V23, a new theme by Themesmith, was released to positive response from forum members, who hailed it as a very usable dark theme. Consisting of light and dark grays, shrunken glyphs, and bright-colored accents, its design will delight users of the author’s previous work, Frankentheme, as well as other dark themes like Ashen, Cold and Photopro; but who else will be drawn to V23, and how in-depth does the theme go?

Aesthetics

Upon applying V23, the user is greeted with three distinct colors: gray, black, and yellow. Gray, the dominant color, rules the controls, Aqua windows and glyphs; the black, less prominent, makes its way through the titlebars, metal windows and text colors; and the yellow sparsely covers titlebar widgets and other miscellaneous elements. Indeed, it is a considerably unorthodox color scheme- the contrast of light grays and near-blacks is seldom used in most themes (with the possible exception of Swizcore Studio’s NeXT), and the touches of yellow are a pleasant step away from the usual monochromatic tone of these respective elements, and dark themes in general; it’s a wonderfully creative choice, and are, for the most part, more than welcomed.

It’s not to say that V23 goes without its issues, however, at least aesthetically. One of the things that stuck out to me was the lack of detail under tabs; an extremely faint inner shadow is the scope of depth between the tabs and the window, and on many brighter or higher-contrast displays one would be hard-pressed to find any (I had to squinch at first to identify the outline before it became noticeable). Unfortunately, the same problem applies to the buttons, too- Push buttons nearly blend into the window, while the round buttons and text fields are given shadows to avoid this problem. These inconsistencies may cause those accustomed to themes like Neon, Canum or Vitae to turn away, and pixelphiles may come across some elements (sliders or metal tabs, for example) in need of a spitshine.

Don’t turn away from the theme just yet, however; there are many good things about V23 as well. Controls and progress bars possess a fine amount of detail (save for the outline bit) while not overbearing contrast, and the titlebar, while brimming in black, is helped by the bright, shrunken glyphs (sporting a flat, old-skool feel) to prevent oversimplicity while not becoming too complex. The latter reason applies to the menu bar too; while at first reminiscent of Cold, its the simplicity of details like the Apple logo and yellow accents of selected menu items that give it its own identity. Overall, if there’s anything I love about V23, then that’s its success in capturing a simple yet surprisingly detailed, retro style.

Despite some of its flaws, these reasons should automatically justify use of V23 for any fans of themes like Ashen, Photopro or Frankentheme (the latter also developed by author Themesmith), and the aesthetic issues mentioned will likely prove not be a problem.

Usability

V23’s usability is somewhat of a mixed bag. Menubar items and window titlebars are perfectly readable and the feedback of buttons and controls is perfect for its aim as a usable dark theme. Unlike Aqua, buttons’ clicked states are monochromatic, which results in less noise than Aqua’s prominent use of blue (or graphite). Consistency also holds fairly well in V23, and indeed, all buttons retain the same color for clicked and unclicked states. Uncharacteristic to most themes, radio buttons and checkboxes share the same shape, differing only in the glyph used.

Unfortunately, problems do remain, some ranging from “not looked at close enough” to “frustratingly unusable”. At the lower end, issues start in button feedback. While a few select elements will provide a color change when clicked (menu bar items and radio buttons come to mind), many elements retain the exact same state for active, inactive and clicked. While this doesn’t take away from the ability to be usable, the lack of feedback was an annoyance, especially in stark contrast with many light and dark themes that provide different colors for all three states.
Text colors are another fine example. The Finder sidebar text was left unchanged, choosing to go with a black-on-grey design, which will make users with plenty of sidebar content, or hard eyes, peeved (myself included). The typical readability problems with dark themes still apply in V23 too, with unified windows sporting an almost-unreadable black font (and in a few cases, menu bar glyphs will also bear this problem).

Extras

V23’s extras are, to put it bluntly again, sparse. Application skins are included for Mail, iTunes (notably a beautiful skin), Safari and QuickTime, which will cover the scope of many user’s Aqua-heavy daily use applications; however, compared to themes like Vitae or Canum- the latter featuring 21 application skins- you will have to deal with this annoyance until a new version is released (or for someone on the forums to come up with a solution). And while there are many icon sets available on MacThemes and InterfaceLIFT that will work perfectly with V23, one is not included with the download (possibly for the aforementioned reason).

Conclusion

Overall, V23 is… not for everyone. Yet. It has plenty of good points, but also its share of bad ones. If you’re looking for a theme optimized for usability, you might want to wait for it to mature, but those who are willing to give it a chance, V23 will hold up to be perfectly satisfying for those looking for a simple, no-frills dark theme.

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