Singularity: Color Variations

Dang!!! Why doesn't Blogger process PNG images right? There's not supposed to be any Purple-Haze around each of the above images, although Jimi Hendrix an Andy Warhol might both enjoy the effect.

Yup, I realize I've been lax on updating this. At work I'm trying to get a manuscript ready for publication in the Journal of Bacteriology, been working on a corporate site and obtaining sponsors for the site and podcast. Its been a lot to do lately. Haven't forgotten the LiteStep stuff, however, and have been trying to get some of my fellow themers interested in LiteStep. I think Nerio will give it a go (good for you Nerio!!).

Anyway, above are some color variations I'm putting together for the theme. The original Singularity just offered the one color. Once I offered the NonDisjunction theme, requests for color-variations on the other themes started building. Four color variations are shown above, These were simple bulk recolorizations using the Hue/Saturation tool in Photoshop 6.0, so they're pretty crude interpretations of what the final colors will be, but it does give an idea. There will also be a 5th color variation that will be much darker, something more foreboding. That will require more than a simple Hue/Saturation workup... will have to remake all the colored features by hand for that one, but I'm pleased with how it's turning out (I'll save a preview for my beta-testers).

Off to my GameBoy... MegaMan Network3 is beckoning...

Uh, blogspot?

Okay, so I, um, got an account at blogspot simply so I can make comments on Sacrat's blog.

The skinny on the skinning

Didn't think producing Podcasts would be as time consuming as it is. Lots o' post-production work. Still fun, though.

I've taken another unplanned hiatus from skinning to work on, well, my job, but also goofing around with CSS and Strict XHTML. I'm thinking the Google/Sun partnership may be telling of the future of skinning... If we'll all eventually be using standards-compliant web-interfaces for even full-blown desktop applications, makes sense to learn the GUI intricacies of 'em, 'cuz that's what we'll be skinning in a decade.

Here's a mock-up of the new podcast site interface I'm piecing together as an experiment:
Tonight, I'm gonna try and get the secondary xPopups and shortcuts configured for the upper-left control module. Then I'll try putting some RainMeter stuff together for the two smaller blue orbs.

Singularity: Yes, I'm lazy...

It's been a bit since my last entry, and mulestem's been kindly checking for updates on the Singularity theme. Here's a brief update on some stuff I did last night:

Have been working on pull-out tabs for the shortcuts on the left-side of the screen:
Eventually, I'd like to use a second xPopup config to create user-configured popups in more of a holographic style. The top part, and perhaps bottom, would be metallic, as seen in the above image. The middle, however would be more digital blue stuff with liberal transparency. Haven't sketched it out in Photoshop yet, but I have a clear idea in mind.

Once these shortcuts are figured out I can start work on the scripting required to swap the theme's Z-order, hide/reappear, etc. Can't wait to start coding the hotspots! That's the core functionality of the theme, after all.

The other graphical item I've been working on is a second form of the taskbar. Eventually the little button to the left of the taskbar will switch between different taskbar forms. Below is a prototype for a taskbar containing just 32x32 icons, no text:
For the inactive-state I'm imagining it containing just a 24x24 icon that will sit in the old taskbar. This way the active task will be very readily discernible.