The latest drop of Substance 4.0dev (code-named Key Largo) features four new experimental toned down skins. These join the existing skins described here (Sahara, Moderate, Business and Creme) and here (Business Blue Steel, Business Black Steel, Raven Graphite and Raven Graphite Glass). The new skins are:

Nebula which uses the colors of Nimbus and the title painter inspired by the Orange Metallic theme of Synthetica:

Nebula Brick Wall which uses the colors of Nimbus and an orange title painter inspired by the Orange Metallic theme of Synthetica:

Mist Silver which uses gray colors and header painter inspired by Safari:

Mist Aqua which uses aqua colors and header painter inspired by Safari:

Note that these are experimental and subject to change throughout the rest of the development cycle. You’re more than welcome to test them on your application and provide feedback. In addition, a few existing skins have been tweaked a little in the header portion. The Business skin line uses a slight touch of brushed metal:

And the header painters of Office skin line have been changed to use softer brushed metal painters as well:

Some speculate that Apple is porting Carbon to Windows. It started with iTunes and QuickTime, and now continues with Safari. I don’t know the implementation details, and how rich are the Windows APIs that Apple uses (I’ve been able to run Safari not only on XP and Vista, but also on Windows 2003), but there are some interesting visual quirks. To see what i’m talking about, resize Safari window and move it to the lower left part of your screen. Now, double click the title bar and watch the top part of the screen closely. It takes about 2-3 seconds, during which Safari is all over the place. Here is the screenshot of what happens under Windows 2003 (click to view fullsize version):

Before you say that 2003 is not officially supported, pretty much the same is happening under Vista (except the title pane buttons). As you can see, the original window is split halfway, showing the right part right next to the screen top border, the title pane buttons are replicated, and the toolbars are maximized ahead of the main window itself. Does this mean that each part of Safari “header” is implemented as a top-level window, which are then carefully “glued” together to create an illusion of a seamless window? I’ve never seen a Windows application behave like this, not one written in Win32, not one written in Delphi and not one written in Java.

Pushing Pixels is the natural continuation of my blog at java.net. Currently, it’s in the setup stage, where everything is new to me. Most probably, a lot of stuff will change as i make myself comfortable with WordPress, and you’re welcome to subscribe to the RSS feed.

Mostly, this blog will track the progress of my open-source projects such as Substance look and feel. Feel free to leave comments about what you would like to see here.