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Inconsistency in OSX Leopard Mac-Native Aqua Apps

Submitted by hoopla_punta on August 10, 2008 to Aesthetics, Icons

OSX Leopard has 3 "aqua styles" (kinda a made up theory):
First, the "grey buttons" which is found in Finder, Safari, iCal...
Next, the "bubble buttons" which is found in Mail and Preview
These two share the same blue/gray sidebar.
Last is "big, colourful icons" which are found in some iLife and iWork apps.

Other apps have styles that are necessary, Garageband and iMovie.

The problem is Mac-Native apps (mail, preview...) should all have the same interface. This makes them more uniform and equal.

So bubble style icons should change to grey icons instead. But "colourful" icons is okay as the colour serves its purpose. See the screenshot for an example but I did not add the colourful icons sorry.

Change all the bubble style icons to grey icons.

or give the option to have Mac-Native Apps to have either grey or bubble icons.

Low

Low

Not fixed

Discussion (7 comments)

chu121su12 wrote on August 10, 2008, 6:53pm

Or maybe better to provide user a general setting to switch: default, all bubble, all gray, all big, etc

ion wrote on August 10, 2008, 10:43pm

I'm not in love with the Aqua interface however I can't deny it's not ugly.

I think that's not necessarily bad if the apps don't look the same because this way it's much easier to differentiate them. Sometimes I feel the GUI of OS X is disturbing because it's all grey. I use a grey scheme on other GUIs too but OS X is exceedingly disturbing for me.

mindprint wrote on August 11, 2008, 10:22pm

I used to modify them with UNO on Tiger, but that app does not work with leopard so nu luck. I think Leopard is overall more unified, but still, as you wrote...

Applefan wrote on August 19, 2008, 4:45am

The windows in your screenshot all look consistent.

jasper wrote on September 1, 2008, 9:47pm

All Windows with the same look would be very boring. Really, try it. I have thought the same way for a while, but I realize now that it would just be boring if everything was exactly the same. I like the differences, it gives the applications an unique feel while still fitting in the general theme.

hoopla_punta wrote on September 28, 2008, 11:35am

Have to agree on that.

linuxforever wrote on May 25, 2009, 11:26pm

Unification seems to have huge advantages:
- You only need to change the look at one place to modify all of them (for customization by the user or system upgrade by the vendor); nonetheless, it should be up to you whether you use system standard or the individual theme provided by application which makes sense for photo viewers for instance where usually a dark background and unobtrusively colored icons make more sense (the icon shape does not necessarily have to change, maintaining a bit unification)
- You find the standard functions more easily since you know how the buttons look like
- You can trust the symbols meaning they represent the same very function in each application (e.g. different symbols if the action is delete permanently or move to trash folder of the application)

Unfortunately, the latter advantage is really one of the biggest flaws security wise because it enables programmers to copy the standard theme in order to trick users to invoke actions they di not see coming... Nothing new in the Windows World!

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