coding. DiBona had nothing to do with t.o's success back then, so don't let him try and take credit for other people's work. (Gee, that sounds familliar, doesnt it?) There were alot of people who poured enormous amounts of time and energy into that project who never recieved even a passing acknowledgement from anyone at VA. In short, VA turned their back on them.
Be sure to add that lovely pattern neglect to your "history", Chris.
Bowie J. Poag
i found it pretty weird that the home link in the main navbar on the top links to freshmeat.net, while all other links go to some variation of themes.freshmeat.net. if it's a themes site, shouldn't the home link go to themes.freshmeat.net?
This is so true.
Credit is a big part of any free software project. Why do you think t.o has been down for a year and a half? Why does everyone like the "old" t.o section better than the redesign? Because all of the people willing to work for free got burned.
Where the hell are the Litestep themes??
It's open source too, ya know.
At a user's suggestion (make suggestions! We listen!), we switched to cropping screenshots rather than sizing so that more theme detail could be seen.
This is new, and there are still a few kinks in it. If you've got problems or suggestions, send us an e-mail.
Well I sent an e-mail, but i'm impatient so.. =)
Will you (in some time and place) add a 'X resources' tree? Like icons, fonts, cursors (yeah, there's my own horse, look my soi.)..
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
The themes are very nice. Really. Some look really good. But why are all themes basically the same? It's a little different background, a little different colour on the windows, but basically the same.
Is it at all possible to create a theme that doesn't look like a variation of the MS-Windows-Experience(tm)?
Perhaps I'm way off here, perhaps themes can only change these things?
How about windowmanagers then? Are there any innovative windowmanagers out there? I heard someone talk about a windowmanager that looked more or less like a timeline.
I also heard of/dreamt of a desktop which had a focus point in the middle and documents "floating" away from them the older they got. Now that would be something new and innovative.
.haeger
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
What about Linux.com. Every time they change the interface, it gets harder and harder to find stuff.
I hate that. It used to be a good site, now it is just a place to store links to Newsforge.
What ever happened to their hints, tips, and tricks section. That was one of the best resources on the web. Now it is worthless.
Perhaps you wubbed him up the wong way?
Topic::Desktop Environment::Theme Resources
d =9 73
:)
http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/973/?topic_i
This is because someone actually wrote in to suggest/request this, instead of simply complaining about it on Slashdot.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
case in point. notice how i took pains to present my own on-topic views. oh well.
If they're trying to save bandwidth, it's better to crop the images instead of scaling.
Gustavo J.A.M. Carneiro
Just wanted to say that the recent repetative statements that this or that site belong to OSDN combined with statements that are supposed to be funny is getting old quick.
I could see saying 'such-in-such is a member OSDN' and leaving it at that. But constantly reminding us that that Slashdot is also, and so are this that and the other isn't necessary. We know of OSDN, and we know what sites are a part of OSDN... so please stop going to such lengths to tell us.
*TheDarb
This sig intentionally left blank.
ad asd lekkenma; nnnde\\
And if you want to see everything BUT themes on the front page of freshmeat, can you go to everything-but-the-themes.freshmeat.net ? ;)
;)
This problem has a nasty scalability issue
As for screenshots, your post there is larger than the screenshots are (for me) by 1/4-1/3rd. It's just too small, and many of the screenshots I've seen have been extremely fuzzy - hence my comment that they're not much better than the thumbnail.
The Mozilla issue I'm not sure what the cause is, I just suspect that the javascript on the close button is assuming a one-web-page-per-mozilla-window-instance thing which isn't true for me using tabbed browsing - I had 6 tabs open and pressing the close button blasted away Mozilla. Not a segfault, it was a clean close of the application (rather than simply removing that tab and leaving me with the rest of my work up
My third complaint is that its not easy to tell at a glance what theme belongs to what application from the front page, there's some tiny text under it with an extremely long path pointing out which section, but IMHO it should be up there with the title of the theme. Just a UI thing, and IMHO.
Anyway I wish the site good fortune, it looks like there's already been more themes posted in these few days than the old t.o had in the months after it came back from the crack! Nice work.
Matt