Journal entries tagged "Leopard"
A little icon order
A few days ago, MacThemes user spiralstairs released a set of Finder background images, entitled Shelves. Tell you what, it turns out it was just what I needed to change the look of my Leopard.
What’s the purpose of Shelves? It makes your Finder look as ordered as a nice, clean shelf of documents. And with a few tricks, you can apply that look to all your folders.
Combining Leopard themes your way
I’ve recently been asked to make a small tutorial on how to combine one aspect of iTunesque with iLeopard, because iLeopard did not include that specific option and did things differently.
Here is therefore a tutorial on how to combine elements of themes you like on Mac OS X Leopard.
iTunesque updated for iTunes 8
iTunes 8 came out a few days ago, and with it came some changes to the iTunes file used in a number of iTunesque variants to change the traffic lights. As such, an update was necessary.
This means the installers for all Aquaffic variants are bigger now (around 45 MBs compressed), but they’ll work whether you have iTunes 7 or iTunes 8.
Leopard glyphs: update
The Leopard glyphs for Mail and Preview have been updated to fix some issues, and a second set of glyphs has joined them.
The glyphs now come in two formats: there is the “normal” state, which puts general usability first, and there is the “Leopard+” state, which puts consistency first.
iTunesque update: glyphs for Mail & Preview
Finally. It took me some time, because my law internship kind of broke the pace of things (wink wink nudge nudge), but I have finally completed reworking the glyph designs made by Dustin Schau for Mail.app and Preview.app in order to replace the “Aqua” ones that have existed for the past X years, and have compiled the whole thing into one package with automated installer & uninstaller and with manual installation instructions.
So, what exactly do these glyphs look like?
iTunesque: small themes for Leopard
The all-new iTunesque page has just gone live!
I won’t describe all that is inside, but if you feel something is slightly wrong with one or two aspects of Mac OS X Leopard’s User Interface, I suggest you take a look.
Snow Leopard, iPhone: certainties, hopes
I’ve been studying all day for an exam I have on Wednesday, and I only started learning anything useful two hours ago.
It so happens that this Monday, the WWDC kicked off with a keynote by Steve Jobs, the prophet who guides all Apple fans throughout the world. For the uninitiated, “WWDC” stands for “Worldwide Developer Conference”, and it is one of the major yearly Apple-related events.
Last year, Steve Jobs showed the world a feature-complete version of Mac OS X Leopard, among others. But this year, big disappointment if you’re not much into the iPhone and were hoping for a sneak preview at “Snow Leopard”, the next version of the OS. Disappointment, but surprise right afterwards.
My Leopard’s Look: part III
In this series, entitled “My Leopard’s Look”, I talk about the different aspects of customising the appearance of Mac OS X “Leopard”: icons, the Dock and wallpapers, and finally theming.
Check Part I of this series to read about icons, and Part II to read about the Dock and wallpapers.
Themes
I never was interested in themes under Tiger (Mac OS 10.4), partly because I had a 1999 G3 iMac, and partly because the only tool “average users” could use to apply themes was Unsanity’s ShapeShifter (which came at a hefty price for a student, and which is a “haxie” that requires “Application Enhancer” [APE] to run, and APE has caused me a couple of problems in the past).
Then Leopard came along, and while I was very happy with the new unified metal look for all applications, the blue aqua (scrollbars, list headers, …) was starting to feel old.
So I decided to take a look at Leopard theming options.
Read the rest of this entry »
My Leopard’s Look: part II
In this series, entitled "My Leopard’s Look", I talk about the different aspects of customising the appearance of Mac OS X "Leopard": icons, the Dock and wallpapers, and finally theming.
Check Part I of this series to read about icons.
Dock
The Dock itself
The 3D Dock introduced in Leopard was one of its most controversial features. Many users far preferred the 2D Dock from Tiger. But then someone found how to customise the 3D Dock, and now, you can find Dock skins and instructions on how to install them all over the place (LeopardDocks.com and LeopardDocks.net spring to mind).
My Leopard’s Look: part I
There are many things you can do to make your Mac look unique.
You can customise the hardware by decorating it or adding "skins".
But most of the customising comes from the software. Partly because it’s often free, and because it’s less… permanent.
So, what can you do if you have Mac OS 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard?
Until this weekend of mid-May, icons and dock changes (which I’ll detail later) were pretty much all you could do, because Apple has changed the way OS X generates the user interface in many ways. Not completely yet though: it appears 10.6 will be the first to fully use the new "CoreUI".
But enough technobabble. In short, since this week-end, all parts of Leopard are customisable. At least, that’s the theory.
And to illustrate, this is a normal Leopard screenshot. But here is an example of a new appearance, without using any hacks (note that system fonts can also be changed), and here is my personal Leopard’s appearance.
Note: there are still some limits, but for example, window backgrounds are customisable, …
In this series, I’ll talk about the different aspects of customisation, mostly for the sake of those users not entirely familiar with it, but it will contain some advanced customisation information as well.
Part II will concern the Dock and wallpapers, and part III, theming.