I thought I’d let the group know that Uno–the unified interface theme for OS X–plays well with Scrivener (as well as others). Well, at least in the 72 hours since I installed it.
I have to admit, I haven’t paid much much attention to Uno, not being a fan of ShapeShifter and all those dodgy haxies. Then two things happened:
First, the newest version of Uno eliminates a glaring interface inconsistency so horrendous–to me, at least–that it almost undoes all that Johnathan Ives industrial design. And I’m not talking about the oddly random call of what’s a “metal app.” The newest Uno eliminates all traces of electric blue from the Graphite theme in OS X. Call it Aqua, call it Bondi–me, I unavoidably smell swimming pool chlorine when I see it. The first thing I did when I was beta-testing OS X was to chose Graphite and it’s never been switched off since then. Except for progress bars, Finder selections, unopened email icons in Mail, etc. This still boggles my mind–Steve Jobs personally approves the veining in the stone used on the New York Apple store, but allows a blue ambush in the Graphite theme–for years and years. However, now, on the other side of an Uno install, all is blessedly, cooly gray; my interface is the equivalent of a Miles Davis album–finally . . .
Second, when I investigated Uno because of my All-Gray-All-The-Time fetish, I found it used a script to do a clean swap-out of certain graphic resources in OS X (which are put in a folder for safekeeping in the event I feel the need to smell the chlorine again) So no haxies, nothing running in the backgound, no wasted cycles.
An unintended benefit is that it really does what it says in terms of unifying things–ironically, not the primary reason I downloaded it. While I take exception to things electric blue, brushed chrome never really bothered me. But after three days of living with my tweaked, newly consistent interface, I can’t imagine going back.
Sorry for sounding evangelical about this–it’s because its very cool, helpful software that’s free. And in its cooling-down and unification of the screen, it’s conceptual extension of that Full-Screen Thing that’s so fashionable these days. I don’t know the developer from Adam (but if he’s pointed out to me, I’ll give him a hug for eliminating the faux chlorine smell in my office), and I’ve no stake in Uno–except emotionally.
Here’s the link:
gui.interacto.net/index.php?opti … &Itemid=47
That is all. We now return you to the usual discussions of writing tools, already in progress . . .
PS: For those interested, Uno is preferable to Shaded Uno (a variant of what’s being called Burnt Aqua when it’s used on the newest iterations of iTunes).
