Talk:Appearance Manager

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<!-- [I believe that this is pure speculation. Wikipedia shouldn't predict the future. That Mail will utilize the new "theme" is also only based on rumors] With the release of [[Mac OS X 10.4|Tiger]], the term ''platinum'' will come to refer to applications that use the aqua theme, but their titlebars have encompassed the toolbar or other controls. So far, there are but three applications that utilize this variant of the aqua theme: [[Apple Spotlight|Spotlight]], System Preferences and Mail. -->

I commented that out. — David Remahl 04:33, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough; for future reference, it's generally better to move such things to the discussion page (i.e. here), rather than hiding them in HTML comments, because:

1. It makes them easier to spot, since you don't have to be in the middle of editing to notice there's something there.
2. It allows people to respond, either to justify the inclusion or to confirm the removability. There is then a record of the discussion, whatever is eventually decided.
3. Inexperienced users may be confused by the existence of text that shows up when editing but not in the final article.

- IMSoP 17:50, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

3rd party themes

There needs to be some mention about 3rd party themes which may be found many places nowadays and which all descended from initial hacks of the Drawing Board theme (the first 3rd party theme being "Paper"). The article also does not make clear that the alternate themes were included in very late betas of Mac OS 8.5 but were dropped without warning in the retail version. It could also be better explained that when Mac OS X switched to Aqua, the theme resources were largely the same which is why Carbon applications easily worked in Aqua, and the prior hacking done for themes like Paper was then applied to Aqua in order to make the hundreds of themes available today (though when Mac OS X first came out it seemed a higher percentage of users were interested in theming than is the case today). It could also be mentioned that Aqua themes for Mac OS 9 were developed using this same system which also allowed Classic apps running in Mac OS X to appear Aqua. —pfahlstrom 05:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Similar products section

I've edited back this section, pasted below for reference. Without references to most of what's mentioned, it reads as the usual whining from someone who didn't get what they wanted. It isn't even relevant to the article. Appearance Manager wasn't a Kaleidoscope-killer because it never really amounted to much. Kaleidoscope is dead now because it was not supported by OS X. End of story.

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 21:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Similar UI-customization products had existed on Mac OS for some time, and many considered the Appearance Manager to be a direct copy of Kaleidoscope, a shareware program that was similar in almost every way and supported schemes, which were essentially identical to Apple's themes. Apple apparently intended to offer a tool that would automatically convert Kaleidoscope schemes to Apple's theme format, but this tool went unreleased when theme support was later dropped. The creation of the Appearance Manager led to some bad blood in the Mac community, many of whom felt Apple was "beating up" on Kaleidoscope when they could have simply included it in the system. The anger was even sharper when Apple then cancelled the project outright, leaving Kaleidoscope unable to run on the new system.

i've edited this section, because Kaleidoscope was THE main appearance manager on the mac for many years - before and after apple's appearance manager. it probably deserves its own article - but it doesnt - so i've left it here (for now). i've also supplied a screenshot of the classic Mac OS with a Kaleidoscope theme applied to it - everything: menus, icons, window borders, scrollbars are customized. Johnrpenner (talk) 13:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I believe that Kaleidoscope did actually use the Appearance Manager. The Appearance Manager was the underlying framework provided by the Mac OS system software. Both Kaleidoscope and the Appearance Control Panel utilized this framework to enable schemes and themes, respectively. Ben Boldt 03:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Appearance Themes deserve a separate article.

There is sufficient information about Appearance Themes that they deserve a separate article from Appearance Manager. Themes are only one unsupported feature of the Appearance Manager. I am going to try to move information about themes to the other article (Mac OS Appearance Theme) and add more information about the Appearance Manager to this article.

Ben Boldt 23:28, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Scratch that. There still are some things I should add to this article, though - especially soundsets and different scroll bar options need to be added.

Ben Boldt 02:43, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Please don't move anything from here to Mac OS Appearance Theme; the article Mac OS Appearance Theme is surely a candidate for deletion, since it seems to be discussion of an ongoing project rather than an article about a key part of the commercial Mac OS. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 08:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

After looking more closely at the article and fixing some things, I said "scratch that". I should have been more clear, but I meant that it didn't look like anything needed to be moved. The parts of Appearance Themes that I described are not being developed anymore and I think it's a useful article. "Planned features not implemented" may sound like it's an ongoing project, but actually those are features that Apple intended to incorporate but never did. It is not humanly possible to add those features as a 3rd party because the Appearance Manager is closed-source. Ben Boldt 14:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Copland Platinum theme.png

Image:Copland Platinum theme.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 06:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Charcoal.png

Image:Charcoal.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 20:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)