The Color Method Desktop

This makes me wanna bust out my Mac Classic...

I was using the Kobhens as my desktop for a while too, but it can kind of be a pain. Some programs (like Filezilla) overwrite their icons with every update. Then it would always drive me crazy when I launched a program that didn't match. So of course I would spend the next 10 mins creating the icon and installing it... Not very productive.

Looks great though!

It's OS X in the style of System 7 (and earlier). Retro.

auctoris

@omegakumar: only too many featured desktops... I bet the smileys in his chats were made out from a wireframe stencil!

@monzongo: One can never have too many desktops.

omegakumar

Don't we have enough desktops already?

monzongo

Wow, that's actually the first setup here I've been attracted to. The dock icons really are lovely.

Monochromatic grey depresses me something crazy, I think it's purely psychological, seeing as the mere knowledge my wallpaper is drab can put a downer on my day :/

mine desktop is pretty greyish and monochromatic too. So i can only love this one.

Altough i like more clean ones.

brainshred

It might actually help with organization. Since you can prioritize with color.

even though i'm a designer and hopelessly addicted to bright, saturated colors (you should see my closet) - i LOVE this desktop. might have to try recreating it on mine.

@Phoshi: To me gray is a bit too 'loud' and 'cool'. Yes, loud as in high decibels and cool as in low temperature. I know that's crazy but I'm a synesthete.

ssj4Gogeta

@monzongo: Don't we have enough commenters already?

@lindsayk: Thanks, so glad you like it! If you do end up recreating it (or something like it), let me know! I'd love to see what you come up with!

hawkweisman

@Roberto Urso.

hawkweisman

I've gotten a few questions about this on Flickr, and thought I should make it known here: The GeekTool Weather display is from a Perl script by Nic Haynes, and he has some good tutorials on doing other things in GeekTool. You can find his site at [nicinabox.com].

hawkweisman

@monzongo:

1) We do 2 featured desktops per week.
2) That amounts to less than 2% of the total Lifehacker posts for the week.
3) We cover a very broad set of topics that simply don't apply to every single person.

Honestly, I think whining is absolutely the most productive thing that you can do with your day when 2 out of 100 posts aren't Exactly what you're looking for.

@hawkweisman: Thanks for the update!

I bet he is searching for a b/w "Computer" icon. I would use the puft one.

YasashikuHyperion

@Phoshi: i'm the opposite. my desktop is completely empty and solid black except for a fairly transparent rocketdock tucked into the bottom left corner of my screen (above the black taskbar.) i love it. simple. easy to look at. no bullshit system statistics in the background. just open workspace free of clutter.

Awww .... grey depresses me . But that's a lot of work behind this one ... Really appreciate ur work.

And I'm pretty glad we have a desktop that's not based on the wallpaper i.e. the one wallpaper finally ...

Way to go

Good luck doing all that again when Snow Leopard comes out in a few months.

@danger the pirate: Word. I get bored with any desktop customization always revert back to mildly color-tweaked Windows Classic on a black desktop. If I want system stats, it's a simple enough matter to ctrl+shift+esc.

Hawk's desktop got featured on Lifehacker. I s'pose I should start screwing with Windows 7 to catch up... LOL. Congratulations, man. :)

Michael Allison

I have been wanting to customise my OSX dock for a while now - but I have been wondering, exactly what do you do about programs that arent always in the dock? do all icons have to be changed? And what about the fact that iCal is always changing its icon...

AaronChamois

@lindsayk: I agree. I shoot a lot of B&W film so greyscale is a very natural look for me.

@monzongo: No
/reply_chain

Techknow

i like. J3Concepts is win.

garbanzo-bean

I find nothing attractive about this setup at all. Icons are confusing and not all that attractive, Dock icons look to be nothing but a bunch of tiny print. From my point of view, I don;t see the reason to have custom icons then have to have the print underneath telling you what they are. Either the icon should convey at a glance what is in the folder or its a waste of time. Still can't figure out the need for system stats to be displayed on the desktop. Memory is cheap. Storage is cheap. who but a tiny fraction is so worried about CPU utilization that they need to know at a glance in order to manage processes to fee up addtional cycles?

JohnnyL

Actually not half bad, except there are themes out there with less color in them. You could have easily gone the extra mile and taken all the color out. It's a shame too, because this is one of the only featured desktops that looks like it took more than 5 minutes to put together.
Shout out J3.

I don't know anything about tweaking my UI. I don't know anything about coding or terminal. I'm a total noob. But I am a graphic designer and would love to create and implement a theme like that. Can I find somewhere a complete (and with complete I mean really complete) walktrough? Step by step description for how to do this? Actually the coding and implementing stuff doesn't interest me much, for me it's more the designing part that triggers me. For me it would feel like a huge waste of time to search every bit of the internet to find out how to do stuff ...

ColemanFibbionl

Hi, I know this is a tad off-topic, but I absolutely love Enigma (which is 99% of the time in featured desktops), but I am clueless as how to set it up! Can anyone point me to a good guide, or a pre-setup one that someone is sharing (I remember reading on one featued desktop that he/she had a set-up one he/she was sharing)? Thanks, sorry if it's off-topic, but Enigma/Rainmeter is gorgeous. THANKS!!!!

YachneJillion

wow, no aqua scrollbars, sweeeeet :-)

XandraElectryon

@hawkweisman: Thanks. I actually made similar icons a few years back that were all-cap abbreviations. The main difference was that I chromed the font, and limited myself to 3 letters. But I like this, too.

@JohnnyL: How does a fox curled around a globe or a canceled postage stamp immediately convey any more or less? I found this one attractive because I've been training my brain since age 4 to associate words with ideas. I can immediately tell what "MAIL" means. The small text beneath is purely decorative. Though I do agree with you about stats. But it's technodecoration, really. To each their own.

@Techknow:
Then maybe they should increase it to a 4% of desktops per week. Good day!

Lifehacker rocks!

monzongo

@The How-To Geek:

1) So what!
2) Seems like you know how to use a calculator
3) Really? What a disappointment!

Honestly, I think that you are a total NERD! Sorry I offended you with my comment, because after all that's just what it was a comment, but you couldn't leave it alone no! SuperGeek to the rescue...who is whining here?

Lifehacker rules!

monzongo

@FlameEye: Yeah you should stop! LOL!

monzongo

I need to find a good site with good dock icon sets.

radink

@lindsayk: This is a wonderful desktop, with only sparse elements of color it must do good things for workflow too.

Awesome! This reminds me of GeOS

AnastasiaGanjiro

Having watched your desktop change in time, nice to see this now :D