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Filed under: Utilities, Features, Macintosh

10 hot Growl styles to make your pop-up alerts really pop

Macby Jay Hathaway Oct 28th 2009

Growl provides customizable pop-up alerts for hundreds of Mac apps, making sure you never miss an important chat message or completed download. You can use Growl to set an alert for just about anything, and you can also make Growl notifications look practically any way you want. The built-in themes and the list on the official Growl Styles page don't even begin to cover all the options for gorgeous notifications, from the minimal to the very flashy.

Here are 10 lesser-known Growl styles that look a lot nicer than the defaults:

Gallery: 10 Hottest Growl Styles

  • Basics
  • B-Greek
  • GlossyBlack
  • iPhonesque
  • Niqu

Tags: growl, lists, notifications, skins, styles, themes

Filed under: Windows, Mods

Create Windows 7 themes with Style 7

Windowsby John Burke Oct 26th 2009


There has been plenty of talk about ways to modify and hack your copy of Windows 7, but what if you're looking for more ways to make it drool-worthy? Style7 is a little app that helps make it a little easier to make custom themes for Windows. The way it works is pretty simple (or is it?) and is done with a "simple" configuration file.

When you create a theme, it starts off using the default Aero and you work your way through it from there. You'll need to download Style 7, as well as a UxTheme patch to allow this mod to work. Personally, if I'm going to go through all this trouble, I'm just going to Google "Cool Windows 7 themes" or something. For those of you a little more daring, ehh, give it a try!

Tags: mods, patch, styles, Windows 7, Windows7

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Personas is live, and an uglier Firefox is easier than ever!

by Lee Mathews Apr 1st 2009


Fans of other browsers have slammed Firefox's rather plain appearance for ages. Now, at last, Mozilla fans have a weapon which they can proudly wield against their friends who run IE7 with bikini-clad Hotbar backgrounds!

Personas has gone live, complete with a gallery chock full of prefab styles that can be easily applied to your browser. As with any desktop theming, there are a few aesthetically pleasing creations but there are also a number of abhorrent designs.

Too many of them wind up making a cluttered, distracting mess of the menus. Strata, for example, puts an annoying orange line right through my bookmark buttons. With Cool Black, I can't even read the labels. On the plus side, switching Personas doesn't require restarting Firefox like traditional themes do.

Still, kudos to Mozilla for making themes easier for users to put together. Firefox's easy and flexible personalization is one key advantage it has over competing browsers, so they may as well ride that horse 'till it drops.

Tags: firefox, personas, styles, themes

Filed under: Features, Macintosh, Social Software, Lists

8 can't-miss Adium Xtras

Macby Jay Hathaway Oct 29th 2008



I absolutely love the popular Mac multi-chat app Adium. Not only does it support a large number of messaging protocols -- including Facebook Chat in the latest version -- it's insanely customizable. In Adium, you can change the look of everything from your contact list to your message style to your dock icon. There's an extensive library of user-created styles at AdiumXtras.com, but they're not all good.

Recently, I went on a bit of a downloading tear, rummaging through the Adium Xtra trash to discover the Adium Xtra treasure. Here, I present my findings: 8 of the slickest, most beautiful add-ons ever to grace a chat client. To check out the full range of Adium Xtras for yourself, go to adiumxtras.com.



Message Style: Cinematic

Cinematic is a smooth, dark style that fits in really well with OS X. It sports Apple's signature "reflection" effect, and uses buddy icons to show who's talking -- no text necessary. I like an uncluttered feeling when I'm chatting, and Cinematic delivers. Match it up with a darker buddy list style and wallpaper for a really put-together desktop.

Read more →

Tags: add-ons, adium, adiumxtras, chat, im, skins, styles

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Utilities, Features, Macintosh

10 fresh NetNewsWire styles

Macby Jay Hathaway May 22nd 2008

Now that a lot of people are spending as much time looking at their RSS readers as their web browsers or email clients, it's probably a good idea to give your reader an appearance you can live with. If you happen to use NetNewsWire, one of the most popular RSS apps for OS X, you've got plenty of stylesheets to choose from.

NetNewsWire supports CSS styles, so it's not too difficult to code your own if you happen to have some CSS experience. If you're a CSS newbie, though, don't sweat it: there are plenty of looks to choose from. We went beyond the preloaded styles and picked out some options that should please even the pickiest readers. Some of them not only change the look of NetNewsWire, but add some useful functionality as well. Take a look at our top 10 themes.


Gallery: 10 Fresh NetNewsWire Styles

  • AisleOne 2.0
  • Spotlight+wrap
  • Ollicle Reflex
  • Hardcover
  • Readlight



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Tags: css, design, netnewswire, rss, styles, stylesheets, themes

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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