macOS Sierra Theme for OS X Leopard

Thank you! Anyway, back to the macOS Theme! If it's helpful, I have done the easy part of the Sierra theme installer. It installs everything but the icons and the new buttons, checkboxes, etc. (although traffic lights are included). If you want this, PM me. I have some other things to tell you as well and some questions. If you don't want it and prefer to make your own, that's fine too! I completely understand.

 

I'm working on other elements (radio boxes, controls, etc) right now. I'm going to attempt to get as much stuff changed over before releasing another test build of Extras.rsrc. Back to work...

--- Post Merged, Oct 24, 2016 ---

For my part, I'm doing this for fun and discovery. I really couldn't care less what others do with what I do. I'm going to stay neutral on this whole credit and glory stuff that, frankly, I don't give a crap about, and just keep working. That stuff is for others to battle about...

 

If what I'm doing is of any help and use to the project, then by all means, they can take it and use it as they see fit. They can even omit any mention of me on it; I really don't care about that stuff. If they don't want/need to use any of it, that's ok too. I'm having a right doss here discovering new things I never knew before, and everyone else (and I mean EVERYONE here) that has put their ideas and work in that helped along the way are a right bunch of blokes.

Everything beyond that is not my concern. I dealt with a lot of that exclusivity crap back in my days of working on the MAME emulator (1998-2004) and have seen what a "scene" can do to a group of people who just want to do neat stuff...

... and I'm done. Back to fun

 

We really appreciate your efforts, as we've gotten further into development with your help faster than ever before! Same goes for Adam and Henry who have also been a tremendous help over the past few days in this new thread.

 

Not to mention the macOS Sierra theme was already planned to become its own "distro" of OS X Leopard, as @Orizence and I were working on getting the OS X installer to take custom packages (which I successfully managed to pull off), not a separate installer. It could very well be made for people that do not want to reinstall OS X, but it's going to be way harder that way. The "Ultimate Leopard PowerPC DVD DMG" project was given the green light by the team as well. Again, I have no problem with @HFTaylor12 taking over my work on that due to complications in my personal situation, but we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. The entire reason that project is stalled was because of lack of progress on the main project due to personal situations of the team and the absence of Tom. We can start figuring out how to make a standalone installer after we manage to do all this first, if @gavinstubbs09 and the rest of the team is OK with it. I will eventually write up how to make those packages for the OS X installer, but perhaps Orizence remembers how to do it, and he could inform HFTaylor12.

 

I remember how to do it, I just need some time to do it again, and ill make a write up while I'm at it I'm just waiting for the pack to be released to the public and some spare cash so I can get some more DDR2 and a new HDD before this one dies, but with the new MMA gym I'm joining, and the girlfriend, along with my phone bill and other things, money doesn't come easy thats for sure. (I still need to get my G2 and start saving for a car.....)

 

If you don't want to give it out, you'd better stop uploading the files you're using.

I was only planning to make a installer package that would install only the theme, not the whole OS.

 

Some of us are stuck with older hardware that isnt exactly economical to upgrade, so Ill continue to use my G5. Now the real question is as a 17 year old, in 2016 how can I afford to upgrade my whole music setup to do the same thing it already does

I could be wrong but I believe he was only planning on making the installer and making it work with the OS X installer. I did make a lot of progress on the whole OS installer, just nothing for the theme

 

Here's test 4 of Extras.rsrc, with the following mods done:

1. Small window traffic lights
2. Checkboxes, round and square
3. Sliders, round and pointed
4. Replaced metal texture with white

Next I'm going to attempt to tackle the push buttons. This is going to take a while...

The usual disclaimer about hosing your system (not my fault) applies...

 

I just made an interesting discovery. I fired up Themepark 3.1 on my Tiger machine, which has the Good Grey theme and Shapeshifter. For giggles, I opened and saved the Extras.rsrc from that machine and transferred it over to my testbed Powerbook running Leopard. I'll be damned if it didn't work:



Granted, the controls look a little funny with the silver framing, but this tells me a lot. I can actually scan through the file to see what the original themer changed and make things go a whole lot easier, rather than the hit or miss modding that I've been doing. I can also install this theme on Tiger WITHOUT Shapeshifter now as well. The file is below if anyone wants to give it a try, and again, it's YOUR fault if you hose your system.

 

I'll so be trying this on tiger tomorrow. I have it themed too. Or I used to before I switched hard drives. If it weren't for some apps like iMovie HD, I'd revert to tiger in a heartbeat. It's insanely fast compared to leopard.

 

Do you know where ThemePark 3.1 can still be obtained? All the sites I tried didn't work anymore or just gave me 4.1 which won't work with Tiger, AFAIK.

EDIT: Never mind, the Internet Archive still had a copy of both the site and Themepark 3.1. You can download 3.1 from here (it's freeware so no license is needed). And for Panther users, 2.1.1 is available on the Archive as well and is downloadable from here.

 

Cool, I'll keep an eye on that !
Will definitely try this on my PowerMac G5 when the theme will be 100% finished (Maybe I'll try this on my iMac G5)

 

I took about 5 or 10 minutes and threw together a quick application that lets you test out UI elements such as buttons, scroll bars, and checkboxes. Now we can track the UI element progress! Here's the download. Only works on Leopard and Snow Leopard (because of Rosetta). No Tiger support yet.

