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There was a free/shareware app for Apple's OS 6/7/8 called Kaleidoscope. It was a resource editor that would let you change pretty much any aspect of the deskto

There was a free/shareware app for Apple's OS 6/7/8 called Kaleidoscope. It was a resource editor that would let you change pretty much any aspect of the desktop interface. Apple folks definitely had customization before OSX, but not sure if OSX killed that entirely or not.

joshspankit 6y ago
If by “folks” you mean users: yes. And yes: OSX killed that entirely (not just did they kill it, but as users found ways to crowbar in and do customizations, Apple changed the UI code to block each crowbar hole.)
kitsunesoba 6y ago
Kaleidoscope is by far the best implementation of system theming I've used. A single file was responsible for the appearance of window chrome, window controls, control and text colors, fonts, desktop icons, cursor, text selection color, etc. Furthermore, the schemes were free to rearrange and reshape window chrome as the artist pleased, meaning it was possible to do things like have a titlebar on the bottom of the window or to make the titlebar into a vertical tab that hung off the left or right edges of the window. Heck, it was even possible to make windows take on odd, non-square shapes. The results weren't always practical, but it was a great enabler of creativity, and made for probably the most true-to-the original OS themes on any platform. The only thing that even comes close is probably WinXP/Win7 msstyles, but even those have significant limitations compared to Kaleidoscope. Some arrangements of Linux desktops come close from a technical perspective, but suffer from the customizability being divided into 500 small pieces, making it a bit arduous to get everything to match up. EDIT: One other thing — Kaleidoscope had something unique that I have yet to see replicated elsewhere: there was no installation process for schemes. You could keep your schemes wherever you pleased, and switching them was as simple as navigating to the desired scheme in Finder and double-clicking it. Boom, done. No obscure and/or hidden directories to copy things to, no incantations to make them show up in a control panel. More things could use that classic Mac flavor of simplicity.
- asiando 6y ago
  That reminds me, theming was possible in Tiger times too, but I don’t remember the name of the application.
  - andrekandre 6y ago
    themepark?
    - jd3 6y ago
      SIMBL, ShapeShifter, ThemePark, artFileTool (ArtFile.bin, SArtFile.bin, Extras.rsrc, and Extras2.rsrc), and, more recently, ThemeEngine (/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/*.car) are all of the OS X/macOS customization tools I remember using over the years.
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    There were a few different programs for that, but probably the most popular was Unsanity's Shapeshifter, which allowed theming without replacing any system files (it instead hooked app launches and patched those files in memory). Those themes were pretty good, but suffered some significant limitations, especially with dark themes and carbon apps. The best OS X themes really looked great though, since they supported full color and alpha.

joshspankit 6y ago

If by “folks” you mean users: yes. And yes: OSX killed that entirely (not just did they kill it, but as users found ways to crowbar in and do customizations, Apple changed the UI code to block each crowbar hole.)

kitsunesoba 6y ago

Kaleidoscope is by far the best implementation of system theming I've used. A single file was responsible for the appearance of window chrome, window controls, control and text colors, fonts, desktop icons, cursor, text selection color, etc. Furthermore, the schemes were free to rearrange and reshape window chrome as the artist pleased, meaning it was possible to do things like have a titlebar on the bottom of the window or to make the titlebar into a vertical tab that hung off the left or right edges of the window. Heck, it was even possible to make windows take on odd, non-square shapes. The results weren't always practical, but it was a great enabler of creativity, and made for probably the most true-to-the original OS themes on any platform. The only thing that even comes close is probably WinXP/Win7 msstyles, but even those have significant limitations compared to Kaleidoscope. Some arrangements of Linux desktops come close from a technical perspective, but suffer from the customizability being divided into 500 small pieces, making it a bit arduous to get everything to match up. EDIT: One other thing — Kaleidoscope had something unique that I have yet to see replicated elsewhere: there was no installation process for schemes. You could keep your schemes wherever you pleased, and switching them was as simple as navigating to the desired scheme in Finder and double-clicking it. Boom, done. No obscure and/or hidden directories to copy things to, no incantations to make them show up in a control panel. More things could use that classic Mac flavor of simplicity.

asiando 6y ago
That reminds me, theming was possible in Tiger times too, but I don’t remember the name of the application.
- andrekandre 6y ago
  themepark?
  - jd3 6y ago
    SIMBL, ShapeShifter, ThemePark, artFileTool (ArtFile.bin, SArtFile.bin, Extras.rsrc, and Extras2.rsrc), and, more recently, ThemeEngine (/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/*.car) are all of the OS X/macOS customization tools I remember using over the years.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  There were a few different programs for that, but probably the most popular was Unsanity's Shapeshifter, which allowed theming without replacing any system files (it instead hooked app launches and patched those files in memory). Those themes were pretty good, but suffered some significant limitations, especially with dark themes and carbon apps. The best OS X themes really looked great though, since they supported full color and alpha.