i just downloaded leopard 9a321 , to check out the features , and as a regular mail user love leopard and cant go back to tiger now...also i love the new preview , even with the crashes its amazing....one thing i did notice is both candybar and shapeshifter ...dont work at all with leopard beta's....which is o.k ....but kinda wierd , the shapeshifter prefpane wont even open and so would candybar , i have to settle with uno and buy pixadex...dang....anyhoo does anyone have a solution for that and all the dashboard and preview crashes ...i know i sound stupid ...this is a beta and crashes are inevitable , but anyway.....i love leopard toooooo much to start using tiger again but i do need to keep going back to tiger for some stufff....tell me wht u think

p.s - why is evreone so exited abt a new gui.......more than that we need small features which are already there in the leopard beta's ...and spaces is one of the best things invented along with preview which gets leopards preview capabilities on par with windows...i hated the tiger preview....and also i think shapeshifter is all we need .......i dont know exactly wht a new gui would mean....but i just think even if it did not change i would still buy leopard...since its got so many new features tht are addictively better than tiger...i love macs......
madhur

First of all, welcome to the forum!
Secondly, please use "a"s in the word "what," and please do not make other very simple grammatical errors that would be found in instant messages. One of the things that I love about this forum is that the writing (of native English speakers) is done better than in other forums.

Continuing, things like candybar and shapeshifter should have large problems in Leopard. So far, a lot of the changes in leopard are in the core, and those apps change things on a core level; they alter setting that have to do specifically with core settings. Basically, those are some apps that I would most except to NOT work in leopard.

Leopard might not *need* a new GUI, but in order to steal some thunder from the recent Windows Vista release and to continue it's ad campaign, and keep the switchers coming, Apple needs to have some fresh new look, not just some of the same-old.

I recently came across the Musingsfrommars.com apple development blog and the post there with an amazing tiger/shapeshifter theme that brought transparency to the windows, something like that would blow me away for Leopard, although I don't think it'll happen, too many people would say that Apple copied MSFT with a transparent UI, of course if they make a color shift, say from white to black, accompanied by a darker grey it would look *very* nice, and would be very sleek to boot.

I don't dislike Aero Glass in Vista, I think it's nice, but I think it's overly praised for what it is.

apple is obviously slowly phasing out brushed metal, in favor of a sleeker look found in a bunch of apps in leopard. shapeshifter wont work at least until leopard is released in finished form, if not later (large portions of it will have to be rewritten/updated). however, there has been some speculation (because of elements found in something new in leopard called CoreUI) that leopard could officially support themes (although the "aqua" file found in CoreUI could simply have something to do with resolution independence, it could refer to a theme capability)

hmm... one of those "top-secret" features?

i sure do wish that leopard gets a new look....also i now am a year old mac user......and have had the best time of my life....and i check forums like these 24*7 ......mac are really awesome specially for music...has neone got a lowdown on wht kind of skins would there be for leopard...i hope the menubar changes.......i like it but ...they should come up with some thang that blows the {censored} out of taskbar..hehehe...neway...thanks for all those answers

Yeah, I'm a stickler for these kinds of things, too. Use sentences and paragraphs, please. Multiple ellipses don't cut it.

Just about everything you listed there can only be the subject of pure speculation until Leopard is actually released or until we see something major in a dev release.

The skin-making companies have no reason to release anything until Leopard is officially released.

I happen to like the current menu bar, but a change could be nice.

I'd like it if they did something with Dock, but I don't actually have anything specific I'd like done. Again, a change (hopefully for the better) could be nice.