Mac Team

Looking Sharp is right

I kinda preferred the old one over this. Change is always good, but I think you're moving in the wrong direction.

In my opinion there is too much contrast betwee the tab borders and the background color. A more subtle difference will make it blend more in with the system, I think.

There's also something wrong with the tabs - the corner's don't look rounded enough(probably due to the above-mentioned problem with too much contrast)

I'd also welcome a more mac-like drop-down arrow in the address bar - I think a simple solution to this is to make it slighty brighter and smaller.

I might play around in Photoshop to see if I can illustrate my points.

Looking forward to see the progress on this skin!

When I first saw the screenshot of the new interface on the Desktop Team blog, I must admit that I was afraid of seeing it on MacOS.

Hopefully, you provided us with a reworked version of this interface, which integrates quite well in the OS.

However, in my opinion, there are some things that could be improved. For example, buttons could have a dark gray border, like in any other MacOS application. Or you could anti-alias the borders of the tabs. Or (even if on an interface point of view it's right, althought not on a MacOS-wide point of view) you could remove the shining effect on hovering buttons. Or provide us with gray-scale versions of the reload and Wand buttons.

But overall, it's a quite good job. It's anyway better than leaving us with the new Vista-like interface.

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us

Works even with Identifying as Opera

Also can you guys add check spelling as you type some time in the future? Most other browser all ready have this.

Way too dark. I want color icons

New icons are blurry (or is it a shadow? It's hard to tell when you've got gray on gray on gray )

Skull for spam folder is creepy, especially when skin is dark, has no colors...

I made a few minor adjustments to the new default skin in Photoshop, to illustrate my suggestions for improvements above:

1) Tab bar border has been made brighter
2) Tab bar corners are now anti-aliased
3) Drop-down arrow in address bar is now both smaller and brighter
4) The overall color of the skin has been brightened a tiny bit, and the strength of the gradient has been reduced

I'm by no means any UI expert, but I do think the amended skin is easier on the eyes, and looks more mac-like.

See for yourselves: http://i9.no/opera-skin-mac.png

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Great stuff, keep it coming!

@ zyph nice little changes

Interesting Opera SHARP design ideas, Joachim -- looking Safari-ish.

Good first iteration. I'll mention what jumps out at me on the Mac skin. I appreciate maximum browser screen real estate, so the tab bar/addr bar size is still a bit larger than Safari3.

Also, in Leopard, added depth when pressing Safari buttons was welcome. Opera's buttons give less of that organic Mac feel of pressing a button and seeing 3-D button movement when pressed with your cursor...

Btw, great depth on the tabs. The current tab jumps out more from the background tabs now. Previously, it was more flat. Nice refinement.

Good new look, but can be improved (better integration with the OS).
There is still this anoying problems with forms and video sites (try to watch an Apple ad on their website).

Otherwise, Opera rocks :-D

It is a bug in Opera using the quicktime plugin, I get the same thing it is load further down on the page

http://my.opera.com/Chas4/albums/showpic.dml?album=540739&picture=7501993

Yeah, hopte it'll be fixed for the final (even if it is not a major bug).
Even so, the bug with forms can make some sites not usable at all (even if it's their fault, badly written sites)

I like the fact that you made the color a bit closer to the default Leopard chrome, but I must say I think you are taking it in the wrong direction.

I am assuming this is a Carbon based app, and not Cocoa? If it is Cocoa (which I am assuming it's not due to the fact that it is multi os application) then I would say you should utilize the built in Mac controls.

In the vein of posting mock ups, I might as well throw up something I was playing with a while back. I would prefer if Opera actually made something more consistent with the likes of Safari and Firefox.

Bear in mind this is super rough and thinking about it more, I would probably change a lot of it, but I feel this would be a preferred step; design Opera to work in Leopard, don't port it.

This is the one thing holding me back from using Opera full time on the Mac.

(Obviously this is missing elements, it's definitely something I started and never finished).

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/18782/operaAfter.png

Cheers!

@ Amadeus003 does start to look like Safari, and is easy on the eyes

Active Panel selectors have ugly white pixels (not well anti-aliased). And zyphs tabs are much nicer than the current ones.

Way too much padding/margin in the tabs.

But I like this thing!

EDIT: active panel selectors is already on the known issues list, cool.

Toolbars and buttons are great, but the tabs could really be improved (I've got several rows of them opened and the tab bar located at the bottom).

May I ask whe the "Macintosh Native" theme doesn't try to immitate Cocoa? I'd rather call this one "Opera Macintosh Standard" and introduce a seperate "Native" theme that looks like a native app.

The new GUI in 9.5 is a tremendous inprovement! Very nice skin!

I am, for the most part, pleased with 9.50; it loads faster and uses less memory than 9.27 (though memory does grow and grow - that just seems to be in the nature of all browsers).

I prefer, in every way, the Mac Native skin (for me, the 9.50 Opera Standard skin is unusable) - and I heartily think Amadeus003's tabs are to be preferred to those in the build: I think it's easier on the eyes to make the active tab darker, inactive tabs lighter (and it's utterly clear in his example which is the active tab). I would NOT, though, stylize the tab's text with that "depth" look; plain text is sufficient (and is a quicker read); and the slightly lighter (than in the Build) brown he uses for the active tab provide plenty of contrast without the shadow.

And I like that his tab separators are not full height, but I think they should be darker, more obvious - as dark as in the 9.50 build.

Thanks for all your work; I'm looking forward to 9.51!

Mike Bradley

P.S. How about user-selectable text color for tabs. Or how about lightish yellow for the label text in unread tabs?

P.P.S. Thanks, zyph, for your contribution, but I think the lighter than black drop-down arrow seems fuzzy. IMO, the crispness of black is preferable.

P.P.P.S. I think it's terrific that the Mac Team is inviting comments and suggestions. Thanks guys and gals!

The Mac Native skin makes Opera much faster than the Opera skin for me