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GUI Customization
From Mac vs. Windows
Customizing the look of the one's desktop environment has been an important feature ever since color was introduced into the user interface. In fact, some users often see productivity gains from working with an environment that has been customized with the colors and styles they find pleasing versus those they do not. Both Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista deliver on this feature to various degrees. Both operating systems ship with a setup that is intended to appeal to the greatest number of users, but rarely can everyone be satisfied with only one setting. Customization, therefore, is a very important feature.
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Appearance and Themes
Mac OS X Leopard
There are very few options for customizing the appearance of the Mac OS X environment. For one, users can't specify a system-wide window theme for applications. As of Mac OS X Leopard, there's only one unified theme.
Second, visual effects such as drop shadows, transparent menus, and animations can't be turned off. Such a lack in flexibility wouldn't be bothersome for most users. However, those running Mac OS X on lower-end systems with an older video card or slower CPU might see a decrease in performance.
As mentioned in a different context, the Apple UIs are designed with the intent of giving users as much screen space as possible for viewing multiple documents. The permanent shadow effect enables applications to be designed without a border as the shadow effect gives a perfect visual separation of the front most document without obscuring any portion of the background documents. All Windows documents require a minimum 4 pixel border both to allow resizing handles and to mark the border between one document and the underlying one, and still sometimes leaves some visual confusion about which is the top document(see under Windows Vista below). The Apple drop shadow creates an even better visual separation with a zero pixel border requirement as can be seen above.
On systems with 32MB of VRAM or more, Quartz Extreme offloads most graphics processing to the actual GPU, which takes the burden off the CPU. Quartz Extreme makes a huge difference in the performance of the system and not having enough VRAM to run it can slow the system down significantly.
Under , users are allowed to customize the color of highlighted text and basic interface controls (dialog buttons, window scroll bars, etc.). While any color can be chosen for highlighted text, there's only two options for interface controls: blue or graphite.
The desktop for each user can be set to a different background. Right-click an empty space on the desktop and choose Change Desktop Background from the popup menu. Mac OS X comes with a variety of bundled pictures to select from, but users are free to use ones from their own collection. Users can choose to have Mac OS X only display one picture on their desktop or cycle through a folder of pictures.
The menu bar in Mac OS X Leopard is transparent by default and blends in with the desktop background being displayed. This can be disabled to provide a solid colored menu bar for those who do not prefer this appearance.
Windows Vista
Windows Vista has three primary themes: Aero, Basic, and Classic. There is also a special Aero Stabndred theme only avibale to The vista Home Basic dition. Each of these themes can be customized to various degrees. Themes can be chosen and customized by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing . Themes are selectable under the Appearance Settings dialog.
Aero
At the high end is Aero. Aero makes use of advanced features of the user's graphics card to deliver many effects, both visual and functional. Aero provides drop shadows on all windows as well as a glass effect on the window borders and titlebar. It also provides window animations and thumbnails (see Window Management.) Because of the heavier graphic processing requirements, Aero is not supported on all PCs capable of running Vista.
Due to Aero's special features, the Window Color and Appearance control panel has additional options not available under either the Basic or Classic theme. Options such as changing the color and opacity of the glass borders around every window and toggling transparency. There are eight color presets, but any color is available through the color mixer.
Borders can never be 100% transparent - they will always blur what's under them - but they can be 100% opaque. Many additional aspects of Aero that are also available to the other themes, such as the color of selected items or the width of window borders, can be customized through the Classic Appearance Properties dialog (the only appearance dialog for Basic and Classic.)
Basic
Next in line is Basic. Basic shares many aspects of Aero, like scrollbars and buttons, but does not have advanced features like glass borders or taskbar previews. Basic is the default style on computers that cannot support Aero. While not as flashy as Aero, it is more colorful than Classic and supported on all PCs.
Many options in the Appearance Settings dialog only apply to Basic, but not all of them. The Effects button contains three options: Font Smoothing, Menu Shadows, and Window Dragging contents. The Advanced button allows the user to change many aspects of the theme.
Classic
Classic is the theme recommended for uses where performance takes priority over appearance (such as on legacy computers or in a virtual machine.) Classic is actually several options on the Appearance Settings dialog, with two different normal use color schemes as well as several for those with sight impairments.
