Maureen M. McCarty (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} stardustgirl) wrote,@ 2009-04-05 18:26:00 |
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It's getting dark, too dark to see...
I've spent the day eyeing Leopard warily from my chair and web-surfing for skins, icons, and suchlike. There's a *whole* lotta grey goin' on there, and I'm trying my designer-y best to neutralize its depressing effects by altering what I can in the options allowed, but I cannot help but wail and gnash my teeth and remember the good old days of Kaleidoscope. Think purple and orange stripes are the shiznit for a UI? Someone probably wrote one; it was a time of anything goes.
I used a black and blue skin on the Wallstreet, and something that changed with the seasons on the desktop at work. I could use whatever font suited my viewing pleasure to name my icons, I could use whatever color I wanted for the highlight in the menubar. It was all about *me*, or *you*, or John Doe. It was just like Burger King: Have It Your Way.
Now it seems to be all about conformity. What happened? Toolbars? Any color you want as long as it's dark grey with a really dark grey but not quite black tiny little font (Hello? Readability? Not. And don't get me started on the light grey on white documentation and website.) Yes, you have a choice of themes - blue or charcoal. Big whooptee. Need to change the font in the sidebar of the windows because you can't read them? Tough, unless it's the Mail app. That seems to be the only one where the font face as well as size is capable of being changed, but the icons in the toolbar are woefully small even with the "use small icons" box UNchecked.
Workaround: take the resolution down to 1024 x 640, turn on options for the visually-impaired (I kid not) and bump up the contrast to lighten the dark grey. I'm using the peony (pink) desktop picture and changed the text highlight to a similar color. I've actually added some options I cared nothing about in instances where the toolbars were customizable, just to get a little color up there.
Next I'll attack some of those battleship grey folder icons and make them more palatable, if possible. There's just something about the way Leopard is laid out that makes me think at some point, System 7 snuck off in a dark corner with Windows95, some indescretion took place, and this is the spawn of that unfortunate liason. I mean, c'mon... flat grey folders? Screaming blue menu highlights? What happened to that happy, glossy, candy-colored interface that made things look happy and fun instead of like the inside of a cube farm asylum?
I bitch because I'm bummed. I was never into computers at all until Macs came along, and once I saw how customizable they were, and what a spiffy thing Photoshop was, I was interested. Real interested. It was friendly and fun - hell, it even smiled at you when you started it up. What was there not to love?
Now it's a machine that demands the user conform to it rather than the malleable little beasties that used to be fun to play with. If I had the desktop model, I swear I would've named it Hal because that's what it feels like now.
I suppose there's always hope the pendulum will swing back again, or that Shapeshifter will be available for Leopard. In the meantime, I view all that grey with the same jaundiced eye with which I used to view the harvest gold tile in the bathroom: you're only here until I can get rid of you.
All personal hatred of grey aside, the Aqua look really is much, much, *much*, easier on my eyes from a readability standpoint. Perhaps I'm persistently crabby about this because I have what feels like a charley horse in my eyes from peering at Leopard in its default mode.
The upside: the new guy is fast. Web pages load quickly. (It really isn't supposed to take 5 minutes for Facebook to load? Who knew?) And iMovie '09 took my malfunctioning iMovie4 project that mysteriously dropped its last 20 minutes of audio the minute it was sent to iDVD and spat out a perfectly functioning disc.
I've spent the day eyeing Leopard warily from my chair and web-surfing for skins, icons, and suchlike. There's a *whole* lotta grey goin' on there, and I'm trying my designer-y best to neutralize its depressing effects by altering what I can in the options allowed, but I cannot help but wail and gnash my teeth and remember the good old days of Kaleidoscope. Think purple and orange stripes are the shiznit for a UI? Someone probably wrote one; it was a time of anything goes.
I used a black and blue skin on the Wallstreet, and something that changed with the seasons on the desktop at work. I could use whatever font suited my viewing pleasure to name my icons, I could use whatever color I wanted for the highlight in the menubar. It was all about *me*, or *you*, or John Doe. It was just like Burger King: Have It Your Way.
Now it seems to be all about conformity. What happened? Toolbars? Any color you want as long as it's dark grey with a really dark grey but not quite black tiny little font (Hello? Readability? Not. And don't get me started on the light grey on white documentation and website.) Yes, you have a choice of themes - blue or charcoal. Big whooptee. Need to change the font in the sidebar of the windows because you can't read them? Tough, unless it's the Mail app. That seems to be the only one where the font face as well as size is capable of being changed, but the icons in the toolbar are woefully small even with the "use small icons" box UNchecked.
Workaround: take the resolution down to 1024 x 640, turn on options for the visually-impaired (I kid not) and bump up the contrast to lighten the dark grey. I'm using the peony (pink) desktop picture and changed the text highlight to a similar color. I've actually added some options I cared nothing about in instances where the toolbars were customizable, just to get a little color up there.
Next I'll attack some of those battleship grey folder icons and make them more palatable, if possible. There's just something about the way Leopard is laid out that makes me think at some point, System 7 snuck off in a dark corner with Windows95, some indescretion took place, and this is the spawn of that unfortunate liason. I mean, c'mon... flat grey folders? Screaming blue menu highlights? What happened to that happy, glossy, candy-colored interface that made things look happy and fun instead of like the inside of a cube farm asylum?
I bitch because I'm bummed. I was never into computers at all until Macs came along, and once I saw how customizable they were, and what a spiffy thing Photoshop was, I was interested. Real interested. It was friendly and fun - hell, it even smiled at you when you started it up. What was there not to love?
Now it's a machine that demands the user conform to it rather than the malleable little beasties that used to be fun to play with. If I had the desktop model, I swear I would've named it Hal because that's what it feels like now.
I suppose there's always hope the pendulum will swing back again, or that Shapeshifter will be available for Leopard. In the meantime, I view all that grey with the same jaundiced eye with which I used to view the harvest gold tile in the bathroom: you're only here until I can get rid of you.
All personal hatred of grey aside, the Aqua look really is much, much, *much*, easier on my eyes from a readability standpoint. Perhaps I'm persistently crabby about this because I have what feels like a charley horse in my eyes from peering at Leopard in its default mode.
The upside: the new guy is fast. Web pages load quickly. (It really isn't supposed to take 5 minutes for Facebook to load? Who knew?) And iMovie '09 took my malfunctioning iMovie4 project that mysteriously dropped its last 20 minutes of audio the minute it was sent to iDVD and spat out a perfectly functioning disc.
