For a first preview, this is amazing.
I like the new drawers. The best of the old, the best of the new.
I like that OS4.0 has all or most of the eye candy of Magic Menu, Birdie, et. al. They've even gone
them one better, with the rounded corners, bitmaps in the menus, etc. It's important to impress
newcomers straight away, and people are visual creatures. And all of this on a 256 color screen?
Wow!
However, one thing I wanted to see, and didn't, is for the icons to support transparency as well.
The shadows on the current icons look fantastic against a medium gray background, (screen 4) but
bizzare against a background darker than the shadow, or against a colored background. (check the ram
disk's shadow in screen 6)
Real shadows are just a darker shade of the same color as the object they're thrown against. The
same algorithms used to generate the menu's shadows could be used on the icons, or the icon rendering
engine could be made to support an alpha channel for transparency. Then the icon's artist could
define the shadow and / or translucent section, such as for window panes.
Just something to think about at the last minute, if it's not too much trouble. Or save it for
OS5.0.
Quixote
"Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle"
--Leonardo DaVinci