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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: koaftder on February 17, 2010, 08:16:49 PM

Title: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: koaftder on February 17, 2010, 08:16:49 PM
(http://wapedia.mobi/thumb/7d7314607/en/fixed/470/293/Amiga_Workbench_1_0.png?format=jpg,png,gif)

That is what I was raised on GUI wise back in the 80's. Parents moved to NC in '89 from Ft. Worth Texas. Never saw another amiga in the wild since then other than what I snatched on ebay. Not a fan of the bleak grayness in subsequent versions.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Dragster on February 17, 2010, 08:30:05 PM
Don't you miss orange too? :-)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: koaftder on February 17, 2010, 08:37:30 PM
Quote from: Dragster;543714
Don't you miss orange too? :-)

Yup, I love it. I used that a1k until 1993. It was the only machine I knew until then.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: save2600 on February 17, 2010, 08:47:33 PM
I agree! I love the look and feel of the original Workbench. I don't understand how some think it looks less professional. Gray is drab, boring and depressing. I guess not unlike a lot of office jobs. lol
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: koaftder on February 17, 2010, 08:54:50 PM
Quote from: koaftder;543715
Yup, I love it. I used that a1k until 1993. It was the only machine I knew until then.


Quote from: save2600;543719
I agree! I love the look and feel of the original Workbench. I don't understand how some think it looks less professional. Gray is drab, boring and depressing. I guess not unlike a lot of office jobs. lol


workbench:

(http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/thing-called-love.jpg)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: motrucker on February 17, 2010, 08:59:17 PM
I like 1.3 a lot too. I use my A1000 for old games, but that is also where most of my important data bases are kept - on Data Retrieve Pro and a few small er ones on bBase.
On my newer machine, I don't keep it grey - far to depressing
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: cha05e90 on February 17, 2010, 09:12:00 PM
...this why I sometimes use this on OS4.1:
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: yorgle on February 17, 2010, 09:12:43 PM
YES.  {Blue, White, Orange, Black} > {Gray, light blue, white, black}
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: tokyoracer on February 17, 2010, 09:41:19 PM
Mouse cursor looks better too then the usual more pointy one from later Workbenches.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: save2600 on February 17, 2010, 09:45:44 PM
That's it, I'm going back to 1.3 and not looking back! lmao  

Too bad WHDLoad isn't 1.3 compatible. Or the 2060 for that matter  :(  :lol:
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Dragster on February 17, 2010, 10:14:06 PM
Quote from: cha05e90;543726
...this why I sometimes use this on OS4.1:

Yah, you can use the classic theme for OS4.1..  doesn't look that bad.. but the mixed icons (big os4.1)... mmm, dunno,  would be awesome if there were an os1.x iconset

Cheers,

Dragster
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: bloodmoney on February 17, 2010, 10:29:58 PM
My favorite retro GUI like thingy.

http://edu.i-lo.tarnow.pl/inf/hist/002_gui/images/c64geos17.gif

That's the look Amiga should have had.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: stefcep2 on February 17, 2010, 10:35:19 PM
noooooo!!

1.x is amateur hour.

Blues, greys, the 3D effect of buttons, scroll bars, scroll arrows give a very stylish, clean, uncluttered look.  Sure 3.x stock icons are not much visually, but thats easy to fix with Magic WB.  Always loved the consistency of Magic WB:  a drawer looks like a drawer, and they are all instantly recognisable, and I like the "stone" 3d look to it all.  And its fast.

You can have your 32 bit 3D rendered icons, but I bet when you have a hard drive full of different ones, it all looks like scrambled eggs, and you then have to ignore the icon coz you don't know what the hell it supposed to represent, and look at the name underneath it, with the icon becoming nothing more than the place you click, defeating the whole purpose of having a GUI.

Over the years, I've lost interest in GUI eye candy, and just want speed and functionality: hence I'm installing the stock 3.1, 4 colour GUI, which is a speed demon, and just does the job.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Cammy on February 17, 2010, 10:39:21 PM
I don't think it would be very hard to make a Workbench 1.3 theme for Workbench 3.x using VisualPrefs, Birdie, FullPalette and WBPattern.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Karlos on February 17, 2010, 10:44:44 PM
Quote from: Cammy;543740
I don't think it would be very hard to make a Workbench 1.3 theme for Workbench 3.x using VisualPrefs, Birdie, FullPalette and WBPattern.


I'm pretty sure it has been done, actually.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Karlos on February 17, 2010, 10:48:42 PM
Quote from: stefcep2;543739
You can have your 32 bit 3D rendered icons, but I bet when you have a hard drive full of different ones, it all looks like scrambled eggs, and you then have to ignore the icon coz you don't know what the hell it supposed to represent, and look at the name underneath it, with the icon becoming nothing more than the place you click, defeating the whole purpose of having a GUI.