--- Post Merged, Oct 26, 2016 ---

If the files are compatible, then it shouldn't be hard to make a macOS theme for Tiger. As long as the Extras file and ThemePark is used and not artTools, then all that's left is the icons, dock, font, and foxboxes, right?

 

I've figured out which resources in SArtFile are used to draw the window frame in Finder, thanks to gavinstubbs09's posting of the Black OS X theme on his PowerPC Centre site. I decoded the SArtFile from that theme and compared it to the stock SArtFile and found the resources that were different. I also noticed a couple of color changes in Finder.rsrc that the theme used. Now I need to experiment a bit to see exactly how each resource changes the frame, because Leopard uses a primitive form of resolution independence where each resource can be used for multiple applications. Although using Extras.rsrc requires disabling CoreUI in Leopard, it still uses SArtFile for certain elements, such as Finder window frames, etc, and its a touchy bugger. I've been able to decode and successfully encode the file a few times now, so I'm hoping to have some results soon. I'm attempting to lighten up the window frame to match the current macOS shade.

Finding information about Leopard theming is a real SOB. I searched high and low, and almost every link I hit was broken, or the sites have gone down and had robots.txt on the server (macthemes2.net, for instance) so there was no archive left over. I did find a couple of chinese sites that had some good info, and there are various bits scattered here and there, but by the time Snow Leopard was launched, people had pretty much given up on Leopard, as SL was much easier to mod.

--- Post Merged, Oct 26, 2016 ---

Theming Tiger will be academic compared to Leopard. There are a couple of elements that the Extras.rsrc doesn't theme compared to Shapeshifter, such as the Spotlight icon, but I know where that's stored. Shapeshifter, from what my research has uncovered, seems to overlay Extras.rsrc, as well as a couple of other resources, so if you open and save Extras.rsrc in Themepark, then move it to the system folder, it won't theme everything that isn't stored in Extras. To do what I did in the above original post, the Shapeshifter theme must be applied, and you have to open and resave Extras.rsrc since Shapeshifter only overlays the original rather than writing to it. I'm going to open up a few other resources (Finder.rsrc, for example) while Shapeshifter is running, save them, and move them to their proper places to see what effect they have as well.

Thanks for writing the app. It'll help tremendously.

 

@swamprock, I found a problem with your Extras file. It seems to be giving me Mountain Leopard buttons and a few other UI elements. I know for sure the push buttons are changed. I tried uninstalling Mountain Leopard and then putting in the default Extras.rsrc file and my buttons were standard Leopard buttons. After installing your Extras file, I am getting buttons like this:

I think the progress bar is changed as well. It would be great if you could take a look and see what may be causing this. Thanks!

 

Yeah I'm aware of that. I actually left the Mountain Leopard buttons since they're an approximate match to the newer ones. I plan on changing the buttons in a later build. The way Extras.rsrc is set up, there are multiple copies of the same asset that need to be changed when you're theming. It's quite tedious, believe me.

I merged the Good Grey theme with my mods and changed some (but not all) of the progress indicators (the smaller file copy/move/etc. indicators). You'll have much of that theme, with the new progress indicators and slimmed-down scroll bar elements as well (which is another reason I used Mountain Leopard for my mods). The scroll bars in Good Grey are huge, so I changed them to the thinner ML bars. I'll post that file in a bit as I'm on my way home soon.

(I'm starting to think that Apple used Good Grey as a base for their UI changes starting with Yosemite. Many of the elements used in Yosemite are identical to GG, as I've found while doing all of this.)

 

If I can help, let me know! I wasn't originally planning on it but I think it's a great idea and am willing to help in any way I can.

 

Hmmm... Don't get tired doing all that x) maybe because, oh nvm ...

 

Here's test 4, with merged elements from Mountain Leopard, Good Grey, and my own mods. I basically took ML's scroll bars and the traffic lights and other mods I did and merged them all into Good Grey. This will be the base for the rest of the mods that I'd like to do. Credit for the elements used goes to the original themers. Usual disclaimer applies if you hose your system (oops, but it wasn't my fault)...

Next steps are to change the shade of the window frames, remove the arrows (a mod with arrow will be kept around for those with one button mice/trackpad with no gestures), and change the buttons.

--- Post Merged, Oct 26, 2016 ---

Never. If you read my other posts, you'll see that I'm essentially doing this for ME and sharing it with others who are interested. That's it. This is educational for me, and a whole lot of fun as well. I'm not out to steal anyone's thunder or make this a race to see who can get this done first/better/cooler/etc. That crap means NOTHING to me.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have to offer when you're done.

 

You mean you're not using Yosemite resources anymore?

 

I'm still using them. Some of the resources I used from the other themes match Yosemite/El Capitan/Sierra pretty closely, and the ones that don't, I'll be replacing them. Install it, play around (especially copy a large file to test my initial work on the progress indicator), and you'll see...

One thing to keep in mind is that this is an ongoing process that won't ever be perfect, but will get closer as more work gets done on it. All of the files that I'm posting are just tests and incomplete.

Oh... and you can install that file in Tiger as well...