Do you love or hate: OS blog themes?

[Agenator]

So you've seen those vista or mac osx blog/website themes. Sure they look pretty, but they are resource hogs, they use images directly from the operating system, and often they make external graphics look bad. It also seems to me that these reduce the creativity of the designer. Instead of actually trying to build something that looks good, they are simply mimicing the operating system. Its true that I have seen some fairly reasonable executing of the Mac OSX style, and admitadly with the right eye candy (ie. expandebale side moduels using the osx minimize, maximize, close buttons) it is half decent. But it still feels rather fake an un original to me, and thus I dont like it. What about you guys? Do you love OS themed styles? Why? Do you hate them? Why as well?
-Agenator

 

[nterror]

Hate them.

Id also add sites that use M$ Office themes (both 2003/2007). As mentioned, extremely unoriginal, and it doesn't add familiarity. Just seems lazy, and annoying after the 5th site you come across doing the same thing.

 

[Parsa44]

I also hate them.

Firstly I think its pretty aboriginal, there are a infinite variations of templates you can have, why pick one that looks like Vista?

Yes it might mean they use less bandwidth which is true when people stop going on thier website altogether.

Just look at all the best popular websites on the internet, do any of them have templates that look like OS?

 

[farscapeone]

I hate them because I like originality.

 

[ichwar]

I voted I love them because I think there's a LOT of room for creativity inside of OS blog themes. I've seen a lot of them that aren't done right, (and I hate them), but I've seen a few that are done well, (and I love them).

 

[Agenator]

I think there's a LOT of room for creativity inside of OS blog themes.

Could you possibly elaborate this further? (this is crossfire after all )

 

[Livewire]

Could you possibly elaborate this further? (this is crossfire after all )

Well, I can certainly do what I can (I'm also for them, long as they're creative), if only because I've noticed something over the past few years - we need to define some things so everyone's on the same playing field.


We need to define what one means by OS Blog Theme - do you mean has a similar look and feel to a popular OS, be that Linux or Windows, or do you mean it has a clock in one corner, a bar at the bottom, and a button at one side that opens a popup menu with more choices.


Cause the first one I can see - it's hard to be creative when you're essentially cloning an OS graphic for graphic.


The second? Seriously. One look at WinCustomize shows it isn't hard at all to get creative if all you're restricted to are a clock, a button, and a bar:

http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=6764&libid=1 isn't hardly close to:
http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=6731&libid=1 isn't hardly close to:
http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=6760&libid=1 doesn't have much in common with:
http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=6738&libid=1


There's a lot of freedom depending on what you define as OS Blog Theme. Frankly I like the idea of it looking similar to an OS, as long as it's not overkill - I use Inanis Glass on my wordpress blog, and I quite like it. Close enough to vista to say it's a clone, but I quite like some of the other color schemes it comes with, so meh.



Given enough time I bet I could make something awesome if all I was required to stick with was a "start" button, a bar, and a clock ('cept for me sucking so bad at CSS, so it'd take me a while). Now, if I'm supposed to make it look like, say, Vista, then there's not much room for creativity at all - I can't play around with the colors, or how buttons look, or anything.

But a button, a bar, and a clock? That could be expanded on.

 

[Smith6612]

I like OS themed sites. They look neat, are creative, shows that someone knows their stuff with CSS (Vista themes anyone?) as well as Javascript, and unlike stated above, they do not use files from your hard drive. They use files from the web server (which is all CSS, and images).

 

[Agenator]

I agree with livewire that a website designed in the fashion of an operating system GUI can look good. I just dont think that vista and OSX clones are all the creative. By the true sense of the word you cant be creative when cloning something.

I like OS themed sites. They look neat, are creative, shows that someone knows their stuff with CSS (Vista themes anyone?) as well as Javascript, and unlike stated above, they do not use files from your hard drive. They use files from the web server (which is all CSS, and images).

First of all, if someone has all those skills to reproduce an operating system on the web, imagine how amazing a website that they created on their own would be....
2nd. Bandwidth does not mean using files off your hard drive (where did you get this from?) When I said they used images from the OS I mean that people usually just screencap and image and then code around that, without designing anything on their own. By increased bandwidth I meant that because they screencap these images its hard to design sites that use the repeat-x repeat-y css commands which allow the site to resize the width of nav bars etc. For instance, if someone copies the aero glass bar in vista, they usually copy the whole image and use the whole image on the site. All of these images add up and make load times increadibly slow.
-Agenator

 

[nterror]

There are programs that can strip out images (ie resource hacker). Then the countless tutorials on creating Vista graphics... IMO, the default Windows/Mac themes are an eyesore. Its just simple gradients (OSX) with a semi-transparent layer (Vista glass). Win7 is just the semi-transparent layer. I prefer detail with at least some imagination.

 

[Smith6612]

I agree with livewire that a website designed in the fashion of an operating system GUI can look good. I just dont think that vista and OSX clones are all the creative. By the true sense of the word you cant be creative when cloning something.

First of all, if someone has all those skills to reproduce an operating system on the web, imagine how amazing a website that they created on their own would be....
2nd. Bandwidth does not mean using files off your hard drive (where did you get this from?) When I said they used images from the OS I mean that people usually just screencap and image and then code around that, without designing anything on their own. By increased bandwidth I meant that because they screencap these images its hard to design sites that use the repeat-x repeat-y css commands which allow the site to resize the width of nav bars etc. For instance, if someone copies the aero glass bar in vista, they usually copy the whole image and use the whole image on the site. All of these images add up and make load times increadibly slow.
-Agenator

I never stated that they do load off of the hard drive. I was replying to the first post's statement on those images loading off of the HDD. I as replying stating they loaded off as images from the web server. As per the long load times, if you have a halfway decent connection with decent latency/pipelining to the server, you shouldn't take any more than 3 seconds to load up one of those OS themes on a blog.

 

[Agenator]

depends on which one.... But its still longer than some other sites.

 

[chaoztlg]

My opinion on this one is pretty neutral. Indeed, they lack alot of originality from the creator's side. On the other hand, they give the user something to familiarize with, and when done right, makes the site/blog easier to navigate. The same can be achieved by placing your navigational stuffs somewhere easily found...

 

[prppedro]

I don't love, but not hate. I like the Linux simple themes. Certains blogs, and M$ site have a heavy Windows Vista theme, what make the M$ paga a trash.

Realy, I like much the HTML pages.

Att. Pedro

 

[ashhhevil]

I seriously hate 'em.

I mean...I go to websites to get out of my computer world. But the OS themes make me feel like I'm still here. I feel so trapped.

While real websites make me feel free and happy.

 

[adamparkzer]

I don't really care, but seeing as there wasn't an "undecided" or "indifferent" option, I chose hate. I find websites that copy operating system themes as unoriginal. They're essentially stealing a graphic interface of a popular company because they're too lazy to think of their own, and are profiting off another company's theme, if their website brings income.

 

[igames]

They CAN look very good, but most the time they are a epic fail and no one wants it to look like windows or a mac inside of a windows or a mac, i would never use one because i like hand designing things and not using templates and themes

 

[xpbrian]

i personally hate them because they cant make a cool theme by himself