[.Neo]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

They must have updated lately, seems all of Safari's buttons are now vectors:

Same goes for most of the check/radial/OK buttons and pop-up menus. So quite a few of Mac OS X Leopard's elements are vectors right now.

I wish they would return the Mail button look from the WWDC07 build instead of the current ones.

[Heady]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

Same goes for most of the check/radial/OK buttons and pop-up menus. So quite a few of Mac OS X Leopard's elements are vectors right now.

They're actually high resolution bitmaps.

-Heady

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Heady 

They're actually high resolution bitmaps.

-Heady

No most of them are PDF files.

All of the icons are high resolution bitmaps though.

[Mithras]

I tried diddling around with some of the .xml files (which are mostly binary plists) in the AquaUI.bundle, but couldn't achieve any obvious changes. Anybody having any luck with changing opacity, color, or some of the more exotic attributes of UI elements?

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Mithras 

I tried diddling around with some of the .xml files (which are mostly binary plists) in the AquaUI.bundle, but couldn't achieve any obvious changes. Anybody having any luck with changing opacity, color, or some of the more exotic attributes of UI elements?

Is it just me or are not all the Aqua elements actually present in AquaUI.bundle?

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

No most of them are PDF files.

All of the icons are high resolution bitmaps though.

Uh, you can embed bitmaps in pdf files you know.

[Heady]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

No most of them are PDF files.

Are they vector PDF's, though?

[MindFad]

I'd honestly be surprised if they were vectors and not embedded bitmaps, when it comes to the toolbar icons anyway. I'm very curious about that. Can't wait to get my hands on Leopard.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Heady 

Are they vector PDF's, though?

Yes they're vectors. There's a reason why Apple still adds separate 16x16, 32x32 and 128x128 icon states instead only 512x512 pixels: You can't scale bitmaps properly without loosing quality, especially not when it comes to small UI elements.

Originally Posted by MindFad 

I'd honestly be surprised if they were vectors and not embedded bitmaps, when it comes to the toolbar icons anyway. I'm very curious about that. Can't wait to get my hands on Leopard.

The regular toolbar (like the ones you would find in a preferences window), application and documents icons are still bitmaps. They increased the maximum size of those from 32x32 to 128x128 pixels when it comes toolbar icons, and from 128x128 to 512x512 pixels when it comes to the document and application icons.

[MindFad]

Ah ha! I knew about the 512x512 resources, but I had only predicted that the next logical jump for toolbar icons would to become 128x128, but remain bitmaps, not vectors. Go me.

Well, that's good to know. Cool beans.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

They must have updated lately, seems all of Safari's buttons are now vectors:




However, Mail's are not (though their background is ):


Apple menu is very odd indeed:

but selected:

And these screenshots are from the latest builds. The Safari toolbar button backgrounds are still Aqua. At normal 72dpi resolutions, Safari and other apps have the platinum-ish gradient buttons. Granted, even if the RI widgets don't change before release, they could easily be changed in a point update. Still though...Apple had a ton of time to get this right on release.

[Kevin]

All I am going to say is, if the Aqua elements still exist in the final version of 10.5, and it doesn't have bars like iTunes, they need to change back the bars in iTunes.

I prefer them in iTunes, and might mod the OS to be unaqua. Wouldn't be that hard to do. Esp since I wont be relying on any themeing engine but OS X's.

I'm just sick of Aqua. I was the day it came out. I think iTunes looks great, cept the aqua buttons...

The new scrollbars could use some type of texture in the middle. Like OS 9 did.

Something for your mind to grab onto.

[MindFad]

I agree, I'd actually like the iTunes scrollbars throughout Leopard. They fit better than the aqua ones do with this new look. And that "grabbby" texture in the center of scrollbars like OS 9 would nice as well. Something simple, like this:



On second thought, they really wouldn't match the buttons in apps like Mail. I guess it's how Apple sets iTunes (and iLife now?) apart from its other apps, but I don't get why. These iTunes scrollbars work with the flat, non-aqua look of the iTunes buttons.... There's a whole lot of interface stuff going on that I don't get.

