It's like a time machine
A long time ago, on an operating system long since EOLed, there was a tool called Kaleidoscope that allowed you to skin the Mac UI. Along with many other people I suffered under the delusion that I could produce a skin that would be half-way usable. Thankfully, the evidence of that delusion has been mostly washed away by the passage of time. (Even the mighty Internet Archive Wayback Machine responds with a satisfying “Not in Archive.”) But, alas, there are still a few traces here and there.
So, I present to you Ascaris (it’s flat, it’s grey…it’s named for a parasitic worm!):
Ascaris is a flat, boring interface. I designed it that way, because I really dislike all of those flashy, lets-see-how-many-people-we-can-blind, overly-colourful Schemes that are out there.
I have taken elements elements from the BeOS, the Apple Lisa, along with a few others, and tried to slap it all into a small little package. Oh, yes, I also borrowed some icons from Macintosh System 0.97. Nothing like those pre-release Apple products for nice art.
And Ephemerol (yet another Aaron hack):
Ephemerol is my rendition of the current Apple human interface, based on the well-known Platinum, née Apple Grayscale, née Aaron window style. Ephemerol draws more from my own graphic design preferences and common sense than Aaron/Apple Grayscale does.
Where Apple Grayscale is an excruciatingly exacting rendition of Apple’s Platinum Theme, Ephemerol throws what Apple wants out the window round back with the ferns and forgets it, making something I like and can plug.
Ephemerol was inspired by the my initial observation that Windows 95’s slab-style windows were ‘Really cool!’, despite the fact that the OS is rotten from the reversed-engineered-CP/M up. I took all the bits I liked and could implement from NeXTstep/OPENSTEP, the BeOS, OS/2, and a couple others, and threw it all into Aaron, stealing shamelessly from other good schemes when the desire arose, which didn’t happen all that often.
However, over time, the look of Ephemerol has changed from Aaron (which has since been superseded by Apple Grayscale or Macâ„¢ OS 8) considerably. Much of the first version has been left behind, and it is getting more and more difficult to pinpoint where the various parts of Ephemerol were inspired by. The grow boxes excluded of course.
Who needs a Tardis when you’ve got software?
