Metal "tweak"

rok · October 17, 2003 3:24PM

okay, anyone notice after installing QT 6.4 that metal has now been "tweaked"? much less pronounced "brush" texture, and there's a few extra pixels in between the window widgets.

is this a common tweaking among all metallized apps in panther (for those of you with access to panther)?

one funny thing i noticed: open iphoto, safari 1.0, and a quicktime 6.4 player under jaguar, and stack them on top of each other, so you can see the window widgets and their amazing expanding spacing... i take it the gui toolbox for metal apps isn't exactly set in stone, huh?

moogs · October 17, 2003 5:55PM

Yep. And if you notice the contours on the QT player, they're a little different also. Just noticed that when watching the ROTK trailer.

evo · October 17, 2003 6:19PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rok

okay, anyone notice after installing QT 6.4 that metal has now been "tweaked"? much less pronounced "brush" texture, and there's a few extra pixels in between the window widgets.

is this a common tweaking among all metallized apps in panther (for those of you with access to panther)?

one funny thing i noticed: open iphoto, safari 1.0, and a quicktime 6.4 player under jaguar, and stack them on top of each other, so you can see the window widgets and their amazing expanding spacing... i take it the gui toolbox for metal apps isn't exactly set in stone, huh?

From what I know, QT Player, iPhoto, iTunes all use a "hacked" (non-standard) brushed metal for technical reasons and maybe so they can run on pre-Jaguar systems. Apps like iCal, Safari, Address Book all use the standard brushed metal provided by the OS. That's why there's a discrepancy.

I find iFix to very helpful for making sure brushed metal looks consistent in iTunes, QT Player, etc.

iFix

code master · October 17, 2003 7:34PM

Note that at least quicktime and iTunes are out for windows which doesn't have a standard library to access so the hacked versions definitely help them there.

blixa · October 18, 2003 8:23PM

Ugh. It's so annoying how different the new quicktime player's metal is from everything else. For example, when a QT window loses focus, the titlebar doesn't fade to grey text like everything else does. mleh.

buonrotto · October 18, 2003 9:31PM

Is the difference with the QT 6.4 appearance true in nib-based Panther apps too?

kane · October 19, 2003 4:52AM

I don't think QuickTime looks very good on either platform. On Windows there are a lot of annoying differences between the QT and iT UI. See for your selves:

Notice how the title text on iTunes is bold whereas the one on QuickTime isn't. Also notice how the entire window upper area is darker (and non-metallifized) in iTunes but not in QuickTime. Lastly notice the absence in consistency in the three upper area buttons for the two applications. It just looks wierd I think.

rok · October 19, 2003 10:17AM

like i said, the differences are subtle, but between platforms and between apps, it's the little things that seem to be all over the place.

kirkland · October 20, 2003 12:49PM

I can understand QuickTime Player and iTunes needed a hacked interface to do metal. But why would iPhoto? It's a Cocoa application, after all.

Kirk

ghost_user_name · October 20, 2003 1:06PM

iPhoto was released before "textured" was an option in Interface Builder. Thus, Apple had to make a custom subclass for NSWindow.

What's funny is that this shows pure laziness on Apple's part. If you open the right NIB in IB, switch to NSWindow, do some minor rearranging -- poof! It's using the "proper" metal window.

kirkland · October 20, 2003 4:14PM

But iPhoto 2 was released in January, when did this textured support get added to IB?

One of my first reactions to iPhoto 2 was a bit of confusion regarding it's look... it actually looked less like a "real" metal window than iPhoto 1 had.

ghost_user_name · October 20, 2003 5:20PM

iPhoto 2 was released when we were still on 10.1. Texture support was added in 10.1.5 (IIRC), a little bit later than iPhoto 2. So, Apple still had to do some custom work to get it in there.

kirkland · October 20, 2003 5:40PM

iPhoto 1 was released back in the days prior to 10.1.5, but iPhoto 2 premiered this January with iMovie 3 and iDVD 3 as part of iLife.

buonrotto · October 20, 2003 7:22PM

I believe that iMovie 3 and iPhoto 2 do not use the standard metal appearance nib because Apple wanted them to work in 10.1. I seem to recall that the nib-based metal theme only works in Jaguar, and thus the apps that use the standard theme do not work/appear correctly in 10.1.5. So my recollection is that they did this for backwards compatibility.

chris cuilla · October 22, 2003 4:24PM

I'm wondering if Apple has any plans to syncronize all of their "brushed metal" applications at some point in order to make them all much more consistent, and (I assume, if each of these is possibly a different, custom "hack") help reduce the maintenance required for keeping the looks all up to date.

It would be nice to see them move in that direction.

It seems that iCal, Safari, iTunes, iPhoto, QuickTime Player, Finder, Address Book, etc. should all have identical brushed metal looks, UI components, etc.

I understand that from a "feature perspective", this may not be very high on the list of priorities. But it seems it would make things a bit more productive for future development.

buonrotto · October 22, 2003 6:44PM

I suspect that since they're 2 OS versions deep into the metal .nib feature with Panther, they will start to do this. The likely laggards in this exercise however would probably be iTunes and QT since they don't come close to using .nibs or that sort of application structure. iPhoto and iMovie are a snap at this point, and I suspect that the next versions of those apps will (certainly should) use the standard metal look, and thus will only (officially) run on 10.2 or greater. I'm not sure about whether the Panther Finder uses this metal .nib but I would assume so. Then again, this is the Finder we're talking about...

Nearly all other metal apps use the standard appearance, so the exceptions are left in only a few very prominent places.

david hossack · October 22, 2003 8:41PM

There are several metal looks used throughout Jaguar (that is all I have seen).

One Freaky one that is very individual is Quicktime Player-It is built in and looks pretty rough.

The second is the iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD metal which is also built in and while similar to the default metal it has "texture differences". Lets call it fake System

Third is system metal used by AddressBook, Safari, iChat and iSync. It is the default system metal. Each app has different widgets in the interface but basically it is the same This is the true System Metal.

The fourth is iTunes Metal. It is very different. The texture is different but the main difference is that it uses a different well style to the other metal apps. It has a grey line round all the wells for the source list and track listing etc. It is original to iTunes and has had it since iTunes 1 on MacOs9. This is also the only carbon app here.

Now the freakiest app is iCal. What it is is a dead ringer for the carbon iTunes but it is a nib based 10.2 only cocoa app. It is tricky to tell the interface apart from iTunes but the foundation is completely different. It is not using the default elements in the brushed metal apps but it IS a standard cocoa 10.2 brushed metal window. Wierd or what?

The best brushed metal apps are iTunes and iCal. Why Apple has not implemented a standard based on both of these apps elements is beyond me and why iPhoto, iChat, Safari, iSync, QT Player and iMovie don't adopt this same look. Nearly every app is different it is time they standardised then built the interface elements into the system. Then the flat buttons wouldn't vary from app to app etc. It is messy and the details should be fixed since they are all pretty good apps.

Metal "tweak"

Comments