4 ms·

I wonder if it's possible to do things like this with Windows or MacOS. I love the idea of cool effects like this (even if the first thing I did after OSX intro

by dhosek 5y ago

I wonder if it's possible to do things like this with Windows or MacOS. I love the idea of cool effects like this (even if the first thing I did after OSX introduced the genie effect was to turn it off—nowadays the hardware is fast enough for it to not be annoying and the split second of the window shrinking away is a nice visual cue as to what's happened especially if one accidentally hides the window via cmd-H).

_zzaw 5y ago
macOS has gotten a lot less fun, starting with X. I remember no end of UI-customization utilities for pre-X Macs, some of which were really powerful, like Kaleidoscope. I loved being able to make the system look like an NeXT box (there was even an Irix theme) or design my own UI entirely. Even Apple briefly considered the idea of building theme support right into the OS. But they didn’t, and the few quirky things that OS X did, like the puff-of-smoke effect, have been quietly removed. I hate how sterile Apple’s products have gotten. Sure, they’re beautiful, but they don’t have the kind of character the old ones did. I wish something like Kaleidoscope (or Burn My Windows) existed for Macs.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I remember one, "Out of Context Menus" that allowed things like adjusting the vertical and horizontal settings of windows, as well as applying a gaussian blur to them. You can read more about Eric Trout's extension here: https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999/ https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999...
- dhosek 5y ago
  On the flip side, I remember in the late 80s that pretty much every Mac disk had a virus on it thanks to fairly loose OS security in those days. I'm guessing that no more talking moose is the price we pay for not having to worry about getting a virus anytime something is put in the computer.
  - _zzaw 5y ago
    Heh, I remember reading about a few of the infamous ones. Most of them seemed generally harmless; I never got one, although if I’d gotten more software from MUGs and mixtape-style floppies, I might have. You are definitely correct about loose OS security. It was possible to do a lot of damage with just a HyperCard stack, and those were pretty widely distributed.
rbanffy 5y ago
Windows Terminal has a neat shader thing that you can use to add things like noise and scanlines to your terminals. I wish all desktop windows could have shaders applied. I'm trying to convince myself to write one for a curved CRT look and one for phosphor persistence. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/samples/PixelShaders/README.md https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/samples/Pixe... The Windows Terminal team has a lot more fun than the others, it seems.
- bogwog 5y ago
  > The Windows Terminal team has a lot more fun than the others, it seems. Instead of having fun, they should be performing doctoral research to improve performance. (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362#issuecomment-862849357 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362#issuecomm...)
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    If the person thinks it's that simple, they could offer a patch. I don't think it's simple and I won't.
    - FemmeAndroid 5y ago
      After that post they did implement a full reference implementation: https://github.com/cmuratori/refterm/commits/main https://github.com/cmuratori/refterm/commits/main And there is movement in getting changes into the terminal itself: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10461 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10461
noitsnot 5y ago
Went down the comments looking for a Windows version. No luck. :(
aleffert 5y ago
A while back I made a goofy app called Appstagram that applied Instagram-like filters to the windows of your desktop applications (https://github.com/aleffert/appstagram https://github.com/aleffert/appstagram), but Apple continually made it more difficult to inject code into every process (even after having been granted permissions by the user) and I eventually gave up.
Ambroos 5y ago
Stardock's WindowFX is probably the closest you're going to get. It's old, was never all that stable and never got super popular (compared to WindowBlinds), but it should work. https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/

by dhosek 5y ago

_zzaw 5y ago

macOS has gotten a lot less fun, starting with X. I remember no end of UI-customization utilities for pre-X Macs, some of which were really powerful, like Kaleidoscope. I loved being able to make the system look like an NeXT box (there was even an Irix theme) or design my own UI entirely. Even Apple briefly considered the idea of building theme support right into the OS. But they didn’t, and the few quirky things that OS X did, like the puff-of-smoke effect, have been quietly removed. I hate how sterile Apple’s products have gotten. Sure, they’re beautiful, but they don’t have the kind of character the old ones did. I wish something like Kaleidoscope (or Burn My Windows) existed for Macs.

rbanffy 5y ago
I remember one, "Out of Context Menus" that allowed things like adjusting the vertical and horizontal settings of windows, as well as applying a gaussian blur to them. You can read more about Eric Trout's extension here: https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999/ https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999...
dhosek 5y ago
On the flip side, I remember in the late 80s that pretty much every Mac disk had a virus on it thanks to fairly loose OS security in those days. I'm guessing that no more talking moose is the price we pay for not having to worry about getting a virus anytime something is put in the computer.
- _zzaw 5y ago
  Heh, I remember reading about a few of the infamous ones. Most of them seemed generally harmless; I never got one, although if I’d gotten more software from MUGs and mixtape-style floppies, I might have. You are definitely correct about loose OS security. It was possible to do a lot of damage with just a HyperCard stack, and those were pretty widely distributed.

rbanffy 5y ago

Windows Terminal has a neat shader thing that you can use to add things like noise and scanlines to your terminals. I wish all desktop windows could have shaders applied. I'm trying to convince myself to write one for a curved CRT look and one for phosphor persistence. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/samples/PixelShaders/README.md https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/samples/Pixe... The Windows Terminal team has a lot more fun than the others, it seems.

bogwog 5y ago
> The Windows Terminal team has a lot more fun than the others, it seems. Instead of having fun, they should be performing doctoral research to improve performance. (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362#issuecomment-862849357 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362#issuecomm...)
- rbanffy 5y ago
  If the person thinks it's that simple, they could offer a patch. I don't think it's simple and I won't.
  - FemmeAndroid 5y ago
    After that post they did implement a full reference implementation: https://github.com/cmuratori/refterm/commits/main https://github.com/cmuratori/refterm/commits/main And there is movement in getting changes into the terminal itself: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10461 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10461

noitsnot 5y ago

Went down the comments looking for a Windows version. No luck. :(

aleffert 5y ago

A while back I made a goofy app called Appstagram that applied Instagram-like filters to the windows of your desktop applications (https://github.com/aleffert/appstagram https://github.com/aleffert/appstagram), but Apple continually made it more difficult to inject code into every process (even after having been granted permissions by the user) and I eventually gave up.

Ambroos 5y ago

Stardock's WindowFX is probably the closest you're going to get. It's old, was never all that stable and never got super popular (compared to WindowBlinds), but it should work. https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/