Dave's Kaleidoscope Extras is a set of original color scheme files and other goodies for Kaleidoscope. Kaliedoscope is a $20 shareware control panel by Greg Landweber, Fred Bass and Amargosa Software.
About Kronos
Kronos is the first color scheme I created for Kaliedoscope. When I first saw Kaliedoscope I liked the "Eclipse" color scheme but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Kronos is similar to the Eclipse color scheme but offers a more "Hi-Tech" look with the addition of "Hi-Tech" titlebar buttons, scroll arrows and scroll thumbs based on screenshots of the 'Hi-Tech' MacOS 8 theme pictured in the July 1995 issues of MacWorld and MacUser. Kronos also changes your system's folder icons. In order to see the new folders you need to reboot after selecting Kronos.
About Lake Road
I got the idea for this color scheme after visiting my local 'Future Shop' and seeing those funky PC clones by Acer. They're not actually black, they're a very dark green. Why doesn't Apple make cool looking Mac's like that? Anyway, so the idea was to create a hi-tech look but with a bit of color. In the end however, I decided on more of a forest green color so I decided to come up with an outdoorsie name. Lake Road is actually a road here in Nova Scotia. It leads to a friend of mine's cabin where I'm lucky enough to get to spend a couple of weekends every summer. Nice spot. As with Kronos, this theme also patches your system's folder icons. To see the new folders, just reboot.
About Mercury
I like Aaron, but I've always thought it was a bit too grey. This scheme was an attempt to make a color scheme that was more silver looking than grey. The key was to use a darker shade of grey for the main content colors and boost the contrast of shadows and hilights. I also created some nice shiny buttons for this scheme. This scheme looks particularly nice with my silver folder icons. To see the silver folders, just select Mercury and reboot.
About Mondrian
If you haven't already guessed, the name of this scheme comes from the name of artist that inspired it, Pieter Mondrian. I was just playing around with different ideas for buttons and things when I decided to make a scroll thumb based on one of those red, yellow and blue compositional paintings by De Stijl artist Pieter Mondrian. Well, the thumb box looked pretty cool, so on a whim I decided to make flat grey windows with nothing but red, yellow and blue squares on them for buttons. No fancy 3D stuff here, just primary colors! I was just fooling around, but when I saw those windows I thought, "hey, that's really cool!" I thought this color scheme would be dull at first, but it's definitely one of my favourite schemes now. As with all of my other color schemes, this scheme patches your system's folder icons. If you wish to see the new folder icons, just select Mondrian and reboot.
About the Hi-Tech Desktop jpeg
This is a 3D raytracing I did of a grid model. It gives your desktop a cool 3D look and was inspired by similar desktop pictures seen in "Hi-Tech" MacOS 8 screenshots. In order to use this image as your desktop, you will need to use either Decor or Desktop Picture. Both programs are shareware available from your nearest info-mac mirror. This image is at 640x480 resolution. A future version of my Kaliedoscope Extras package will include a hi-resolution desktop image for those of you with 17" or bigger monitors. Gee, I wish I was one of those people :-)
About the 'Hi-Tech Menubar patterns'
This is a set of ppat's for importing into the shareware program, 'Menubar Pattern'. Be careful though, I had problems importing the patterns with Kaleidoscope installed. It's best to reboot with Kaleidoscope disabled in order to import the patterns. Once the patterns are imported, Menubar Pattern and Kaliedoscope appear to get along just fine together. Included in this file are two dark colored patterns that go nicely with "Kronos" and two light colored patterns that go well with "Mercury."
About the Mondrian ppat
This is a desktop pattern for use with the "Mondrain" color scheme. It's based on an actual painting by Pieter Mondrian. To use this pattern, just drag and drop it into your "Deasktop patterns" control panel and click the "Set Desktop Pattern" button. Eventually, I'll have a custom desktop pattern for each color scheme.
About the Mondrian folder
This is a custom Pieter Mondrain style folder icon that you can use wherever you want! To use this folder icon, just make duplicates of it! (no need to copy and paste with the "get info" boxes). Alternately, you could use Resedit to replace the folder icon in the Mondrian color scheme file. This will make all of your folders into Mondrian style folders after rebooting. I tried this myself but thought it was a bit much.
How about some URL's for all that stuff you mentioned?
Ok. For the info-mac stuff, I'm using my nearest mirror site. You might want to change that part of the URL to point to *your* nearest mirror site.
Nah, that's all. Oh wait, there is one thing ;-) ...These color schemes were all designed in 16 bit color. As a result, some of the schemes may not look exactly as intended if you are using 256 colors or less. I would like to make my color schemes more 8 bit friendly and will certainly make an attempt at it for a future version, but this may be difficult to do without changing the window colors significantly.
