Latest Update June 6, 1998 Latest version: 1.8 Updated for 1.8 and Mac OS8

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The Nerd Corner

Eldacur Mauvelous for Kaleidoscope

The picture to the right shows a typical Macintosh Finder window as rendered by Eldacur Mauvelous. As you can see, it's done all in shades of purple, generally lighter shades, and the window decorations are kept fairly simple.

Mauvelous is my third Kaleidoscope scheme. I designed it to be as simple and unobtrusive as many of the grey color schemes, but with a dab of color. I chose shades of purple at first because it was a color that we hadn't yet used in an Eldacur scheme. Anteak uses earth tones, LeitMotif greys and teal, and Bluish blues. Once I got going, though, I grew very fond of the colors, especially as the became a bit warmer and pinker.

The main color in mauvelous is actually lavender, not mauve. I chose it because it is a light shade with a fairly neutral temperature, half way between warm reds and cool blues. In a reversal of the pattern I used in Anteak, the inactive windows are a darker mauve. For accents I've used various shades of rose, maroon and pink, leaning more to warmer shades. The widgets in Mauvelous are based on the ones from Anteak, but simplified and sharpened.

I hope that the overall effect is to create a scheme that is at once colorful and visually appealing, but still easy on the eyes and simple enough that it isn't distracting. If I've done my job, most of the time Mauvelous will slip into the background, but every now and then when your eye wanders off of whatever you're working on, it will catch on some detail or a bit of color and for just a moment you'll see the scheme before it slips away again. I'm looking for the occassional grin, not to blow your socks off. Drop me a note if it works.

Download Eldacur Mauvelous

To use Eldacur Mauvelous, you must have at least version 1.5 of Greg Landweber's Kaleidoscope. You can read about or download Kaleidoscope from Greg's Web page.