Carpe Stellarem is proud to announce Xtender our latest tool under development for modding your Mac. Xtender breaks the bounds of OS X theme development forever... and more...
In essence, Xtender is not a theme changer. Xtender can "inject" any program on the computer with outside code. This makes it possible to add functionality into an application or modify an existing behavior.
Xtender 1.0 will ship with 5 basic functions:
Themes - Xtender 1.0 will support the XScheme+ format and will take full advantage of ThemeKit 2.0. But Xtender takes a new twist on themes. Themes can integrate directly with Xtender's injector engine. This allows themes to not only change the look of a program, but also the behavior. Want to create an actual start menu? No problem. How about re-arrange the order of the close/minimize/zoom buttons? Xtender can do that. Theme creators can mix and match Xtender mods within a theme to create a theme experiance thats not just skin deep. Xtender also has a royalty free API for mod creation, so anyone with coding skills can make mods. Xtender for the first time provides near-Linux theme support but not only allowing the changing of looks, but the changing of behavior. Best of all, Xtender operates without modifying the users hard drive.
LiveTheme 2.0 - LiveTheme is back from Duality 3, and even better. Version 2.0 is built on the Safari rendering engine, and operates similar to the iTunes Music Store (without the need of a credit card of course). Users are presented with a page, they click on a theme, and it is downloaded directly into Xtender. It uses a plug in architecture meaning anyone who wishes to can create a php, html, or asp web page with support for MySQL, Flash, CSS, and anything Safari supports, and distribute themes to LiveTheme users quickly and easily. We have working with XThemination for the past month on an implementation of LiveTheme and testing. We plan to release a standalone LiveTheme client for Duality, ShapeShifter, and ThemeChanger next week. Best of all, LiveTheme allows downloaded .themes and XSchemes to work in ShapeShifter, so format will not be a concern with LiveTheme. However, GUIKit cannot be supported due to it not being an open format (we can't read it). Users of ThemePark can easily export to XScheme however.
Icons - Xtender will feature a re-hashed icon system. Users can change the pictures that represent items in the Finder. A new version of our Catalyst supports editing of icon sets and deployment.
Window Behavior - Xtender isn't just a new Duality. It breaks out of the traditional theme niche by providing new capabilities. Xtender features the ability to bring back the old Window Shade feature from OS 9. It can also disable window shadows, make all windows Aqua, or make all windows brushed.
Mod management - Xtender also allows mods to be installed independently of themes. Developers can create mods using a royalty free API, without dinking around with a "lite" API. The API is royalty free for all freeware, shareware, and commercial developers. Developers can create theme-independent mods to change system behavior without changing looks.
Another feature I'll mention really quick is sound sets. Sound sets will not be included with the 1.0 release but are being coded for the 1.1 release. We are operating on a very quick timeline and the feature just didn't make the cut.
And best of all, Xtender will debut at a price of $15. This is a fraction of the cost it would cost to buy each competing program seperately. We also plan on making contributions back to an open source project.
Xtender shatters the bounds of OS X and allows developers to make their customization dreams a reality. Themes aren't about looks anymore. Xtender allows a theme to be an experience, not just another skin.
Currently the Xtender engine is complete. Xtender was planned to be the successor to our "Monolith" project, but Monolith was abandon in favor of Xtender. We are still linking up various functionality on the theme and icon features. The LiveTheme feature is done. Theme management features are complete. We are starting on Window Behavior within the near future. As I stated we are operating on a very quick timeline and expect to be released by March at latest.
Sorry if this is a lot to take in but we have a lot to announce.
Edit: Forgot to mention we should also be launching the official Xtender site next week.
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--Colin Cornaby, Carpe Stellarem -
http://www.carpestellarem.com.
