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The looks of things such as buttons, window decorations and icons (we're talking computer desktop concepts) has been a concern of mine since I was a kid. By now I should have learned that it is the inside of a computer program that is important— (trying to be funny)
The Benu bird represents creation and renewal. My Benu skins are based on an idea of a GUI look and a (conceptual) window manager. I also did some programming for drawing window decorations; for example, the titlebar buttons could be drawn at different sizes.
The obvious inspiration is BeOS, but this is not really a BeOS fan thing.
Download BenuAmp Winamp classic skin
Winamp.com user review:
This is just about the cleanest and most usable skin there is for Winamp.
It's visually appealing without being garish or pointlessly quirky.
Don't let the simple appearance fool you - this is an exceptionally
high-quality skin.
Garth Snyder, 31 July 2007
Download BenuAmp Silver (2009 version)
Shinier than apple! This is the improved BenuAmp.
Here is the original Benu thing. I created this theme for pekwm in 2005 but didn't make it public back then.
Tools are included that allow a colour theme specification to be used in updating the theme, including images. COOL! but the code is horrible and didn't work. Too bad, thought this was the earliest example of my programming anything interesting (web programming doesn't count), both C and Perl. Bugs identified: too small arrays in two places. Fixed. So if we change two colours, TitleBG_fo[0] and TitleShadow_fo[0], to 7fc7c5 and 347674, we get:
I've tested with pekwm 0.1.11 and referenced pekdon's theme file (a pleasant surprise to see my theme in the pekwm overview page). Here's my latest update:
The old versions: benu-pekwm017.tar.gz and benu-pekwm016.tar.gz.
I started some things which I haven't finished and probably won't. There are incomplete Benu themes for GTK+ and Firefox. The GTK+ theme is about as old as the pekwm theme, and I have used widget looks from it in later skins.
I got acquainted with Firefox theming long ago when I helped Roman Joost with PixelZilla. Some years later I themed parts of Firefox in Benu style (e.g. menus and scrollbars) and draw a few icons.
I have a screenshot showing very little of the Firefox theme (I hid the toolbars!), but the page in it is quite interesting. It's the first BenuAmp at Winamp.com (from Google cache). I like the random review.
