It isn’t often you come across a theme such as Argon, a long-awaited arrival by Resident Artist Nuclear Potato. Following its release a week ago, it was well-received by users for its originality, but despite this reaction, who will it appeal to, and how well does it hold up to long-term use?

Aesthetics

Coming personally from themes like Vitae and Canum, I initially felt uncomfortable during the first launch. Indeed, Argon is no conventional OS X theme; every element has an original take on presence and feedback, with the unorthodox neon highlight taking showing up on every widget throughout the interface. While it feels strange and different at first, it’s after you run your paces through it when the charm kicks in.

It’s an understatement to say Argon is merely different; this is a very innovative OS X theme. Buttons and tabs unconventionally remain the same colors clicked or unclicked, with a thin neon glow hovering just inside the element, a simple yet tantalizing design. Scrollbars do away with the actual scroller altogether, resorting to, again, a thin neon glow, which rests into the track so smoothly you realize how useless a scroller would be anyway.

Argon’s titlebar buttons take minimalism to a new level for OS X themes. Razor-thin rounded rectangles replace Aqua’s comparably gigantic traffic lights, having just enough presence to be noticed while not possessing the “Hey, look at me!” feel of Aqua’s. The simplification comes with caveats, however, restricting the usual freedom of glyph design and forcing it to small 2-pixel dots, which might just be too minimalistic for some.

Button consistency in Argon was a pleasant surprise; every button uses a [basically] identical look, changing only the shape when necessary (such is the case for round circle buttons and square buttons), and using the same neon effect for feedback. Popup buttons and segment tabs, which have been unified to solve the “sunken in or standing out” problem presented in Aqua, take on this effect as well.

Checkboxes, when pressed, present a sleek digital “X” instead of the well-known check, taking an abandoned concept from Aqua and turning it into something useful. Radio buttons, however, move the pixel-thin glyph based on the option- in the center for clicked, shifted to the left for unclicked. It’s a creative but unintuitive idea, in my opinion- you have to look closely to make sure you’ve selected the right option, and users with fast fingers or bad eyes are bound to slip up at least once. And while I do admire the progress bars (both determinate and indeterminate), the asynchronous indicator (better known by non-themers as the “wheel”), oddly uses an “X” in place of this convention. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, but just keep in mind that it’s not a giant, pulsating checkbox.

Still, despite these minor problems, how does Argon hold up in aesthetics overall? Quite well, in fact- Nuclear Potato didn’t disappoint in making it beautiful, and certainly can make it aesthetically perfect.

Usability

Argon’s usability strengths come from its unusual methods of visual feedback. Whereas most themes will use a color or gradient change to express a “clicked” action, the thin neon-green lines are a welcomed difference; when I first saw/used these elements- again, as a Vitae/Canum/SmoothStripes kind of user- my first reaction was a feeling of awkwardness; once I began using it more fully, however, it was very natural. Argon’s ability to pull this off comes from its incredible element consistency; it’s not like this effect applies to a few select widgets, this applies to everything- checkboxes, buttons, tabs, scrollbars, you name it; and best of all, every element still has an identity- a menu is a menu, a button is a button; everything falls right into place, and you can tell Argon was designed with this in mind.

The menu bar is a mixed bag to some extent. On one end is the actual bar, featuring the same darkish-gray as the windows (which are, by the way, consistent between Aqua and Metal). While it aesthetically looks fine, the root menu selections are cast in white text against a light gray gradient. Is it impossible to read? Certainly not, but it’s not as clear as it could be, and there is room for improvement. The menus themselves, however, are beautifully thought out using that wonderful neon line for selections and a subtle text color difference for added effect.

Argon’s simple and diminutive titlebar buttons will be debated for their usability. I’m not personally bothered by the glyphs, but I think the rollovers and clicked states need to be clearer. And as is the case with dark (or, in the case of Argon, dark-ish) themes, there will always be text problems, usually restricted to a specific application (iTunes ignores tab colors, for example).

However, as long as users can put up with these minor details, Argon is still a very usable theme, and will cater happily to those willing to give in to a little more minimalism than they’re used to.

Extras

While Argon isn’t as plentiful in extras as most themes of its caliber, there are still quite a few niceties included. Built-in to the guiKit are skins for Camino, DVD Player, iChat, iTunes, Mail, QuickTime Player, Safari and VLC; there are further enhancements also included for DVD Player, iChat, QuickTime Player and VLC (which need to be manually installed into the application bundle- backups are included). guiTweaker settings and Adium extras (Status icons, a list theme, a layout and even an emoticon set to boot!) are welcomed, but there are no wallpapers or icons, and unfortunately, Aqua’s won’t do.

While using the application skins, I found all of them were quite beautiful and match perfectly with the rest of Argon, but you might experience some minor problems due to the nature of light text in themes.

One of the most interesting extras of Argon, however, is the developer kit, containing an .asl of all of the layer styles as well as the entire ThemePark file, so Photoshop-savvy users can go crazy modifying and improving Argon to their liking; expect more app skins and an icon set to be released because of this.

Conclusion

It’s not often you see a theme as creative as Argon; Nuclear Potato’s work of art is so well thought-out and beautiful it holds a place in a niche group of themes like it- changing conventions for visual feedback, element type and size while still allowing them to be intuitive. Does Argon go without its problems? No, but they are feasible to fix, and the openness of the theme’s development means it will always get better and better. Argon manages to capture an innovative look for OS X, and is perfect for those willing to change things up some.

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