[0157988944]

the Mail buttons don't and never have matched anything else in the OS, anyway. I like the second scrollbar.

Apple MUST put iTunes scrollbars in Leopard, unless they have something else that goes better. The Aqua buttons have to be changed to metallic, and the scrollbars changed to iTunes.

[Big Mac]

If things haven't been firmed up at this point, I don't think there's much of a chance they will be in the final release. And that's truly unfortunate.

[.Neo]

If I recall correctly in the past iTunes always went ahead of the OS when it comes to interface changes. iTunes/QuickTime on Mac OS 9 introduced Brushed and parts of Aqua, Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah followed.
In the Jaguar days iTunes underwent another set of changes showing us those flat plastic buttons for the first time, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther followed.
Now we have this radical new Unified look since iTunes 5, extended further in v6, and made almost complete in v7, that's only been partially adapted by Mac OS X Leopard leaving many of the 6 year-old elements Aqua intact. I honestly don't understand Apple's choice in this matter. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Like Big Mac, I have little faith that we'll see those changes before GM. But who knows.

PS
I do find it interesting to see that Apple is somewhat returning the Platinum UI concept of Mac OS 8 and 9.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

If I recall correctly in the past iTunes always went ahead of the OS when it comes to interface changes. iTunes/QuickTime on Mac OS 9 introduced Brushed and parts of Aqua, Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah followed.
In the Jaguar days iTunes underwent another set of changes showing us those flat plastic buttons for the first time, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther followed.
Now we have this radical new Unified look since iTunes 5, extended further in v6, and made almost complete in v7, that's only been partially adapted by Mac OS X Leopard leaving many of the 6 year-old elements Aqua intact.

I honestly don't understand Apple's choice in this matter. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Like Big Mac, I have little faith that we'll see those changes before GM. But who knows.

Maybe it's just a matter of resource allocation and Apple simply having more important fish to fry at this time?

The only people likely to notice these sorts of subtleties are the hardcore Mac graphic designer crowd which may not be worth Apple's time and attention at this point. The Leopard beta testers for our Mac enterprise team at the university report a number of bugs with active directory and such. Perhaps Apple's attentions have been with getting core functionality working?

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Maybe it's just a matter of resource allocation and Apple simply having more important fish to fry at this time?

The only people likely to notice these sorts of subtleties are the hardcore Mac graphic designer crowd which may not be worth Apple's time and attention at this point. The Leopard beta testers for our Mac enterprise team at the university report a number of bugs with active directory and such. Perhaps Apple's attentions have been with getting core functionality working?

From what I understand Apple, unlike Microsoft, has a whole separate design team working on interfaces. Hence why, in general, Mac OS tends to look better than its Windows counterpart.

Next to that it should require very little effort for Apple's engineers to change a few Aqua scroll bars, checkboxes and buttons to the ones featured by iTunes. They already have the required resources sitting a folder somewhere.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

From what I understand Apple, unlike Microsoft, has a whole separate design team working on interfaces. Hence why, in general, Mac OS tends to look better than its Windows counterpart.

Next to that it should require very little effort for Apple's engineers to change a few Aqua scroll bars, checkboxes and buttons to the ones featured by iTunes. They already have the required resources sitting a folder somewhere.

Maybe those resources are native to newer versions of libraries the apps you have spotted aren't running yet?

[Big Mac]

Why can't one of the UI experts from the forums get hired by Apple so that these things can finally be unified?

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Maybe those resources are native to newer versions of libraries the apps you have spotted aren't running yet?

The Aqua scroll bars etc. are still used system-wide. Not just by a handful of applications.

But I wouldn't know if Apple is holding them back.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Why can't one of the UI experts from the forums get hired by Apple so that these things can finally be unified?

Damn, we should have thought about that earlier!

(why does this forum have such crappy emoticons? )

[besson3c]

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!! 

