Aaron Light

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Version 1.2.3 - 7 November 1997 - Fee: $5

Download Aaron Light 1.2.3 (101K)

Without Aaron Light:

With Aaron Light:

What it Does

Aaron Light makes Mac OS 8 look more like Mac OS 8. Although Apple has updated the Macintosh user interface in Mac OS 8, many third party applications do not yet take full advantage of these changes. Aaron Light patches these applications to use the new appearance, giving your Macintosh a more uniform interface. In particular, Aaron Light patches progress bars (including the startup progress bar and some indeterminate progress bars or barber poles), floating windows, and dialog box backgrounds, as well as fixing a number of menu drawing glitches.

Aaron Light also substitutes Espi Sans Bold 10 for Chicago 12. Many people prefer Espi Sans Bold 10 to the Chicago and Charcoal system font options provided under Mac OS 8. If you want to use Espi Sans Bold 10 as your system font, select Chicago in the Appearance Control Panel and Aaron Light will do the rest. You do not need to install any Espi or Espy fonts for Aaron Light to do this.

What You Need

Aaron Light requires Mac OS 8. If you are running System 7 and want the new Mac OS 8 interface, you should try my other shareware programs Aaron (not Aaron Lite) or Kaleidoscope, or just upgrade to Mac OS 8.

Free for registered users of Aaron

If you have already registered Aaron, you do not need to pay the shareware fee for Aaron Light. You can remove the Annoying Shareware Message from Aaron Light the same way as you did with Aaron. If you do not remember how to do that, contact Greg.

Version History

Version 1.2.3 (7 November 1997)

Fixes a crash at startup.

Version 1.2.2 (6 November 1997)

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop no longer use Mac OS 8 push buttons or popup menus. Patching them caused too many problems.
The Sound Volume control strip no longer draws a barber pole as its slider indicator.
Indeterminate progress bars (barber poles) use the correct accent color.
Progress bars reflect accent color changes immediately without having to restart.
Improves menu highlighting in several applications, such as Adobe Acrobat.
ShrinkWrap 3.0 progres boxes use gray backgrounds and Mac OS 8 progress bars.
Claris Home Page 2.0 no longer draws progress bars where it shouldn't.
Corrects the mask on the stop sign alert icon.

Version 1.2.1 (19 October 1997)

Patches indeterminate progress bars (barber poles) in MT-NewsWatcher 2.3.5.
No longer patches BBEdit dialog backgrounds, since that caused too many problems.
Fixes the default button ring glitch (for real this time).

Version 1.2 (5 September 1997)

SoundApp uses Mac OS 8 progress bars and floating windows.
Claris Emailer no longer uses Mac OS 8 floating windows, since they did not draw the zoom box on the small toolbar (preventing you from expanding the toolbar to its large size).
The Global Village status bar does not overlap the Help menu if you let Aaron Light substitute its system font for Chicago.
Fixes a default button ring glitch introduced in version 1.1.
Fixes menu highlighting glitches in Photoshop and Alpha.

Version 1.1 (21 August 1997)

Patches floating windows in more applications, such as Claris Emailer and MT-NewsWatcher.
Patches indeterminate progress bars (barber poles) in Anarchie and MT-NewsWatcher.
Sets dialog box backgrounds to gray in SimpleText, BBEdit, and Anarchie, as well as the Netscape 4.01 download progress box.
The Global Village status bar menu draws with a gray background.
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop use the Mac OS 8 push buttons, radio buttons, and check boxes instead of Adobe's custom versions.
ClarisWorks menus draw correctly: no more white splotches or black highlighting.
Espi Sans Bold 10 has the delete key glyph used for the Finder's Move to Trash command key equivalent.
Menu dividers are correctly beveled in most applications.
Fixes menu highlighting glitches in Netscape, GraphicConverter, and BBEdit.