[MacNN Forums] Official OmniWeb Themes addon: seeking artists

[Eugene Lee]

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Posted on : 01-23-2004 11:57 PM

Since we've found it's impossible to please everyone when it comes to
toolbar icons and the like, we're producing a plugin for OmniWeb 5 that
will let users easily switch out entire sets of icons at once. Actually,
you could consider it more of a "themes" style utility, in that it
allows for easy replacement of any image resource in the running app,
including the images we use to build custom widgets (such as the ones
seen in the tabs drawer and workspaces window on our screenshots page).

This plugin will be released as a separate download (it won't be part of
OmniWeb by default), and will come packaged with a few starter themes.
I'll be putting together a couple of themes based on older OmniWeb
versions, but we'd like to also like to include a few themes from other
artists in the Mac GUI editing community.

So, if you've got an idea for how you'd like OmniWeb 5 to look -- or a
Mac OS theme you'd like OmniWeb to fit into -- and want to contribute a
theme for use with this plugin, please drop me a line at (rick at
omnigroup.com). Volunteers will receive beta versions of OW5 and the
themes plugin for testing, and contributors whose work is included in
the plugin release will receive a free OW5 license.

__________________
Rick Roe

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Posted on : 01-24-2004 02:50 AM

I suppose I should have pointed out... we'll be negotiating with
volunteers individually to add them to this program, and we will be
trying to make sure we're getting actual artists who intend to
contribute and not just people who want an early beta.  Besides, you'd
only be getting a beta at most a few days before the public beta comes
out.

Yes, this will be an open format, and once the plugin is released,
anyone will be able to create iconsets/themes for it. Right now we're
just trying to line up a few early themes to be bundled with the plugin
when it comes out.

The theme format is basically a folder (file package, really) full of
images that have the same names as those in the OmniWeb app wrapper and
its bundled frameworks. You can do essentially the same thing now by
digging into our app wrapper and replacing images -- we're just making
it so that users can just flip a switch to see different icons, without
having to replace app-wrapper files.

__________________
Rick Roe

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Posted on : 01-25-2004 12:18 AM

There's no explicit deadline, as there's no specific release date for
OW5 final yet announced. However, if we get a large number of good
themes early on, we may choose to release the first version of the
plugin sooner. So... I guess you could call the end of February an
informal deadline.
 
Thanks to all the people who've volunteered so far -- we'll be
contacting you to work out the details this coming week.

__________________
Rick Roe

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