And these screenshots are from the latest builds. The Safari toolbar button backgrounds are still Aqua. At normal 72dpi resolutions, Safari and other apps have the platinum-ish gradient buttons. Granted, even if the RI widgets don't change before release, they could easily be changed in a point update. Still though...Apple had a ton of time to get this right on release.

Yes, these shots are from 9A559.

It seems that at default resolution, Safari still uses the bitmap versions, but once RI is invoked it switches to the vector set. Odd, but I guess it makes sort of sense to use resolution optimised bitmaps at the default resolution.

[TETENAL]

Can you start the slideshow from a selection of images on the desktop without using the context menu?

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Can you start the slideshow from a selection of images on the desktop without using the context menu?

No. There's no separate slideshow feature anymore at all as far as I can tell. It has been rolled into QuickLook (which has it's own button, you can hit space or call it from the contextual menu).

[- - e r i k - -]

The plot thickens:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/LeopardUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ folder.

mbgradient.png
menuselectionaqua1.png
menubar3.png
mbselection2.png
mbrgradient.png
menubrgradient.png
menuselectionaqua.png
menubrtab.png

There's also a lot of very interesting high-res images that you can find in the same folder, like big shiny aqua spheres, enabling you to easily re-color Aqua buttons, or even texture them! The thing is, changing stuff in the LeopardUI.bundle folder seems to only affect the UI if you're in resolution-independent mode, that is with the scaling factor set to something else than 1x, otherwise, the UI seems to still mainly rely on the good old Extras.rsrc file.

[MindFad]

Eeeeenteresting.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

The plot thickens:

Isn't it like this:

AquaUI.bundle for the regular 720 dpi interface.

LeopardUI.bundle for the RI interface

? At least that was what I gathered. Could be wrong though. In any case both were kind of a mess the last time I checked. A lot of redundant, unused or missing elements etc.

[Visualize]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Why can't one of the UI experts from the forums get hired by Apple so that these things can finally be unified?

And who would that be? I can't think of any that qualifies for the job. Is roosta an expert on UI or is digitaljames? what about swiz? Or Zimphire(sp?)

Is having ideas and visions about UI-design the same thing as being an expert?

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by MindFad 

I agree, I'd actually like the iTunes scrollbars throughout Leopard. They fit better than the aqua ones do with this new look. And that "grabbby" texture in the center of scrollbars like OS 9 would nice as well. Something simple, like this:

Niceeee. And I agree.

On second thought, they really wouldn't match the buttons in apps like Mail. I guess it's how Apple sets iTunes (and iLife now?) apart from its other apps, but I don't get why. These iTunes scrollbars work with the flat, non-aqua look of the iTunes buttons.... There's a whole lot of interface stuff going on that I don't get.

Me either. Remember when Mac users would make fun of Windows for having an inconsistent GUI? Well OS X sux in this department.

I was REALLY HOPING 10.5 would bring some consistency. If not, I guess I can hack the resources to make it bring it back myself. It sucks that Mac users have to do such a thing. Something that was so standard with every other MacOS .

Sad. Platinum was usable, consistent, and easy on the eyes.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

If things haven't been firmed up at this point, I don't think there's much of a chance they will be in the final release. And that's truly unfortunate.

Not true, Apple has been known to change things at the last minute.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

The only people likely to notice these sorts of subtleties are the hardcore Mac graphic designer crowd which may not be worth Apple's time and attention at this point.The Leopard beta testers for our Mac enterprise team at the university report a number of bugs with active directory and such. Perhaps Apple's attentions have been with getting core functionality working?

I think you might not understand why Mac users buy Macs besson. And no, not just hardcore Mac graphic designer crowds notice these things.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Visualize 

And who would that be? I can't think of any that qualifies for the job. Is roosta an expert on UI or is digitaljames? what about swiz? Or Zimphire(sp?)

Is having ideas and visions about UI-design the same thing as being an expert?