What do I owe you Dave?
If you like my color schemes and continue to use them there is a requested $5 shareware fee. Please support and encourage my color scheme hacking habit by sending cash, cheque or money order to:
David Lewis
c/o Allen Graphics
9 Bayswater Rd.
Dartmouth, N.S.
B2W 4H2
Canada.
Registered users will be placed on a mailing list for direct mailings of new schemes and updates. Thank you so much for trying out my color schemes. I hope you enjoy using them. I've had a lot of fun learning how to hack Kaliedoscope not the least of which was mastering RGB notation in HEX code! Joy! If you have any comments, ideas for future schemes, good recipies, jokes etc. please email me. Or you could even snail mail me for that matter! I would love to hear from you. Finally, special thanks to Greg Landweber and friends for creating the engine that drives the whole show.
David Allen Lewis
lewisda@tuns.ca
www.tuns.ca/~lewisda
Version History
version 1.3
Ñ Added a three new color schemes, Lake Road, Mercury and Mondrian.
Ñ Added the Mondrian Desktop pattern.
Ñ All color schemes now have a fancy schmancy "vanity plate". That's what I call the PICT that shows up in the control panel whenever you select one of my color schemes.
Ñ Removed the 'Kaliedoscope Resources' file. In it's place, I have made a new set of silver folder icons and incorporated them into the color schemes themselves. Now there is no need to use Resedit for anything. In order to see the new folders, you have to reboot.
Ñ Removed the "Hi-Tech" desktop pattern since I was not the original author of this pattern.
Ñ Renamed "Total Eclipse" to "Kronos". Much cooler name don't you think?
Ñ Removed the "Partial Eclipse" color scheme since it was essentially identical to the "Total Eclipse" color scheme. I got the impression from people's email that most people preferred the "Total Eclipse" scheme over the "Partial Eclipse" scheme.
Ñ Floating Windoids in the "Kronos/Total Eclipse" color scheme now have a dark blue hilight like regular Finder windows and document windows.
version 1.2
Ñ Changed the name from "Dave's Eclipse Patches" to "Dave's Kaleidoscope Extras". The new name is a bit longer but *much* more descriptive.
Ñ The color schemes are now provided as actual color scheme files. There's no need to mess around with Resedit now to create them. This saves you a bit of hassle. My schemes are based on Eclipse, but I changed a good 80% of the resources in there. The Kaliedoscope patches are still patches that you must apply yourself with Resedit.
Ñ Total Eclipse radio buttons and check boxes now turn 'hi-tech blue' when clicked (instead of red) in order to match the colors used in this theme for depressed normal buttons.
Ñ Total Eclipse now has floating windoid title bar buttons (zoom box, close box, windowshade widget) that match the style of the buttons I made for regular window title bars.
Ñ Partial Eclipse radio buttons and check boxes are now light grey like Aaron to match the colors used in this theme for normal buttons.
Ñ Partial Eclipse now has floating windoid title bar buttons (zoom box, close box, windowshade widget) that match the style of the buttons I made for regular window title bars.
Ñ Fixed the 4 bit icons resources for the title bar buttons and scroll arrows. The original icons were only done in 8 bit and the 4 bit icons were a mess. Title bar buttons should look much better in 16 color mode now. However, there are still problems with window colors and scroll thumb colors. This has to do with the way the color scheme files work and there is currently nothing I can do about it other redesigning the problematic elements with the 16 color palette only (or very close to it). But that would probably look *really* ugly.
Ñ Redesigned the the 'Hi-Tech' trash can icons to better match the silver folder icons. It looks more like brushed aluminium now and less like black Rubbermaid.
version 1.1 (Not released)
Ñ Deleted one of the menubar patterns. It had a blue highlight that was not showing up. With Aaron or Kaleidoscope installed, MenuBar Pattern cannot change the color of the outermost menubar pixels. The Aaron or Kaleidoscope menubar colors take over for those outer rows of pixels.
Ñ Added two new menubar patterns, a concave silver one, and a convex black one with a top bevel.
Ñ edited the titlebar buttons so that they now change shape when clicked instead of just turning black. cool!
Ñ fixed the Kaleidoscope resources file. It had a number of unnecessary small icon resources in it which caused an error when attempting to paste it into Kaleidoscope. Sorry about that. This was a left over from my early development of the 'Hi-Tech' hack on Aaron. Aaron has those extra icons but in Kaleidoscope the extra icons are in the color scheme files only and not the control panel. opps!
version 1.0
Ñ released as "Dave's Eclipse Patches" on September 26, 1996
All contents of "Dave's Kaliedoscope Extras" are copyright ⌐1996 David Allen Lewis
