Amadeus 1.5.5 for Kaleidoscope 1.5 or later – with additional functionality for Kaleidoscope 1.7.3 and later.
Validated with Sven Berg Ryen’s Scheme Checker to assure reliability.
by Lloyd Wood
<mailto:L.Wood@kagi.com>
1997 MacUser Kaleidoscope contest judge.
What people think of Amadeus
“to Apple's Platinum Appearance what Mozart was to Salieri. Where Apple extrudes the horizontal bars at the top of the window, Wood subtly retracts them. The 3D effect is far more graceful, far less intrusive. Although at first glance the color scheme seems so similar to Apple's platinum appearance that you wonder why Wood bothered, after using Amadeus for even a day you can't go back to the standard look, which seems clunky, amateurish, and unworthy of a company with Apple's superb design heritage.”
— Jeffrey Zeldman, Macintosh OS8 Blues
“easy on the eyes, making it perfect for everyday use”
— Rainier Arangcon, ZDNet
“an improved version of Aaron”
— Andrew Gore, MacUser
The Kaleidoscope World
The home of Amadeus, of The Kaleidoscope Way, or Zen and the art of the Kaleidoscope color scheme, of the original Kaleidoscope scheme designers’ mailing list archives, and a complete introduction to the world of Kaleidoscope:
Amadeus is a colour scheme created as a plug-in for the popular Kaleidoscope MacOS human interface munger by Greg Landweber and company. Amadeus replaces and rejuvenates your Mac’s interface to provide a better-than-OS8 look ideal for extended periods of use.
If you don’t have the Kaleidoscope control panel installed, download the Kaleidoscope package from your local info-mac mirror or via The Kaleidoscope Way web page mentioned above. Once you have Kaleidoscope installed, drop an Amadeus colour scheme file into the Kaleidoscope Color Schemes folder in the Extensions folder of your System folder, open the Kaleidoscope control panel, and select the Amadeus scheme.
Distribution and legal information
Modification of the contents of the Amadeus for Kaleidoscope package for redistribution is prohibited. Modification of the colour scheme for redistribution is prohibited without my express permission. Make your own colour scheme and name it yourself.
Amadeus for Kaleidoscope is shareware and there is a small $3 registration fee; please support shareware by registering your copy. Please see the ‘Registering Amadeus’ textfile for further information.
Design rationale
Amadeus is a classical interpretation of the much-anticipated platinum appearance that Apple eventually shipped with Mac OS8, similar to the Aaron and Apple Grayscale schemes bundled with Kaleidoscope. However, Amadeus draws more from classic System graphic design, common sense, and awareness of display limitations than those schemes do, and when used with Kaleidoscope offers an improved alternative to the MacOS8/Aaron Light interface.
Where other schemes are blatantly three-dimensional with twee highlights merely for the sake of it, Amadeus attempts to remember the user and to provide a clearer interface. Amadeus aims to allow the user to spend less time thinking ‘Wow, drawing that pointless and ugly highlight must have taken ages – why is it there? What does it mean? Why am I thinking about this?’ and more time simply using a more transparent interface.
In particular, Amadeus pays more attention to the needs of users of display modes showing less than 256 colours than many other colours schemes do. This attention can be discerned in 256 colours if you use applications whose own palettes differ considerably from the standard Apple system palette.
Design features
• Full support for screen depths of 16 colours and less.
(This is often overlooked or handled badly in other color schemes.)
• Scrollbar arrows that can really be pushed for increased feedback. They move!
• Buttons checkboxes and menus that stand out from the backdrop so you can see them clearly!
• Truly dimmed elements you don’t try to select. They fade away!
• No confusing highlights when you’re pushing.
• Nameplate dialog information, double-click launch dialog (and Finder balloon help under OS8).
• To folder icon or not to folder icon? The choice is yours.
• Clearly-named resources - useful for scheme designers.
• Engraved window dragging zones, or ‘racing stripes’.
(The ‘engraving the racing stripes’ innovation in the original Amadeus has started something of a fashion, and other good colour schemes – notably TealEaves and Copperplate – have adopted this to good effect and chosen the same side in the ongoing secret war of Innies vs Outies.)
Suggested use
Here’s how I use Amadeus. If you like my taste in colour schemes enough to use Amadeus, you might be interested in the details of exactly how I intended my Mac desktop to look. If not, skip this section.
I prefer Apple’s Windowshade double-click functionality to the Aaron windowshade widget, which always hangs off the right side of the screen whenever I need it most and gets confused with the window resize box. I suggest turning off this widget by ResEditing the WPrf resource in Kaleidoscope. I don’t recommend turning on active scrolling with the SPrf resource, since you will soon discover that no Mac is fast enough to make active scrolling truly seamlessly possible in popular up-to-date bloatware such as Netscape and Word.
I do recommend installing SideFX, by Sylvain Demongeot. SideFX allows you resize your windows from the edges that Kaleidoscope makes movable, via your choice of click-modifier keys. It’s incredibly useful, and is available from /info-mac/gui/ on your local info-mac mirror, just as Kaleidoscope itself used to be before they created /info-mac/gui/ks/.
Greg’s Espi Sans Bold 10, included with Kaleidoscope, is my system font of choice, with Geneva 9 for Finder views.
I use Amadeus ƒ+, with additional folder icons, to give the familiar folder icons I’ve used for the past five years. I’d rather have those than think about replacing a disk full of custom icons based on the flat shape, and the bigger the clickable area the better. Familiarity breeds contentment.
A note on naming
Amadeus is named for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the dead famous 18th-century Austrian composer responsible for the chart-topping ‘The Marriage of Figaro’, ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘The Magic Flute’, and a host of earlier, less polished, works. These works would not have been possible without the tutoring and encouragement of Wolfie’s forebear, Leo, who was renowned as a teacher, as an authority on the tools of the trade, particularly the violin, and as a composer in his own right.
A note on versions
Amadeus 1.0.9 is the final release of Amadeus for Kaleidoscope 1.0.1, and is still available from the webpage as freeware for remaining Kaleidoscope 1.0.1 users. Kaleidoscope 1.5 and later use a different internal file format, requiring this completely redone Amadeus for Kaleidoscope.
A note on culpability
I blame Greg Landweber first and Leo Breebaart foremost.
I’d also like to thank the denizens of the scheme designers’ mailing list, whose discussions have made reinventing Amadeus considerably easier than it would otherwise have been.
This release of Amadeus would not have happened at all without the feedback I received from satisfied Amadeus users around the world. Speaking of which...
Feedback
Unlike the designs of Aaron or Apple Grayscale, the design of Amadeus is not dictated by Apple. Your comments and suggested modifications are welcome.
Known issues
On-the-fly folder switching is only available under Kaleidoscope 1.7.3 or later, running on OS8 or later.
The turquoise scroll thumbs are relabelled aquamarine to match Kaleidoscope 1.7.3 and Mac OS8.
With Kaleidoscope 1.5, the ghost thumb can obscure the edge of the scrollbar arrows and leave a line. This bug is fixed in later revisions of Kaleidoscope.
Revision history
1.5.5 - added support for new accent colours in Kaleidoscope 1.7.3; various tweaks.