That really depends on the icon theme, to be honest. I try not to have different icon themes concurrently. The stock 4.1 update 1 icons are nice, if a little big.

Quote
Over the years, I've lost interest in GUI eye candy, and just want speed and functionality: hence I'm installing the stock 3.1, 4 colour GUI, which is a speed demon, and just does the job.

I can certainly understand that sentiment. However, if you are an RTG user, there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in using less than 256 colours for your screens, even if you only use 4 pens.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: save2600 on February 17, 2010, 10:54:12 PM
Quote from: stefcep2;543739

Over the years, I've lost interest in GUI eye candy, and just want speed and functionality: hence I'm installing the stock 3.1, 4 colour GUI, which is a speed demon, and just does the job.

I noticed that and agree about the eye candy statement. I'm super pleased with OS3.1 on my 25mhz A3000. Works extremely well. Installed OS3.9 on it the other day just for fun and yep, was sluggish as hell. Went back to 3.1 quicker than it takes the Dock to load up on that system. lol   Oh well - kinda cool using different OS's with different Amiga's anyway  :)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: AeroMan on February 18, 2010, 12:27:14 AM
I vote for 3.x with MagicWB. I still think it looks pretty cool even compared to XP :D
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: save2600 on February 18, 2010, 12:34:33 AM
What's the performance hit like with MagicWB?  The main reason I like 3.1's Workbench is how fast icons, etc. pop up.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: dreamcast270mhz on February 18, 2010, 01:38:45 AM
i hate the look of the 1.x series and 2.04 wb, my favorite is 3.9 because it is the most functional, 3.1 is my second I think a 1.x iconset would suck. The scheme is better, IMHO, but the icons themselves? Blegh! I don't like the grey scheme either, but 1.3 and older just are too old for me. (Incase ur wondering, I never played Amiga games, and probably never will for those that need 1.x. I was a genesis/NES man.)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: stefcep2 on February 18, 2010, 03:54:33 AM
Quote from: save2600;543762
What's the performance hit like with MagicWB?  The main reason I like 3.1's Workbench is how fast icons, etc. pop up.


So close to 4 color it doesn't matter.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: stefcep2 on February 18, 2010, 03:57:48 AM
Quote from: Karlos;543743
That really depends on the icon theme, to be honest. I try not to have different icon themes concurrently. The stock 4.1 update 1 icons are nice, if a little big.



I can certainly understand that sentiment. However, if you are an RTG user, there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in using less than 256 colours for your screens, even if you only use 4 pens.

Other than for me anyway its just looks visually distracting: i've gotta take that second look to work out what that icon represents.   Its unnecessary visual information that my brain needs to process.  It just looks too "busy".  Each to their own I suppose.

Another eg. is cinema 4d.  Version 4 and 5(PC) had simple icon buttons, it was a clean, uncluttered UI.  They then went to 3D multicolored buttons and icons upto about Version 9 and it looked like pants.  Now they're back to a simple 8 color UI, and in fact some of the more accomplished users have recommend that you configure the buttons with text, rather than drawings as there are so many to remember and the pictorial representation just slows you down beacsue you have to stop and think: "now what the hell is this supposed to look like and where the hell is the one I want."
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: trekiej on February 18, 2010, 04:35:01 AM
How do you think OS1.3 would look at higher resolution?
Has someone here run OS1.3 with an Indivision?
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: nyteschayde on February 18, 2010, 09:18:03 AM
I don't mind the colors from 1.x but I certainly think every other advancement from the later OSes are a plus. The gray can be a bit overwhelming at times but I also don't know too many Amiga users who were satisfied with leaving their desktop colors alone. Most people I knew customized pretty quickly.

With 1.x many didn't because you didn't have many options to do so. Even 2.x gave you tons more to work with.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: bloodline on February 18, 2010, 10:35:50 AM
My favourite look was 1.3 too. The Z order buttons suck though, 2.0 fixed that :)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: bubblebobble on February 18, 2010, 11:07:29 AM
1.3 looks like a toy (actually it was a toy), 3.1 looks more professional, but very 90ths, nowadays look has much lower contrast, which is much more relaxing for the eyes if you work 8h on it. The contrast is saved for important things like text or the mouse cursor.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: ElPolloDiabl on February 18, 2010, 11:38:43 AM
Quote from: save2600;543762
What's the performance hit like with MagicWB?  The main reason I like 3.1's Workbench is how fast icons, etc. pop up.

