Neon is the newest creation by well-known themer Toner, a theme that shares roots with his first theme, Canum. The second release by the MacThemes resident artist, Neon uses Xbox-inspired greens and unified metal to create a solid, lightweight OS X theme. But despite its new color scheme and details, is it an entirely new work, or simply a variant of its predecessor?

Aesthetics
Once Neon was installed on my Mac, I was presented with a familiar sight- the silky-smooth grays that helped define Canum continue to be used by Toner in his latest work. Though it first feels like a variant, I was surprised at its originality; Neon takes the idea of a gray theme and extends it even farther than Canum did; its minimal use of green makes the already-subtle warmth of its predecessor seem comparatively prominent.

We’ll start with the windows. Neon’s windows are virtually identical to Canum’s, again incorporating that smooth, white metal. While the windows themselves are the same, the titlebar buttons are another topic; tiny circles replace the capsule-shaped widgets of Canum, available in lovely sunken and non-sunken variants. The buttons lack color, but the detail in the sunken variant helps Neon’s widgets stand out from Canum’s blue-and-gray contrast; I personally found the non-sunken variant a bit boring, but that’s why the preference is there.



Neon’s widgets are a sight to behold; grays continue to dominate the theme, but the Xbox-esque touches of green are not only a creative method for feedback, they also look pretty, too. While still darkening the whole element, like most themes, Neon’s extra “oomph” of green keeps it from looking too drab compared to Canum, and it’s impressive at how Toner keeps his two creations separate.

The last elements worth mentioning are the scrollbars; like Canum, they take a cue from the iTunes 7 scrollbars, which still fit in nicely with Neon’s dominantly grey theme; the bars themselves, however, are a bit lacking in detail, and the active and inactive states sharing the same appearance may not appeal to users of Canum, with its warm-blue bar.

Usability
Last time I wrote positively regarding Canum’s usability, and how the soft feedback of its widgets contrasted with Aqua’s “loudness”; Neon is the same case. Toner has accomplished in making Neon an extremely usable theme, with the slightly-shrunken elements providing the perfect amount of feedback and, in some ways, putting Aqua to shame. And naturally, Neon is also extremely consistent, only changing an element due to a theming limitation (square buttons, for example, don’t share the sunken look like their push and rounded siblings).

There are few aspects about Neon I wished were changed. Perhaps the outstanding one was the unsaved-close button, which looks just like a normal close button, only distinguishing the difference once you roll over the buttons; it’s certainly not a dealbreaker by any means, but it might be confusing to theming beginners.

Still, you have to overlook the miniscule issues here: Neon is, without a doubt, extremely usable, and it’s clear some serious thought went into this first-hand.

Extras
Whereas Canum included 21 application skins and just one theme, Neon is somewhat the opposite: there are two variants (sunken and non-sunken titlebar buttons), and 11 application skins. All of the skins are quite beautiful, and even the iTunes skin includes a text color hack to make it truly fit in (just make sure you’re updated to 7.3). Among the other skins include Address Book, DVD Player, iChat, VLC and Safari, but remember that the latter won’t be themed if you’re using the beta.

A beautiful iconset by Icon Chemist Jonas Rask is included in the download, as well as five wallpapers, two designed by MacThemes Resident Artist Psychopulse.

Conclusion
It’s very hard to write about Neon without sounding like the Canum review, but the summary still applies: Neon is original, creative and beautiful, a theme that is not only extremely usable but also well-detailed and full of the nice touches users desire in an OS X theme. Put aside the irrelevant problems and give it a try; Toner didn’t disappoint before, and he doesn’t this time around either.

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