Mac Contest Roundup 53
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."
Well, some people worked pretty hard ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I looked at every theme, and there seem to be three tendancies:
One is to make it bright, gaudy and hard on the eyes;
The other is to make it so dark it's hard on the eyes. Some of these look very nice, but I wouldn't want to risk my continued vision on them.
And the last set simply makes them as much as possible like things that already exist, which shows a fatal lack of imagination.
It's obviously a lot harder to invent a good visual look than one might think, but for the time being, I'm sticking with what Steve provided me with, with a newer, renewed respect for how hard his designers' jobs are. I even have a little sympathy for his allegedly fascist desire to prohibit the development of themes for MacOS X entirely.
D
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of theming and such... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are themes so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone here use the really black black themes? I find them a pain switching from a black desktop to a suddenly white browser window for example.
And some of the gaudy ones... just want to make my powerbook burst into flame [danamania.com]
aqua (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't like them... (Score:4, Insightful)
My problem is I want something that looks good that is easy to read. I need high contrast but not black on white because it gets too bright. The font has to be clean, sans serif or I can't read it. Bceause I also need the font size to be larger I want the frame around windows to be smaller so that I still can fit more than one window on my monitor.
I also want it to be pretty because pretty things are pleasing to the eye.
Needless to say I haven't really found a theme I like regardsless of os. I tend to choose something simple and then costumize colors and fonts as much as I can.
Usability (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at Tunderbird and Firefox for Windows. The main theme is PLAIN UGLY, who came up with that Quake activity indicator? You are trying to reach professional users or kids? If I had a boss (and Windows) he propably would ask WTF I a wasting my time on with kids software or something.
Now have a look at those examples:
[kmgerich.com]
Pinstripe for TB [kmgerich.com]
Does it look good? It does. Does it look professional? Yes. Does it have little skulls bouncing around? No!
I do not have anything against skinning functionality in applications, I have something against people running the skin archives coz they have no clue about the basic standards of Usability and taste. They should tell those people with 30 submitted skins to fcuk off and get a life.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, the real reason why you always switch back is because that's the original, plain and simple. Not because it's necessarily better or worse, but because it's the default. That sounds too simplistic but it is always true. It's why most XP users switch back to the classic theme. I've heard countless XP users say 'I love the new round look', only to find out that they've switched back after a few days, weeks, or months.
Whatever changes Apple makes in the next revision, you'll prefer it. Of course they have many talented people paid to work on it, but the real reason is always because that's what they give you.