Aqua (user interface)

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Mac OS X 10.4.8 Aqua screenshot.

Aqua is the graphical user interface and primary visual theme of Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system. It is based around the theme of water, as its name suggests,^[1] with droplet-like elements and liberal use of translucency and reflection effects.

Much of Aqua's original design was intended to complement the look of the original plastics of the iMac and Power Macintosh G3/G4 desktop models, including the use of pinstripes and translucency. In 2003 and 2004, Apple moved to the use of brushed metal in their industrial design (such as with the aluminium Apple Cinema Displays); Aqua changed accordingly, incorporating the additional brushed metal look while de-emphasising the pinstripe backgrounds and transparency effects. This somewhat inconsistent mix of interface styles has been controversial among the Mac OS X user community.

1 Overview
2 User Interface
3 Litigation
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Overview

The Aqua theme and user interface was introduced at the January 2000 Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.^[2] Aqua's first appearance in a commercial product was in the July 2000 release of iMovie 2, in which the buttons and the scroll bar acquired the Mac OS X Aqua look, as well as in iTunes in January 2001.

Two primary features of Aqua are the gel-like buttons (colored red, yellow, and green) that control the windows, and the Dock, which facilitates the launching of and navigation between applications.

Aqua is the successor to Platinum, which was used in Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9.

[edit] User Interface

White and blue are two principal colours which define the Aqua style. Title bars, window backgrounds, buttons, menus and other interface elements are all found in white, and some, like scrollbars and menu items, are accented with a shade of blue. Most of the interface elements have a "glass" or "gel" effect applied to them; for instance, David Pogue described the original Aqua scrollbars as "lickable globs of Crest Berrylicious Toothpaste Gel".^[3]

[edit] Interface Elements

Below, all Mac OS X Cocoa interface elements ('controls') and their NEXTSTEP class name are given. Most of the controls are available in three sizes: regular, small and mini.

[edit] Windows

An open sheet in Pages.

Both the standard Aqua-themed pinstriped windows (NSWindow) and the brushed metal windows appear to have the navigational buttons sunken into the window, however in versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.2, the buttons appeared to be on top of the pinstriped windows. Brushed metal windows also have more plastic-like buttons. Mac OS X also allows users to choose a Graphite version instead of a Blue version of the interface. (In Graphite, window controls appear silverish-grey instead of red, yellow, and green.)

Toolbars, defined as NSToolbar, are available in two types: standard or unified. Standard retains the normal Aqua title bar and simply places a row of icons below it, whilst the unified look extends the title bar downwards and places icons on top of it, as if the window has one large title bar.

Sheets, which are modal windows, are defined as NSSheet. When opened, they are thrusted towards the user like a sheet of paper, hence the name. They are partially transparent and focus attention on the content of the sheet. The parent window's controls are disabled until the sheet is dismissed, but the user is able to continue work in other windows (including those in the same application) whilst the sheet is open.

[edit] Menus

Menus are backed with the standard pinstripe pattern, and when menu items are highlighted they appear blue. In application menus, which run in a single bar across the top of the screen, keyboard shortcuts appear to the right-hand side of the menu whilst the actual menu item is on the left.

Drop down menus for use in windows themselves (NSPopUpButton) are also available in several varieties. The standard 'pop up' menu is white with a blue end cap with opposing arrows, whilst 'pull down' menus only have one downward facing arrow in the end cap. 'Pull down' menus are available four different Aqua varieties, most of which have fallen into disuse with subsequent Mac OS X releases.

[edit] Text Boxes and Fields

The Apple menu, core to the Aqua interface.

Text boxes are black on white text with a sunken effect border, and are classed as NSTextField. In addition to regular square text boxes, rounded search text boxes are available (NSSearchField). For more extensive text requirements, NSTextView provides a larger, multi-line text field. A combined text box and pull down menu is available, NSComboBox, which allows the user to type in a value in addition to choosing from a menu. NSDatePicker is a combination textbox and picker control, which allows the user to type in a date and time or edit it with directional buttons. NSTokenField was introduced with Mac OS X Tiger, and allows the user to drag non-editable 'tokens' to a text box, between which text can be typed.

[edit] Push Buttons

Standard push buttons with rounded corners are available in two varieties: white and blue. A blue button is the default action, and will appear to 'throb' to prompt the user to carry out that action. The action of a blue button can usually also be invoked with the return key. White buttons are usually associated with all other actions.

Also available are rounded bevel buttons, designed to hold an icon; standard square buttons; glass square buttons and round buttons. In addition, circular, purple online help buttons are available which display help relative to the current task when clicked. All types of button are classed as NSButton. Disclosure triangles, although technically buttons, allow views of controls to be shown and hidden to preserve space.

