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OS 9 Themes

Ariii

Ariii

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sorry, but how do you create themes? On Google, I've found too much inconsistent information, and a lot of broken links. Is there something I can just view, or is there still good download links for themes? Also, I'm not interested in PM'ing.
 
Kaleidoscope was hot in it's day. I had BBX Mercury and a bunch of other stuff I picked up elsewhere.


In my garage I have a Mac IIci with System 7.5.1. I'm running Kaleidoscope on it with an OS9 theme.


Unfortunately, OSX completely changed things and now all of this is history.
 
Don't forget Hi-Tech, Gizmo and Drawing Board, which were the only official themes produced by Apple for the Classic OS's Appearance Manager - they were only included in pre-release versions (the released versions all included only the familiar Platinum theme) but if you look hard enough online you should find them somewhere, the files from the betas work fine in OS 8 and 9 if you put them in the System Folder > Appearance > Theme Files folder.
 

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From what I understood at the time it was a matter of resources and difficulty. Kaleidoscope made theming easy. As a result you had bazillions of themes (many of them just awful) designed by part-time themers. Some of the other themers had real followings (DSX, BBX, etc). But when Apple came out with OSX they locked everything down. Some designers made the transition. Butt O' Sigh was one. Rough Draft which was a Kaleidoscope theme based on Drawing Board was ported to OSX before Shapeshifter became popular and DSX and BBX had a few Shapeshifter themes later on too.

It was extremely difficult in the early days to theme OSX. OSX was an entirely new OS and the way graphics were handled was also new. This was one of the reasons Menucracker was a big deal when it came out. Someone actually had found a way to break in. Of course Apple retaliated and continued to break Menucracker with each new update. At the same time you had new people coming in to this from different directions trying to figure things out. That's how we ended up with APE and Shapeshifter. Shapeshifter won't function without APE because it needs APE to work around Apple's design of the system. Candybar, Magnifique and a few others started coming later.

So, really, because theming OSX is so difficult the Kaleidoscope designers decided to bow out rather than trying to theme OSX. That ended it. Once Leopard came out it got even more difficult. There are ways to do it now, but precious few apps that will work on Leopard and above. It's just a whole different game now.

That's the way I understand it anyway.

http://www.macobserver.com/news/00/june/000612/kaleidoscopeosx.shtml


http://www.teknidermy.com/issue/4/iviewlandweber.html


http://freecode.com/articles/learning-from-kaleidoscope


http://www.resexcellence.com/support_files/interview_GL.shtml


https://www.macworld.com/article/1018915/kaleidoscope.html
 
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Thank you so much! Now I have the iIndigo theme, and am trying to upgrade the OS. Is there any way to upgrade OS 9.1 to OS 9.2.2?
 
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