UNO 1.5
I'm not one to fiddle with the appearance of my Mac's UI. I think Apple did a pretty good job, and I see no reason to change it. That being said, certain parts of OS X's default appearance can be a little inconsistent, and the custom UI theme called UNO was designed to make OS X consistent across the board. UNO 1.5 has just been released, and it is a complete rewrite of everyone's favorite OS X theme. If you want to banish Brushed Metal from your Mac, or just like the look of the so called 'Unified Toolbar,' then UNO is worth checking out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
dave said 9:51AM on 3-26-2007
After a few years of using OS X I really came to dislike Apple's use of stripes in their OS and never cared for brushed metal.
UNO was exactly what I was looking for - it hasn't affected the stability of the OS and it makes the UI look great. The unified appearance is the best of Apple's interfaces and now I have it system-wide.
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lanny said 10:25AM on 3-26-2007
I don1t like UNO. It's not enough to make the top of windows flat to be consistent. Brushed metal has some conventions like BORDERS. Just compare Mail and Finder on the screenshot. Finder is not yet "Jaguarish" and rather have a proper brushed look than a broken Jaguar style.
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Pete said 11:19AM on 3-26-2007
If all my apps looked the same, wouldn't expose be much harder to use effectively?
As for borders, I wish more apps had them. It's annoying to have (for example) two Safari windows open with (the increasingly common) black background webpages and not be able to tell where one window ends and the other begins.
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Alexis said 11:25AM on 3-26-2007
The main thing that bugs me about UNO is the fact that it gives Finder windows and iChat sharp bottom edges. Everything else seems to be okay, but those sharp edges just look strange to me. I'd use it if I could control that part, as well.
alas.
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Twist said 12:13PM on 3-26-2007
I kind of like the look of UNO but I don't use it because it uses an installer to modify the system files. If it was a ShapeShifter theme then I would probably use it.
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Occh said 12:41PM on 3-26-2007
UNO rocks, and is one of the first things I install on a fresh system.
I'm very grateful for a free solution that doesn't involve ShapeShifter.
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Stephen Lang said 1:40PM on 3-26-2007
I actually like brushed, but initially installed UNO so that Firefox would look half-decent.
But I like the Unified look now, and use UNO system-wide. Brushed seems like a somewhat superfluous design element to me at this point, though I go back and forth on this. I do like having a little bit of texture, ala Brushed. We'll see what happens with Leopard.
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Alex said 2:53PM on 3-26-2007
I also didn't like that it changed the system files, but it's a must have for me since it makes firefox usable. I couldn't stand to look at firefox before, but the uno firefox theme combination is great. Just as if firefox was an aqua app.
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Adrian vG said 3:54PM on 3-26-2007
I love UNO!!!111oneoneon
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Muller said 5:52PM on 3-26-2007
if just for the quicktime and itunes skin UNO is awesome.
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andrew harrison said 6:15PM on 3-26-2007
no thanks? i submitted this yesterday :)
anyway, uno is fantastic. if it wasn't perfectly stable, i wouldn't bother, but i've never had a problem with it. The current OS X design elements are ok on their own, but having a mish mash [i believe that's the technical term] of several different styles for no good reason bothers me. Uno gets rid of that problem, and makes me a happy camper.
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Paul said 6:59PM on 3-26-2007
Uno is timeless, and much more classic mac like than brushed metal or most of the crap Shapeshifter junk. Not to mention consistent. That's probably why it's so classic mac, even though it doesn't come from Apple.
Apple--pre OS X--set the example for the world with its consistency. (anyone remember Applie human interface guidelines?) Now they just break their own rules and don't set an example for anyone. Hopefully Leopard will bring us back some sanity here.
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litmus said 8:14PM on 3-26-2007
I'm going to give Uno a try as I used to use shapeshifter until it had some pretty bad system issues when it was making the move to Universal. As for firefox I use the theme iFox Smooth to give it the Unified love.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1830
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yakov chodosh said 1:42AM on 3-27-2007
UNO is the best interface modding program out there.
The new version is not without its problems, though: It doesn't remember preferences, so I had to go in several times to "remind" it to leave my widget library thing with the dots, and to give me back my original text selection color
...but all in all, UNO is the best!!!!
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Kevin said 12:56PM on 3-31-2007
I've never used UNO, but understand the desire to even out Apple's weird (to me) design choices for windows of late. Whatever happened to the Human Interface Guidlines?
My feeling is that brushed should be used for apps that only have one main window and regular windows should be used for apps that open documents. While Apple has sort of stuck to that, it has used a regular (unified) window for Mail and multiple metal windows for the Finder. So there is no consistency from Apple themselves.
I just don't understand their thinking.
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