[edit] Check Boxes and Radio Buttons

In Mac OS X, empty check boxes are small, white rounded rectangles. When they are checked, they turn blue and a check is present. They are defined as NSButtons, in essence they are buttons which can be toggled on or off. Radio buttons are similar in appearance and behaviour except they are circular and contain a dot instead of a check. They are defined as NSMatrix.

[edit] Tables and Lists

Tables and lists can be broadly categorised in three ways: NSTableView, a standard multi-columnar table with space to enter values or place other interface elements such as buttons; NSOutlineView, which is the same as NSTableView except it can contain disclosure triangles to show and hide sets of data; and NSBrowser, akin to the column view in the Finder. All table views can use alternating blue and white row backgrounds.

[edit] Progress Indicators

Two main types of progress indicator are available: a progress bar or a spinning wheel. Both are defined as NSProgressIndicator. The progress bar itself is available in two varieties: indeterminate, which simply shows diagonal blue and white stripes in animation with no measure of progress; or determinate, which shows a blue pulsing bar against a white background proportional to the percentage of a task completed. The spinning wheel indicator, also found in the Mac OS X startup screen, is simply a series of lines of various tones arranged in a circle spinning, like the side view of a rotating wheel.

[edit] Miscellaneous

Sliders are available in three types: one with tick marks and a triangular scrubber, one with a round scrubber and no tick marks and a circular slider which can be rotated. All are defined as NSSlider, and are available horizontally or vertically. The circular slider is simply a gray dot on a white circle which can be rotated to set values.

Mac OS X has a standard control for picking colors, NSColorWell, which appears as a regular square button with a color sample in the middle. When clicked, it shows the standard Mac OS X color palette.

Tab views (NSTabView) in Mac OS X appear to be sunken into the window, and are shaded darker and darker each time a new tab view is added inside another. The tabs appear in a row along the top of the sunken area, and are simply a series of white toggle buttons. The currently selected tab is blue. NSBox is a similar control, used to group interface elements, and uses the same sunken appearance, except without tabs. Image "wells" are also available (NSImageView), a small, sunken container into which image files can be dropped.

[edit] Fonts

Apple uses the Lucida Grande font as the standard system font in various sizes and weights. Some areas of the operating system use another font, Helvetica. Mac OS X makes use of system-wide font anti-aliasing to make edges appear smoother.

[edit] Animation

A widget being added to the Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4.

Aqua makes heavy use of animation. Examples include:

Dock icons bounce up and down as their corresponding applications are launched.
Dock icons also bounce up and down, in a different rhythm, when the application requires the user's attention, but it is not the one currently being used.
Dock icons increase in size when approached by the cursor.
When minimized, windows are "sucked" into the Dock using the "Genie effect".
When a folder on the desktop is opened or closed, the corresponding Finder window appears to come from, or disappears into, the folder icon.
Sheets are "posted" out of window title bars so it appears that a dialog box is in fact a sheet of paper being thrusted towards the user
Widgets that are added to the Dashboard appear with a "ripple" effect, as if being dropped onto the surface of a pond

[edit] System Integration and Standardization

There are a series of Mac OS X features which are standardized across the operating system to make the system more accessible, so the user does not have to learn multiple ways of doing the same thing. Included amongst these features are:

Services menu - found in the application "Apple" menu of most applications, which gives the user access to features of other applications
Palettes - Many palettes are repeated across the system, including:
- Color - The Mac OS X color picker includes multiple ways of choosing colors, including a color wheel, sliders, and a wax crayon view,
- Fonts - The Mac OS X font picker gives the user access to advanced typography features like ligatures and shadows in any program which allows the formatting of text,
- Character Palette - Found as 'Special Characters' in most applications' Edit menu, allows the user to insert characters they are unable to insert with the keyboard
Open, Save and Print dialogs - Are standard in many applications, and usually use a sheet view
A standard Installer, which can be easily employed using Apple's development tools

[edit] Underlying Technology

Aqua is powered by the Quartz Compositor, the Mac OS X window server.

[edit] Litigation

In a miniature re-enactment of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit, Apple quickly threatened legal action against those who made themes similar to their look and feel.

In particular, the use of various Object Desktop components created by Stardock came under fire:

WindowBlinds skins^[4]
DesktopX themes^[5]
IconPackager packages that contained Aqua-style icons

Despite accepting (for the most part) Apple's right to their copyrighted artwork, the skinning community took exception to their heavy-handed actions against all Aqua lookalikes, which many compared unfavorably to Microsoft's laissez-faire approach to the copyright of the Windows XP Luna style.^[6]