Features and Other Whatchamacalits

Take two applications with two completely different purposes and merge them into one. In a nutshell, that’s about the best way to describe the challenge of making CandyBar 3.

But certainly this isn’t the first time Panic has had the opportunity to try this. Last year, the company released their web development app Coda, whose five-in-one design has been heralded for drop-dead simplicity- and won the company another Apple Design Award. Coming off from that, it’s pretty much a given that CandyBar 3 is going to be sweet (no pun intended).

Simply put, think of CandyBar in two different parts: half front-end to icons buried deep in the bowels of your System folder, and an iTunes (or iPhoto) for images. Here’s the former:

It doesn’t get simpler than “Drag in to change or out to restore”- go to the category of icon you want to change (including everything from a folder to an external FireWire drive), and apply your changes (CandyBar even goes so far as to search through your Applications folder so you can change those too- goodbye, HandBrake pineapple). Changing Docks is equally easy- drag in an indicator, base and body, and you’re good to go (as a heads-up, though: restarting is recommended. Simply logging out is sometimes hit or miss.)

Here’s where the Pixadex part comes into play:

I always thought of Pixadex as more of an iTunes for icons than an iPhoto- after all, iPhoto is half a photo tweaker to me, as well as an event sorter. Think about this as iTunes does playlists: you can sort your icons in collections, folders for those collections, or filter-specified “smart” collections. This is a rather important feature- though it seems like a given for many enthusiasts- how many people do you know that own so many icons, they need an organizer to sort them all?

Some of the magic here lies in the tiny details, too. The Quick Drop well to modify non-system icons; the way the changer description text changes sizes as you resize the window, or the fun animations as you move from icon set to icon set. The “Dock” badges next to iContainers, or the collection text color changing as you change your background (yeah, like that little).

Much like the difference between a real Fender Stratocaster guitar and one of its abundant knock-offs, you may not see every little detail in CandyBar; but the details you do see- as well as the brand behind it- let you know that this is a real work of art.

MacThemes: Did you anticipate the need for a Dock customization category before Leopard’s release, or was that something that was added to CandyBar later as a result of the early user hacks of the Dock?

Ged: As soon we saw Apple’s new Dock, we knew something had to be done, although I don’t think we were sure it would be built into CandyBar. As development progressed, it seemed only natural to be able to include “Docks” inside of iContainers though. I’m pleased with how it’s turned out and I think swapping Dock is the feature that users appreciate the most.

MacThemes: With the iPhone SDK coming in February, it must be fun to think about the prospects of CandyBar running on it. Our very own MacThemes community has participated in iPhone themes and icons, via hacking; if feasible, could we see some hack-free customization coming from Panic?

Cabel: It’s pretty hard to speculate on, because who knows what we’ll have access to and even if iPhone users will care, but we’ll definitely take a very close look at all of the possibilities come SDK-day.

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