Over the years, the designers and programmers here on Mars have come up with a slew of cool ideas, designs, and software. What started out as intrigue about the possibilities of changing the look and feel of the Mac OS X interface, turned into a raging passion. At the same time, our experience in web design and development made working on Dashboard Widgets and other HTML-based desktop apps a logical endeavor. While developing one theme in particular — then known simply as "Crystal Clear" — we discovered a way to incorporate transparency into Mac windows. This work gradually led us up the rather steep learning curve for the main software architecture behind Mac applications: Cocoa. While learning Cocoa, we've also dabbled a bit in AppleScript, Unix shell scripts, and other languages... and this work produced some little apps as well. Meanwhile, what started out as a design challenge did not diminish. Some Martians turned their talents to icon design, and others to developing images for decorating the desktop. What none of us anticipated was the strain that working with such teeny-tiny graphics would place on our eyes. Martians have particularly keen vision, but the strength lies mostly in identifying distant objects — such as Earth. By contrast, working on icons, buttons, and other widgets that can tweak the Mac interface requires pixel-level attention. Although design tools easily enable one to zoom in on such objects, one still needs to be able to take in the whole object at actual size. We can do it, but boy do we get headaches! Most of the downloads on the MarsThemes website can be used freely, but our two latest (and most complex) software tools — CrystalClear Interface and Crystal Black — require a license after the trial period. http://www.marsthemes.com http://www.marsthemes.com/images/marsthemes_logo.png http://www.marsthemes.com blog article.]]>October 24, 2013 July 22, 2013 download the updated one here.]]>June 14, 2013 May 31, 2013 March 20, 2013 December 15, 2012 November 12, 2012 October 26, 2012 October 20, 2012 September 24, 2012 Themes page.]]>September 14, 2012 September 12, 2012 September 4, 2012 Smooth Black button theme and compatibility with Mac OS X 10.8.1 (the latest release of "Mountain Lion").]]>August 24, 2012 August 23, 2012 August 15, 2012 July 31, 2012 Icons section to download.]]>July 30, 2012 Bug fixes: Updated component that does the Sparkle update check, fixed install of Notification Center statusbar icon on Mountain Lion and of custom graphic for Endicia, and fixed an error that sent unnecessary messages to the system log.]]>July 18, 2012 July 14, 2012 Crystal Black Release Notes.]]>June 26, 2012 Software.]]>June 26, 2012 is a new app from MarsThemes with one simple, useful trick: It replaces the application name with its icon in the system menubar. For more info about this new shareware, see Software.]]>June 23, 2012 Software.]]>June 21, 2012 Widgets page.]]>June 20, 2012 Crystal Black Release Notes.]]>June 18, 2012 App Skins page.]]>June 9, 2012 App Skins page on MarsThemes.]]>June 6, 2012 App Skins page.]]>May 31, 2012 Crystal Black Release Notes.]]>May 30, 2012 CrystalClear Interface is now available. The most significant change in this release is full support for Mac OS X 10.7.4 ("Lion"). It includes several other bug fixes and minor enhancements. For details, see the CCI Users Guide. CCI 2.7 is free for CCI 2.6 licenseholders and for CCI 2.5 licenses bought before May 10, 2012.]]>May 19, 2012 Crystal Black expands and improves graphics for Lion 10.7.3 and contains bug fixes, including a bug that could disable older versions of iTunes.]]>May 4, 2012 CrystalClear Interface is now available. The most significant change in this release is full support for Mac OS X 10.7.3 ("Lion") for the major upgrades introduced in CCI 2.6 for Snow Leopard.]]>May 1, 2012 Text Tools (v. 1.2.1) ensures that the MTLAgent is disabled if no other MarsThemes plugins are installed. The System Graphics app for Crystal Black was recently updated to support Lion 10.7.3.]]>April 22, 2012 April 19, 2012 Crystal Black version 1.3 is now available for download. This is a free upgrade for existing license-holders. The new version completes the arduous task of theming system graphics for Lion (10.7.3 only). It also includes numerous new features, enhancements and bug fixes. ]]>April 16, 2012 Software page.]]>April 10, 2012 Crystal Black. As previously noted, this version is for Snow Leopard only. It is a free upgrade for existing CCI 2.5 license-holders. A new license is $15.00. All the details are now available on the CrystalClear Interface website.]]>March 31, 2012 CrystalClear Interface 2.6 is nearly finished for Snow Leopard, but despite best efforts and large amounts of work and time, the status for Lion is not looking good. I don't use Lion myself and don't plan to, and I don't want my Snow Leopard users to have to wait another couple of months while I bang my head on Lion. Already, updating CCI and Crystal Black for Lion 10.7.3 diverted work on CCI 2.6 for at least a month in January-February. Perhaps Mountain Lion will change my mind, but for now, CCI 2.6 will be available only on Snow Leopard. Of course, CCI 2.5 and Crystal Black will still support both Snow Leopard and Lion.]]>March 3, 2012 February 19, 2012 February 14, 2012 January 30, 2012