Stop porting windows themes

PC's are only hard to use if your a 40 year old women or a moron, are you one of them?
i bet your an AOL user eh?

wow Kujo, you're calling me stupid when you clearly missed the qoutes and the sarcasm of my post.

well all that doesnt make sense to me and the "frustration" kinda confused me.

my comments are to whoever said the quote

litestep isnt ugly or hard to use. [officially addicted post]

Where's all those theming threads that were clogging up the 3rd party software board when we really need them to push dying conversations like this off the page??? :-]

I see a lot of XP users porting Mac themes over and vice versa. Look at Sosumi, I have have people tell me it was a XP theme first, then asked me if I got the author's permission to make a OS X version.

Everyone's away for the holiday season

LOL

The worst thing there is, is unathorized ports of themes, I think. I've had some of those, but now I've found a nice guy who has started porting all my themes to Windows. That way I can ensure that it's at least good ports!

But I don't see why Windows ports are bad, as long as it's port of decent themes

it's just that every port on this page i see somewhere in there "I had to ask so and so for premission to port this from windows"

I'd like to see some original ports. That's all.

that doesnt make sense, there is no such thing

You know what he meant to type .... he wants original themes, NOT just ports. It is possible for Apple users to design something original, not just copy Windoze (ond OS9) stuff. At least the OSX versions usually have another whole level of refinement to them... I don't know if it's the restrictions that OSX places on the designs as far as size and shape of the elements, or if it's the fact that they have to be good enough to replace Aqua and thus have a high standard to live up to, or the limited but fierce competition amongst our resident themers, but most of the ports don't really end up looking that 'Windozey'. Even the XP one looks better than actual XP (although it still turns my blood to ice)!

I'd like to see some more all-new ideas too, but all-new design ideas are really hard to think of! Why don't you think of a really good idea for someone to work on?

In fact this thread could grow into an idea thread for original themes.... it goes with the subject line. 'Stop porting windows themes', where people without the time or talent or knowhow, or patience to actually build a theme can toss off suggestions and post mockups and maybe actual themers can pick up on the ideas and run with them!

Maybe what started as a lame thread that a week ago would have slid off the page overnight could here grow to be a useful one that inspires great new OSX themes for years!

They aren't, and I have never tried to stop anyone from porting any of my themes.

I ment the other way around, from Windows to Mac. From Mac to Windows is also ok.
The problem in both cases is with porters that don't respect the authors, and want to go ahead and port the theme even though the autohr might not want to. And I've seen this behavior on the mac platform also (ChosenOS).




That would be cool! I myself find it hard to think in new ways when making a theme, it's hard to make a theme that doesn't resemble the previous ones. I think I may sometimes go overboard with gradients and stuff tend to resemble previous theme elements. That's why it's so fun to look at new themes such as Watercolor, they are so different and with many new ideas. It's good for your inspiration.

The thing with ports is that some people grow accustomed to a particular theme and want it for whatever platform they may be using. That was why I ported neXT and BeOS, all of my other themes are originals except for ChosenOS which I am working on now because of the MEGA amount of requests.

I have an idea for a theme. Shucks. I have no idea how to make one. But if Hi I'm Mike can do it..

I know i can.

It seems at this point there's pretty much a limit on what can be done originality-wise for OSX themes.

I don't mean in terms of creating K-scope monstrosities, but little touches like moving/altering window buttons, using horizontal gradients, window borders, etc. are not (yet?) possible AFAIK.

Then there is the general concept that there's only so many variations possible in a long thin strip with three buttons... also, similarities are probably not an accident -- people are most comfortable with what they know, and I think there probably *is* a "sweet spot" in terms of UI design (balance btwn unobtrusive/distinct, readability, etc.) within the given (by Apple) constraints, that most popular themes seem to hover around.

I wish the xp theme ports would stop too,. they're all pretty much godawful