Aero Standerd
Aero Standard is only avibale to users of Vista Home Basic. It uses the graphics card to draw windows like AeroStandardavailable does, but it's lacking the special effects that aero has.
Windows Vista has support for entirely new themes, but the operating system will only apply them if they are digitally signed by Microsoft. If the user wants a theme not signed, they will have to replace some system files with hacked ones, found on the Internet.
Right-clicking the desktop and choosing lets users customize the picture they want displayed on their desktop. Windows Vista comes bundled with sample pictures to select from, but users are free to use ones from their own collection.
Icons
Mac OS X Leopard
The icon for any file, folder, or shortcut can be customized. To edit its icon, right-click the file and choose Get Info from the popup menu. User's have two choices for replacing this icon which appears in the top left corner of the Get Info dialog.
- Use an existing icon -- Copy and paste the icon from another file's Get Info dialog.
- Use an image or photo -- Open a picture in Preview, use its selection tool to select all or a portion of the image, choose , and paste it over the icon in a file's Get Info dialog.
Icons on the desktop or in a folder (set to icon view only) can be scaled anywhere between a minimum of 16x16 pixels up to 512x512 pixels. This is done from within the "Show View Options" dialog (Edit ➔ Show View Options or ⌘ + J keyboard shortcut). Icons shrink or grow in real-time as the user drags the icon size slider.
Windows Vista
Icons of folders and shortcuts can be changed in Vista, but they must be in the .ico container format. Additionally, application icons cannot be changed.
To change a folder's icon, the user must right-click the folder and click properties, then go to the Customize tab. Additionally, users can choose an image file to go on the folder, shown as a file within the folder. To change a shortcut's icon, the user must right-click the shortcut and select properties, then click the Shortcut tab. Again, icons are only limited to .ico files.
Icons in the file system can be changed with the Views slider, and scale between 16x16 and 256x256. If an icon isn't that size, it stops scaling at it's maximum, but a square expands the rest of the way, allowing the icon to stay recognizable yet still have the same target size as other icons. Icons for files also change to a preview of their file if applicable.
Icons of application files can be changed, however they are routinely reverted back to their application's generic file icon the next time the file is updated.
Sound
Mac OS X Leopard
Sound effects, just like visual effects, have limited options for user customization. The available options can be found in System Preferences under Sound. User's can select which sound to use as the system's alert noise for warning messages or invalid actions. Choices are limited to only the default sounds bundled with Mac OS X during installation.
Individual applications that produce sound tend to have their own volume controls, so different applications can be set to different volume levels.
User interface sound effects occur relatively seldom, but often signal the completion of an event, such as when the trash finishes emptying or an operation being performed on a file completes, among others.
Windows Vista
Sound effects can be edited through Vista's Sound control panel (Accessible by clicking Hardware and Sound, then Change System Sounds.) Through this dialog, users may change sounds of various events within the system, as well as save the sound schemes and switch between them. Additionally, the sound played before the Welcome Screen is shown can be toggled on or off, but not changed.
Windows Vista ships with the sounds it uses for most events, as well as most of the sounds from Windows XP. It also supports using other sounds files, but only if they are in the Wave file format (.wav files.) Other applications can register their sound events and associate sounds through this control panel, making it somewhat of a hub for all sounds that are made by the system or its apps. Events that have a sound associated with them have a speaker icon to the left; a white one means the sound has been applied, yellow means it has not.
Some events, such as sounds for closing programs or selecting items come with no sound associated to them by default. To change a sound, users must click on the event, then choose a sound from the drop-down box or browse to the sound file they wish to use. If the user wants a sound file to appear on the list, they need to put the file in C:\Windows\Media.
Windows Vista also includes a volume mixer, where you can select the volume for individual applications.
Odds & Ends
Mac OS X Leopard
- The backgrounds of each folder window in the Finder can also be individually customized by bringing up the "View Options" palette by selecting Edit ➔ Show View Options or using ⌘ + J keyboard shortcut. The "View Options" palette allows users, among other things, to select a solid color or a picture as the background for the current folder.
Windows Vista
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