It's not slower but it hogs some of your CPU (maybe 5%) on 68030.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Photon on February 18, 2010, 06:54:15 PM
Hello. :)

Actually, the colors were chosen for maximum readability on NTSC TVs. They actually work fine for general use today too, I'm running the same scheme, just matted a little. And of course any neon or at least colorful color will work fine instead of orange.

I've experimented quite a bit and blue is actually a good way to get a decent bright background while keeping the 50Hz 'in the corner of the eye' flicker low on bad CRTs. It also allows a bright text color (for those of us who prefer that) and text is clear, unlike the black on grey on WB 2.0+ where pixels clump together if you don't raise the black color a little.

Also, saturated colors fill you with happiness on each power-up, while designer colors are dismissed after deciding that they look good. Or something. :afro:
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Dr_Righteous on February 18, 2010, 07:04:38 PM
Y'all... Y'all need some SERIOUS help. "Fugly" doesn't even cover it sufficiently.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: cha05e90 on February 18, 2010, 07:15:32 PM
@Dragster

Of course the original OS1.3 icons would look better with that theme, but you know icon handling on all Amiga(-ish) OS' - it would be a pain in the a** to change them back and forth, BUT:

If someone had really enough spare time, he could replace all old-style OS icons with the OS1.3 ones and put the icon data for the 32Bit-icons back in place - OS4.1 still has the fallback pictures for 4-colour Workbenches in-build. So switching "True-Color" icons in Prefs OFF would lead to the old OS1.3 icon look. Anyone? ;-)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Karlos on February 18, 2010, 08:48:49 PM
I'm contemplating using these (http://extropia.co.uk/img/icon) along with the double height topaz font to change my 4.1U1 install...
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: KThunder on February 18, 2010, 08:49:44 PM
in 1.3 i always changed the blue to a medium purple and the orange to bright purple or green.
never changed the 3.x colors though. i did change the background.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Cammy on February 18, 2010, 11:43:45 PM
Here's a Workbench 1.3 theme I made by adjusting the Palette Prefs, WBPattern and Pointer Prefs on my 3.1 A600 (which also has a 1.3 Kickstart on the ROM switcher). I adjusted it so that the grey is more like a blue-grey, the black and white have a blue tint to them, and the standard blue has been replaced with a dull orange colour. I didn't just go and copy the 1.3 colours exactly because a lot of the GUI stuff in KS2+ depends on the palette having the colours on different pens (white and black are reversed in 1.3 and 2+). This is using a 4-colour screenmode.

Anyway, here's what it looks like:

(http://i50.tinypic.com/2zr2jwh.jpg)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Karlos on February 18, 2010, 11:46:20 PM
@Cammy

Nice pineapple :D
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Cammy on February 18, 2010, 11:58:48 PM
War has never been so much fun.
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Karlos on February 19, 2010, 12:06:13 AM
Quote from: Cammy;543907
War has never been so much fun.


*sings*

Go up to your brother,
Kill him with your gun!
Leave him lying in his uniform,
Dying in the sun!

So much fun!


Ah, good old Cannon Fodder, still one of my favourite games :)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: hayashi on February 19, 2010, 01:09:55 AM
I for one like WB2/3's default look! It just seems a lot more... professional-looking, iunno.

(This is coming from someone who thinks Windows 3.x looks better than Windows 7 Aero)
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Amiga_Nut on February 21, 2010, 02:49:00 AM
Nah 1.3 looked fine, the only thing that looked a bit strange was the arrows on the scroll bars for the windows. otherwise it was clean and elegant.

Also, when I used 1.3 back in the day I used a dropshadow utility to spice things up a bit, and combined with that it looked better than...

Mac OS
Windows
GEM

And this is without considering it was, and still is, one of the most efficient pre-emptive desktop multi-tasking GUIs ever.

Only thing is...orange was replaced immediately  by  me....orange was such an 80s colour LOL
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: yorgle on February 21, 2010, 04:23:28 AM
Can anyone recommend a tool to make AmigaOS 3.9 look like 1.3?  I've got the colors reasonable right now, but I'd love the 1.3 (or 1.0-1.2) versions of the gadgets....
Title: Re: I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white
Post by: Debaser on February 21, 2010, 05:16:14 AM
Quote from: KThunder;543871
in 1.3 i always changed the blue to a medium purple and the orange to bright purple or green.
never changed the 3.x colors though. i did change the background.


I kinda did the same thing helped with flicker.

Truly though the only thing I miss about that era was my A1K keyboard... and I thought that was off-base and unpopular. You guys/gals really got me scratchin my head regarding the 1.3 love..I just don't get it. :)