Keynote 09 Theme Chooser
February 1st, 2009
This is the Keynote ‘08 theme chooser, shown when you start Keynote:
Here is the updated screen in Keynote ‘09:
Here are some differences I see:
- The “Open Recent” feature is a welcome addition!
- The “Close” button text changed to “Cancel”.
- The text “Choose a theme for your presentation:” is gone. Instead, the screen has a title bar.
- You can now adjust the preview size.
- There are more themes.
- The window corners are rounded.
- Components are less rounded than before.
- The scrollbar and buttons are less glossy than before.
- The slide size option is now right-aligned. Its right edge matches the right edge of the Choose button. Overall, component alignment and spacing seems cleaner.
- The background is black.
- The previews have reflections.
- The gray background seems to have a very subtle gradient.
- “Don’t show this dialog again” is gone.
Why did I do this? Because when I ran Keynote ‘09 the first time, I noticed the “Open Recent” feature. I couldn’t remember if the old version had that feature, so I decided to check.
The funny thing is, I didn’t notice anything else different about the screen. (Maybe that’s the whole point!) Seeing them next to each other, however, makes it obvious they’ve put a lot of thought into the details.
Just to add a couple of observations from a cocoa developer:
1) There is not a single aqua control on the window. This is now more and more commonly the case, in fact Aqua is beginning to feel a bit dated. The best comparison is the scroll-bar and the buttons. It is probably a pretty safe bet that we are looking at “Marble” (or something fairly close to it), which is Apple’s rumoured successor to Aqua.
2) The window has changed from a modal sheet to a modal window. This allows for the title to be in the title bar as you pointed out but also for the modal to feel more application-wide rather than specific to one window.
3) The divider line is no longer one pixel of black. It is instead one pixel of dark grey and another pixel of white below it. We use this trick a lot to get that “indented” look.
4) The view containing the themes is IKImageBrowserView. Well, I don’t know for sure but it should be looking at it. It will probably perform better compared to the view before it, but Im not sure this is a great test to stress it :p
5) The “rounded corners” you mentioned are actually a side effect of a much larger change. The window is now a “textured” one. Although you have screen capped it when it isnt in focus it will have a much darker grey look.
Just a few more for your list
Here’s another bit of fun – make a standard java window and then compare it to the same window made with cocoa. The results are shockingly different in some cases
Holy crap, I’d pay a lot just for that Open Recent button. That has been an irritation every time I open Keynote…which for me is frequently. Must upgrade…