I never liked the gray, gimme the blue and white

[Karlos]

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.

[Karlos]

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.

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.

[save2600]

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  

[AeroMan]

I vote for 3.x with MagicWB. I still think it looks pretty cool even compared to XP

[save2600]

What's the performance hit like with MagicWB?  The main reason I like 3.1's Workbench is how fast icons, etc. pop up.

[dreamcast270mhz]

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.)

[stefcep2]

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.

[stefcep2]

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."

[trekiej]

How do you think OS1.3 would look at higher resolution?
Has someone here run OS1.3 with an Indivision?

[nyteschayde]

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.

[bloodline]

My favourite look was 1.3 too. The Z order buttons suck though, 2.0 fixed that

[bubblebobble]

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.

[ElPolloDiabl]

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.

[Photon]

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:

[Dr_Righteous]

Y'all... Y'all need some SERIOUS help. "Fugly" doesn't even cover it sufficiently.

[cha05e90]

@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? ;-)