Take ordinary Aqua, pull out the gloss, and give it a touch of iTunes goodness. This is more or less the purpose of iLeopard, a new theme by Guillaume Campagna and several other contributors. iLeopard is one of the first full-fledged “themes” for 10.5, by providing a complete installer, extras, and a sense of ongoing development. Overall, it holds up pretty well; while there are niggling little problems that will turn away the pickiest of UI connoisseurs, the attempt holds up as a very usable iTunes skin.

Let’s start with a bit of a disclaimer: about a year and a half ago, I began making my own iTunes-esque theme called “TenFive”, which started out as a simple metalifying of the OS and soon splintered off into a replication of “Leopard” Aqua. This was for Tiger, of course– now that Leopard is out, I’ve discontinued it and don’t see any need to support it further.

Aesthetics

Building a theme that aims to replicate the cosmetic quality of another product is hard. If your theme is based on something with shapes or controls not in line with those you’re theming, it means you have to interpret how the style would look under those constraints. And even if you have the concept down, execution is another can of worms; many themers can visualize something in their head perfectly and not be able to translate that into something real (yours truly, for example).

Thus is the difficulty in creating a global iTunes look. It requires creating iTunes-style push buttons, titlebar buttons, and all sorts of elements iTunes doesn’t make custom resources for. None of this is helped by the fact that iTunes draws resources differently than the operating system does; it utilizes raster resources– to be compatible with 10.4– so even the controls that have been already done for you require manual redrawing.

So how does iLeopard hold up, then? The first sign of a change you’ll see is when you log in: the window buttons and Apple logo have been removed of their shiny metal textures– which, by the way, have been in the operating system since 10.3. Minor changes, really, but they define what the theme basically does: de-gloss Leopard. I dig it.

iLeopard can be described as 100% right in concept, and about 75% right in execution. The new title bar buttons (see preview image), for example, strike me as a fine idea; simple gradients, no sizzle, and something that fits remarkably well with the window chrome. But then you get into little problems, like the glyphs being dark brown instead of black and the embossing effect being just slightly aliased. Not bothersome if you’re tolerant of such small goofs, but anyone with a good eye will quickly notice– and be irritated by– the difference.

Luckily, such glitches are pretty rare. Changed elements, like list headers and tabs, look sharp. Checkboxes feel good to click, and pulsating push buttons cleverly tint from metal to purple. Overall, it feels like it fits in with Aqua, and much of what you see in iTunes 7 feels like it has naturally extended to the rest of the system.

I should mention, however, that of the Blue and Graphite variants, I vastly preferred the Blue one: while the lack of color makes the differences in the two variants pretty miniscule, the title bar buttons and scroll bars in the Graphite variant have not been given enough attention, and could use some extra work.

Update: The problem pictured, as well as many other bugs, have been fixed in version 2.0.1.

Usability

“Vanilla” Aqua has the advantage of being pretty damn usable, and as iLeopard is more of a variation theme and not a drastic overhaul, everything works as you’d expect. In some cases, I actually find iLeopard more usable than Apple’s version– title bar buttons have been given an extra push of feedback, and push buttons have been eased up on it. Excellent changes, and I think that goes for the theme overall. The unthemed elements don’t require coverage, as I’m sure everyone is familiar with Aqua.

While this isn’t really a huge usability issue, I wish something were done to the Aqua variant highlight. Currently, it’s using the systemwide version: a vibrant blue gradient, which could stand to be the iTunes purple that has replaced the blue shades of scroll bars and push buttons. Since they’re not that common in the interface, it’s nothing worth fussing about unless you’re a real stickler for consistency.

Extras

Speaking of consistency, the huge systemwide changes to the user interface in Leopard have greatly reduced Apple’s garish use of custom controls in their applications, in favor of global resources that are quite easily themed. This is good news for theme developers and users, because the fewer resources there are to modify, the easier it will be to produce consistent themes across applications.

There are just a few extras included in the installer, and they’re not major: a new progress bar for Safari, login window buttons, and so on (notably, regular Tiger extras like the dozen Safari toolbar buttons or iTunes buttons are plain gone now). I enjoy that attention to detail, and cosmetically, they look just fine. Of course, iLeopard has the benefit of being an Aqua-based theme, so even if you come across an unthemed element or custom resource, it won’t look foreign; most every app I tested looked no different than usual, and a far cry from glaring.

iLeopard is also strictly a theme installer, so there are no walls or icons. It’s a good thing there are already plenty of Aqua-esque replacements available, as most themes would stick out like a sore thumb without a matching wall or iContainer (for what it’s worth, I recommend Maji for the folders).

Conclusion

So here’s the skinny: I like iLeopard. Mostly. It’s a well-done approach to the full-on iTunes theme, and if you’d like something with Aqua’s character and less noise, it gets the job done. Look harder, and you’ll notice that it gets rough around the edges, but it doesn’t jeopardize the desire to use it; the fact that it’s supported and in-development means some of these problems will very well be fixed by nothing more than user feedback.

This is the first theme review I’ve ever done for Leopard, and it’s hard to weigh how critical I should be against problems like the strange Graphite variant, given how skewed and awkward it currently is to develop Leopard themes. And there is still no unified way of creating safe theme files, so replacing system files via installers needs to be done with total caution (and a backup of your system). iLeopard, however, goes beyond a simple proof-of-concept and feels like a good ol’ fashioned theme mod; there are plenty of old ShapeShifter guiKits that had no fewer problems than this does.

And in the end, this is a simple theme, one that doesn’t drastically affect the tone, feel, or style of the system. If you love the purple scheme of iTunes, you should apply this; and if you’re on the fence about having this look everywhere, give the shine-less Aqua a preview yourself.

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