Two questions, which can most likely only be answered by Apple
engineers :
1. Is it possible from Carbon to use the revised Metal theme that
iTunes uses?
No; nor is it possible from Cocoa. The iTunes appearance is hand-
coded inside iTunes.
Odd. The very reason I asked, and why I thought it might be
available, is because I have been told by a beta tester of a certain
Cocoa app that the new appearance was already being used by that
beta. Maybe you're not up to date with the latest in Cocoa land,
Eric? :-)
Upon investigating further, I can see inside the iTunes resource file
that there are tons of 'metal' PICT tiles that I assume must be used
to hand-paint the window. Eek!
For what it's worth, I never liked the original (current) metal
appearance and this is an opinion that seems fairly widespread, but
the updated metal appearance does look far more elegant.
2. Is it possible to have the same button-like appearance for
toolbar items as can be seen in Mail?
Only by creating custom toolbar items with that appearance. The
Mail appearance is hand-coded inside Mail.
Ok. Eek! (again)
As you noted in a later email, the majority of people think they are
ugly, myself included. I was just wondering out of curiosity.
Where I'm coming from on these two issues is user perception. OS X is
very UI centric. Take two apps that do similar things just as well as
each other - one has what appears to be the very latest look and
feel and the other has a standard (old fashioned?) look and feel.
Which one sells more copies? The one which looks sexier.
In general, it is our intention over time to move features such as
these that are first implemented in the apps, into Carbon and Cocoa
so that all developers can access them.
That's nice and I'm really glad to hear that, but the problem is that
by the time this happens there is usually a newer look and feel
implemented (hard coded) in one or more Apple apps. So again us
developers look behind the times. Additionally, just think of the
time wasted by Apple engineers making hard coded versions of this
stuff, then re-implementing all over again for everyone to use.
Surely Apple engineers and graphic designers have more productive
things to do, no?
Anyway, thanks for listening :-)
Regards,
Martin Crane
Macintosh Software Engineer http://www.vicomsoft.com
Policing For Productivity
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