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Ewwww, Themes!

You know, I'm not against themes, but it seems I'll never install something like ShapeShifter on my Mac. After all, what would be the point? Just LOOK at the choices I'd have! These are improvements?

11 Responses to "Ewwww, Themes!"

  1. "Good Grey" looks good…

  2. I dunno, I kinda liked the 'NeXT' theme when I had it installed for a while. Of Course that's not one of the entries....

  3. Most of those are really gross, but there are some very nice themes like Aqua Extreme.

    The best themes refine & perfect the existing UI, such as making the title bars smooth & shiny, replacing the flat menu hilight with an aqua-like hilight, etc, instead of completely replacing the UI.

  4. Don't base your opinion on those that were entered in the contest. It looks like Unsanity didn't exactly get the reaction they wanted from themers. You should look at themes by Max (http://www.maxthemes.com/themes.htm) or Swiz (http://swizcore.com/SS/macOSX.php).

  5. Already mentioned, but I actually really like 'good grey'. The rest are mostly ick though.

  6. I installed it and tried out the two themes it came with and I came off with the same impression that I come out of from the windows xp theming programs..... artistic masturbation. The themes look like some 16 year old web designer puked on the screen.... horrible colors, no usability, etc. I'm a big fan of themes though, under linux my desktop is constantly changing, the the themes there (that I use anyway) are far less horrible than the ones I just saw.

  7. I have to agree that most are horrible and ugly; but consider SmoothStripes. As far as I'm concerned Aqua is fantastic, but Apple only finished it about 90% -- Max Rudberg completes it. That's why I bought ShapeShifter, at least.

  8. Fugly themes

    I'm with Erik on this one. Are we looking at a theme contest for an OS X utility or Kaleidoscope? Retro can be good. But there isn't a single theme on that list that I would consider installing on my...

  9. I don't have ShapeShifter, but back in the day of OS 9 I used Kaleidoscope!, and I found some pretty amazing "schemes" for that.

  10. Those entries are hardly representative of the true offerings of themes on the net today. As was mentioned, I'd check out http://www.maxthemes.com, as Max Rudberg has a habit of putting out secksy GUI's.

    I too use SmoothStripes, and have not even purchased ShapeShifter, as I've found that simply doing a one-time install with something such as ThemeChanger (which is still supported by Max for themes such as SmoothStripes) works just as well and saved me the cash I'd otherwise need to lay down for SS.

  11. OS X Themes Gone Awry

    In a recent post, Erik over at NSLog decried the horrific themes submitted for Unsanity's ShapeShifter theme contest. And, honestly, I was expecting a bit better myself; the finalist themes cannot be classified by any word other than fugly. Hence, if t...