I can speak for Zimphire in saying that he wouldn't do it unless it involved not having to deal with Jobs on a day to day basis.

Though Swiz would be more qualified IMHO. He wouldn't do it unless Apple made their clusterfludge of a theme file a lot easier to modify or theme for.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Visualize 

And who would that be? I can't think of any that qualifies for the job. Is roosta an expert on UI or is digitaljames? what about swiz? Or Zimphire(sp?)

Is having ideas and visions about UI-design the same thing as being an expert?

I read it as sarcasm.

[Kevin]

I've had read people say that before. That the GUI designers in this forum were better at forming a solid GUI than Apple. I've seen it with my own eyes with the creations that were made.

I am not referring to the two themes I (zimphire) made. Which were just an OS 9 like theme, and a stripe-less darker Aqua. Even though Aqua did eventually become a lot like Simple Aqua. (Not that I would be so pretentious as to think my theme had anything to do with it.. it was just a logical step in the right direction)

I am speaking about those that actually made new GUIs that were slick, yet unobtrusive.

Swiz comes to mind when I think about such designers.

[G0Ducks]

The fact is that Apple could give a crap about our desire in the UI department... They have proven this with every release of OSX and nearly every release of every other OS they've released.

I still don't understand why they don't see the benefit to allow users to at least modify the color and font of their OS. It is a small step that goes a long way to making their computing experience their own.

After all, we have to sit here and look at the thing all day long. Even windows from '95 on allows users to make enough little changes to make the OS feel like home.

R

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Visualize 

And who would that be? I can't think of any that qualifies for the job. Is roosta an expert on UI or is digitaljames? what about swiz? Or Zimphire(sp?)

Is having ideas and visions about UI-design the same thing as being an expert?

I'm fairly positive he wasn't being too serious.

[jriveractu]

hey-oh ! the month is here, hey-oh ! the time is near

sorry ... I had to get it out of me head

[.Neo]

New builds have been released through Software Update.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

New builds have been released through Software Update.

...putting to rest any remaining notion that 9A559 is the GM. Good thing too. I hope the next build that is seeded (if one is seeded) contains *all* the RI-ready graphics (and this includes changes to the current RI-ready widgets that are still using Aqua.)

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!! 

...putting to rest any remaining notion that 9A559 is the GM. Good thing too. I hope the next build that is seeded (if one is seeded) contains *all* the RI-ready graphics (and this includes changes to the current RI-ready widgets that are still using Aqua.)

You're hoping this because you actually own or have to work with a 300 dpi screen that doesn't work properly with the current interface? Or just for the hell of it?

Personally I have no real reason to really look forward to this feature. It would be cool to pull that slider back and forth the first day and see everything scale up and down, but my enthusiasm is likely to end there.

[0157988944]

... As with many "eye candy" features of any OS.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by adamfishercox 

... As with many "eye candy" features of any OS.

A resolution independent UI isn't exactly being developed because it adds an extra touch to the OS like the genie minimize effect or the glowing confirmation buttons.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

You're hoping this because you actually own or have to work with a 300 dpi screen that doesn't work properly with the current interface? Or just for the hell of it?

Personally I have no real reason to really look forward to this feature. It would be cool to pull that slider back and forth the first day and see everything scale up and down, but my enthusiasm is likely to end there.

I don't own or plan to own a 300 dpi screen in the immediate future...but my next monitor will likely be a higher resolution screen and I really want to Mac OS X to be usable from a distance on my current 24" display. My computer is in the living room/dining room. I watch TV on it but I would also like to browse the internet from a distance as well as use other apps from a distance (like the couche or the living room table). Sure I can use the universal access zoom feature but the output is blurry and cropped...not a good solution.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!! 

I don't own or plan to own a 300 dpi screen in the immediate future...but my next monitor will likely be a higher resolution screen and I really want to Mac OS X to be usable from a distance on my current 24" display. My computer is in the living room/dining room. I watch TV on it but I would also like to use the internet from a distance. Sure I can use the universal access zoom feature but the output is blurry and cropped...not a good solution.

