Leopard more customizable?

alra111

alra111

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I started using Mac OS X about two years ago or so and I pretty much abandoned Windows and never looked back...

However, one thing about Windows seems peculiarly absent from OS X...the ability to customize pretty much everything about its on-screen appearance.

With the Mac, it seems you get two schemes to select from and that's about it...with Windows, you can change the application title bar color, font, and a slew of other attributes...

Any chance Leopard will offer more user control over appearance? Any ideas on why Tiger doesn't?

Thanks!
 
1.) I don't think Leopard will bring much more customisation. Because...

2.) Apple's way _is_ different about this. As I've come to understand it - and I almost* completely agree with them - they're putting a *lot* of time and energy into the look and feel of both their hardware and software. That's their job. From their perspective, the user should be the one _using_ the software. They're enabling you to _ignore_ the user interface, because it's beautiful and unobtrusive at the same time.

*Of course they go a little too _far_ for my taste. They could at least offer us a little more choice. In OS 9.x (since OS 8.0, actually), a user could choose the appearance and highlight colour. Right now (since 10.0) we can only choose the highlight colour. Appearance colour is reduced to Aqua or Graphite, i.e. blue or grey. I _loved_ how Rhapsody (Mac OS X Server 1.x) let you freely choose the appearance colour with the standard colour selection pick. (It let you choose more than just the appearance colour, too, but I'm just talking about that for now.)
I wish Apple'd at _least_ bring back some choices for the appearance colour. A red, an orange, some green...

If you _really_ don't like Apple's lack of choice here, you can take a look at unsanity's ShapeShifter plus the themes that work with that. There are some that work quite well, although I find too many glitches in most of them. Themes often overachieve and become, what Apple tries to avoid: Obtrusive.
 
I agree whole-heartedly with Apple's philosophy as far as GUI customisation goes. A study back in 2000 revealed that the average MS-Windows user spends three hours every year on changing system appearance, colours and themes - and I think I'm not alone in thinking of that as completely wasted time.

As for the people who skin their WinAmp and Internet Explorer with different interfaces featuring pictures of anime poodles and smiley faces, I think we're better off with the Mac's well-designed, fixed interface.
 
Yep, it's comparable to cars - as if those had never been used for computer comparisons... ;). Are you more the type that adds a lot of bumperstickers and stuff to the rear view mirror, apply gadgets etc. - or do you buy a car with a nice exterior and interior in the first place. ;) ... Sure, personalisation is a good thing. But I kinda have that with a nice desktop picture already. (I loathe screensavers. Want to save your screen? Have it turn off after a while. Black is beautiful.) ;)

But I guess many people _like_ to waste a couple of hours for these things... So maybe Apple should open up a _little_ about it.
 
I wish that Apple at least provided for changing the background colour of the window content. White bothers my eyes - too bright. The result is that I have been obliged to spend hours obtaining themes and editing them with Shapeshifter.
 
Curiosity said:
I wish that Apple at least provided for changing the background colour of the window content. White bothers my eyes - too bright. The result is that I have been obliged to spend hours obtaining themes and editing them with Shapeshifter.
Click to expand...
The background of most Finder windows can easily be changed with View Options (under the View menu, or simply Apple-J). You can have different backgrounds for each finder window, or apply the same change to all finder windows (seems a little excessive, but is easy to do :) )
 
(If you answer the post right above yours, you don't have to quote the whole post.) ;)
 
You can also customize fonts with things like TinkerTool. TinkerTool is not a "hack" like some others; it simply lets you access options that Apple has kept hidden.

I also doubt Leopard will bring much change in this regard. Apple made a conscious decision to set UI standards. Back when OS 8.5 was in development, they made a "themes" feature, which let you customize the UI to such a degree that it would put Windows' customizability to shame. (I remember one of the standard themes made everything look like notebook paper.) It was really cool, but Apple cut the feature at the last minute before releasing OS 8.5 to the public, for the sake of consistency. Consistency has always been the hallmark of the Mac OS (although that's become less and less the case since OS X's release, but that's another discussion).

I agree with Apple's decision to ditch themes in 8.5. The switch from System 7 to OS 8's "platinum" appearance created enough of a headache for users and programmers alike.

