Entr’Acte 2
Over a year ago I wrote an article announcing the beta version of Entr’Acte. I haven’t released a version to the public since, mainly because people as usual were incapable of reading the skin’s description before commenting on it. In fact for quite some time after I released it I got disheartened with the entire process. It just seemed at the time that it was damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I finally decided that I’d just make the skin for myself, so that’s what I’ve done. If no one else likes it so be it. Here it is– Entr’Acte 2.
When I started back the first thing I thought I would do is work within the boundaries the skinning system allows me. Thankfully, Opera 9.5 allows for a whole lot more than its predecessor. Opera 10 is going to get an overhaul from Jon Hicks. This skin works on the latest snapshot, but I am unsure for how long. I believe Jon will do an excellent job, and skinning on Mac OS X would become more of adjusting the main skin for personal preference and not making the program itself usable which is what it should be to begin with as that’s what Opera is about anyway.
There’s still many things that to my knowledge that are impossible to accomplish with the skin. A whole lot more than was possible before is possible for skinning. Due to limitations in skinning and/or my own toolbar preferences there aren’t any skin settings for having tabs at the bottom or on the sides, and placing the panel on the right isn’t very visually appealing either. I will eventually add support for different tab placements, but the latter will require a skin.ini hack to work properly. Speaking of such there already are a few hacks in place. The skin also supports (per Ralf Demuth’s request) Google Chrome-like tabs in two different flavors, aqua and graphite:
I personally find the Aqua Chrome tabs to look quite a bit garish. Like on the Google Chrome application itself the tab bar becomes an eye sore, where your eye wants to focus on it rather than the content you’re reading. The graphite version strips that problem away in my opinion, but I’m not too big of a fan of Chrome’s tabs anyway. The Chrome appearance has yet another hack in place, and it’s a custom button which allows for the tab bar to have a new tab button similar to Google Chrome’s new tab button:
Entr’Acte 2 also contains 16×16 icons for use in mini toolbars (like the Status Bar) and through a skin.ini hack the ability to use mini icons for all toolbars:
Using small icons for everything isn’t even remotely native, but like with the Chrome tabs there were people who helped me test this skin like Ralf who requested this as well. Having created 16×16 icons initially I was delighted to find a way to use them in the end.
There should be an easier way to have options in Opera skins, and the only way I can think of sanely offering the different options is to offer multiple skin.ini files where if someone desires these different options here they can replace the skin.ini file with these:
Entr’Acte 2 Chrome AquaEntr’Acte 2 Chrome Graphite>Entr’Acte 2 Small
To generate these I use a PHP script that create these automatically for me, but it’s not usable for the general public as it’s a hack job at best. Probably in the future I’ll have a form available that can generate these and a lot more. This’ll do for now.
Download
Entr’Acte 2 (615 KB) — Restart Opera to make sure the skin displays correctly.
I am offering the download from my own server as my skin hasn’t been accepted on My Opera yet. If you are using Opera it should automatically try to apply the skin. When it is accepted then I’ll update the post with the new location.
Edit: I’m no longer offering my skin for download. Upgrade to Opera 10.