The resolution independent UI won't help you with watching TV any better on your computer, nor will internet pages become any larger than they are right now.

At best the navigational buttons of Safari and the menus will be easier to spot from a distance, but for you the gain of better functionality will end about there. So yeah, that could come in handy when having to operate your computer from a larger distance. The actual viewing of a TV show or website won't change one bit.

There's an interesting thought btw: Just imagine if we could capture videos or photos resolution independent!

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

The resolution independent UI won't help you with watching TV any better on your computer, nor will internet pages become any larger than they are right now.

At best the navigational buttons of Safari and the menus will be easier to spot from a distance, but for you the gain of better functionality will end about there. So yeah, that could come in handy when having to operate your computer from a larger distance. The actual viewing of a TV show or website won't change one bit.

There's an interesting thought btw: Just imagine if we could capture videos or photos resolution independent!

I know it won't change the viewing of a TV show...I've got a fullscreen option in EyeTV for that. I was merely saying that I use my computer at a distance viewing TV from the couch and from the dining room table and that it would be fun to be able to do other things like browse from a distance.

This is where you are wrong. It will help browsing from a distance if the Safari team managed to scale elements in webpages (fonts and widgets will be crisp, images not so much) with the UI. In fact, it'll with a whole lot of apps that don't have fullscreen modes with large text.

Even the Finder will be easy to navigate at a distance.

Resolution independent photos will probably never happen. If you want to play around with the idea, download Vectoraster. It attempts to vectorize an image. It does an ok job if you tweak the settings but it only works well on monocolor bitmaps and the more detail you want to capture, the more vector polygons/alphanumeric characters/ovals it needs to create and the more it bogs down even my Mac Pro 2.66.

Vector photos will never be able to capture the full detail of a bitmap photo though. Even with all the processing power in the world.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks 

The fact is that Apple could give a crap about our desire in the UI department... They have proven this with every release of OSX and nearly every release of every other OS they've released.

I still don't understand why they don't see the benefit to allow users to at least modify the color and font of their OS. It is a small step that goes a long way to making their computing experience their own.

After all, we have to sit here and look at the thing all day long. Even windows from '95 on allows users to make enough little changes to make the OS feel like home.

R

I think Steve is a little controlling a tad bit. I mean he was the one that removed themes from OS 8.

The ability to theme OS 8 and OS 9 without having to use Kaleidoscope would have been awesome as long as it ran as fast as platinum.

[Kar98]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks 

The fact is that Apple could give a crap about our desire in the UI department... They have proven this with every release of OSX and nearly every release of every other OS they've released.

I still don't understand why they don't see the benefit to allow users to at least modify the color and font of their OS. It is a small step that goes a long way to making their computing experience their own.

After all, we have to sit here and look at the thing all day long. Even windows from '95 on allows users to make enough little changes to make the OS feel like home.

R

Actually, you could pick your own colors and fonts even in Windows 3.1 (first one I used).

[mudzilla]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!! 

...putting to rest any remaining notion that 9A559 is the GM. Good thing too. I hope the next build that is seeded (if one is seeded) contains *all* the RI-ready graphics (and this includes changes to the current RI-ready widgets that are still using Aqua.)

System remains as 9A559 after the update...

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!! 

...putting to rest any remaining notion that 9A559 is the GM. Good thing too. I hope the next build that is seeded (if one is seeded) contains *all* the RI-ready graphics (and this includes changes to the current RI-ready widgets that are still using Aqua.)

How on earth does that confirm it? That's the third time they've done that for Leopard.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man 

How on earth does that confirm it? That's the third time they've done that for Leopard.

Because they're still testing Software Update and ironing out the bugs. It's the third time because there are bugs to squash and they want people to report them so they're fixed before release.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by mudzilla 

System remains as 9A559 after the update...

Yeah...because users aren't downloading changes to the OS...the system isn't being tested, Software Update is.