Designing programs that are usable with arbitrary appearance settings is really not easy. I know, because I used to use an extension called Kaleidoscope which allowed for unprecedented levels of customizability, and making my own apps look decent with it took a LOT of effort.

That said, it would be a lot easier in OS X, since most of the work is done by the OS anyway (e.g., double buffering and compositing). I think Apple could pull it off well if they wanted to. But I doubt they want to.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to let me change my menu selection color to something besides "dreary gray". Basic customizability doesn't interfere with the general look and feel.

A study back in 2000 revealed that the average MS-Windows user spends three hours every year on changing system appearance, colours and themes - and I think I'm not alone in thinking of that as completely wasted time.
Click to expand...
And obviously the majority of Windows users are not alone in thinking it's not. :p
 
DeltaMac said:
The background of most Finder windows can easily be changed with View Options (under the View menu, or simply Apple-J). You can have different backgrounds for each finder window, or apply the same change to all finder windows (seems a little excessive, but is easy to do :) )
Click to expand...
You cannot change the colour of a Finder text window from the View menu, only that of an icon window. What about other applications that have text windows? One cannot change the colours in many of those. Textedit from MacOS cannot be made to change its colours, for instance (not even with Shapeshifter).
 
Curiosity said:
Textedit from MacOS cannot be made to change its colours, for instance (not even with Shapeshifter).
Click to expand...
Actually, TextEdit does have this feature. It's located (some might say hidden) in the Fonts panel (Format > Fonts > Show Fonts). There are two colors there; one for text color and one for background color.
 
If all you want to do is kill the brightness of the background while you are viewing, there are a couple of neat tricks you might try.

For one thing, using Display Calibrator Assistant (in Displays Preferences, of course) you can change the white point to a more mellow position. Your old display profile will be saved so you can easily switch back and forth between settings.

If you have Unsanity's WindowShade X, then you can also make any window transparent so that the background bleeds through. You can easily set the degree of opacity such that text in the foreground window is still quite legible.

Apple has already brought back the ability to minimize windows by double clicking the title bar. It would be swell if Leopard were to give the user the ability to tint the window's background in applications like Safari.
 

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Mikuro said:
Actually, TextEdit does have this feature. It's located (some might say hidden) in the Fonts panel (Format > Fonts > Show Fonts). There are two colors there; one for text color and one for background color.
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Those changes are not permanent. The next time I open TextEdit, the background is white again. The setting is not saved to the file, either. I tried changing the background, saving the file, and then reloading it. It was back to white again.
 
If I changed the white point of my display, would that not screw up the colour balance of everything? My pictures would then look weird.
If I make documents semi-transparent and I am using a dark wallpaper like an astrophotograph, that would make the text hard to read.
 
Curiosity said:
If I changed the white point of my display, would that not screw up the colour balance of everything? My pictures would then look weird.
Click to expand...

Well the way we perceive color is kinda relative anyway. For me, moving the white point out of the blue and into the yellow actually makes my display look more natural, sort of like changing from florescent to incandescent light. Anyway, you can save the new profile without losing any of your defaults, so it's really risk-free.

Curiosity said:
If I make documents semi-transparent and I am using a dark wallpaper like an astrophotograph, that would make the text hard to read.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. You can control the opacity so that just enough of the Desktop shows through to keep the window background from glowing stark white. There is a slide control that lets you see the effect as you adjust it in WindowShade X. And its pretty easy to change Desktops in OS X, in case the background disagrees with you.
 
or you can use the Universal Access pane in System Preferences to knock down the contrast for the whole desktop. altogether less white.

Universal Access is actually a thinly disguised OS X graphical show-off tool.

EDIT whoops no it only lets increase contrast sorry.
 
Curiosity said:
Those changes are not permanent. The next time I open TextEdit, the background is white again. The setting is not saved to the file, either. I tried changing the background, saving the file, and then reloading it. It was back to white again.
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Ah. It seems like this data is not retained in plain text files. It is retained in rtf, though, and probably the other formats it saves, as well.
 
The colour is retained in .rtfd files as well; thanks for the tip. I use Omni-Outliner for .rtf files, and one can set the background for documents in that, but it does not do .rtfd.
 
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