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Mac Contest Roundup
MacThemes.net writes "MacThemes.net has had over 45 artists submit entries to our Theme Mockup Contest, of which the top six will be created into actual themes by established themers. Prizes of over a thousand dollars of software and cash will be awarded. Until this Sunday, readers and visitors are asked to visit our entries archive and vote for the submissions. Winners are expected to be announced Monday, April 5th."
blobbo writes "iDevGames announces the opening of '21 Days Later', a programming mini-contest that is designed to motivate and educate Mac game developers. It is open to developers from around the globe, and the source code from all entries will be released as open source."
iDG was down for about 2 months, right after the Jnauary annoucement of 21 days later due to a security breach. The person who runs the site had to upgrade his system, and is currently running it from his home. :)
Give him a bit of time to get the site back in order.
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In comparison to what the Windows/Litestep/WindowBlinds communities have been putting out for a while now, these submissions are pretty unimpressive.
There's a similar "theme" competition also running for PC users looking for customization, called the GUI Olympics. They'll be accepting entries until May, but already they have some really nice Winamp skins and Windows themes. Anyone interested in seeing what some of the biggest names in "skinning" are up to should check it out.
We're running Pixelpalooza at the Iconfactory. It's the longest running (and first?) on-line design contest for the Mac desktop -- starting in 1997.
The final submissions are being posted now and we're going to start public voting next week (April 6th.)
-ch
There is an alternative, sort of. It's called XTender, and its public beta was incredibly unimpressive. The day after XTender went public an update was made to ShapeShifter, and everyone again realized how good it was.
Also, ShapeShifter has cost money since its inception. No underhanded tactics there... although it did have the big themers involved in its creation to do the things that they wanted to do. The same guy develops the theme changing and theme creating software, and he is very approachable in regards to feature requests and bug reports. ShapeShifter is technically under the Unsanity umbrella, but Jason Harris makes both. ThemePark (to create themes) also allows exporting to many other non-guikit formats, including the format native to ShapeShifter's competitor (XTheme), and the format supported by Open Source alternatives such as ThemeChanger.
All ShapeShifter guikits can be extracted into images and a Extras.rsrc file using Guikitty. They can't be directly used by another application, so in a sense it is closed and proprietary, but the above mentioned XTender was able to automatically load ShapeShifter guikits if you had Guikitty installed.
Another big point is that a lot of themes use ShapeShifter because it has features that go above and beyond what is capable with any other theme changer, even in terms of things as simple as changing text colors.
Competition is always good, don't get me wrong. But there isn't a whole lot to complain about with ShapeShifter, and any competition it has had has been crushed despite the higher price tag because of ease of use, features, and theme-changing safety (it doesn't modify any system files, or even attempt to overlay those owned by root).
And finally, theres nothing preventing the winning theme from being released in the DLTA (aka Open Source friendly) format as well, the only restriction would be if the theme requires features that are only available in ShapeShifter.
Alright, I think that about makes the case...
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
haha nice fake on the powerbook fire.. the other photoshop work on the site (gallery here) is pretty good, some funny ones.
But you know you're going to spread FUD with this..
Oh well.
The Milk theme is one of the only ones that don't make my old monitor look fuzzy under OS X. Some other good themes, not in this contest, can be found here. ResExcellence
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
I like Flagship by Topsy Designs and Latium by Harlan Lewis.
Both are strongly non-Aqua in appearance. Flagship is blue & gold, very contrasty but somehow not hard on the eyes. It took me a couple days to fully appreciate, but it has been our default home theme for months.
Latium has hand-drawn-looking widgets and an off-grey paper-looking background -- should look dirty or scratchy, but doesn't. (The v. atmospheric wallpapers help.)
Excellent execution and attention to detail can make unlikely-seeming concepts usable & pleasing.
je ne suis pas un fou