Introduction
SoftAqua v1.0 has been ported and modified from the original theme for the Mac. It bears resemblance to the Smooth Stripes style, with modified colours, and has a ’soft’ feel to it. It moves away from the standard Red/Yellow/Green buttons of the Aqua theme, and is toned down to a more subtle Yellow/Green/Blue. The visual style is provided with two different colour schemes - ‘SoftAqua’ and ‘Smooth’. SoftAqua resembles the above screenshot, with a metallic bar across the top of each window. The Smooth variation gives a metallic gradient all the way down the window.

First Impressions
The first impression I received after applying the theme was that it seemed to be very subtle. The colours do not stand out too strongly, and it has a soft, flowing feel to it. The change of red to blue for the close window button alters the look and feel of the theme to a surprising degree. It almost has a ‘nature’ quality to it. As in other Aqua themes, the bright blue scrollbars and tab colours remain the same.

Usability
The start menu is fairly plain, the panel itself has no major changes (except the alteration of the Log Off/Shut Down buttons). However once you start to navigate down the menu structure, the mouse-over state of an item changes to a dark grey gradient, which contrasts the simplicity of the start menu very well. The Apple logo is bright blue, similar to many other themes.

The taskbar is again simple, with the same dark grey gradient over the title of the window in use. The font changes to a lighter grey colour on the active window title, and remains very easy to read. The expand button to the left of the system tray is a simple plus or minus sign, which fits in well with the simple look and feel.

The shell style works excellently, and uses the green and yellow aspects of the theme. A ‘closed’ block has a green maximise icon, and an ‘open’ one a yellow minimise icon. These fit in at the side of the explorer window, and do not distract from what you are trying to do. Also, it was good to see that there are no problems with the theme working correctly in Photoshop, and the smaller buttons required in the graphics program worked very well.

The theme uses the Lucida Grande TTF font, and that comes included in the package. This is a standard found in many Aqua-related styles, and as in others, it works very well. The font is a reasonable size, large enough to read but not too large as to make the taskbar look cluttered. The font contrasts very well throughout the theme, and I have had no difficulty trying to read any text.

Extras
Other than the inclusion of the font and the shell style, there were no other extras in the package I downloaded. Many of the extras such as toolbar themes, application skins and wallpapers etc would be the same as those already created for similar Aqua themes.

Conclusion
To sum up, I used this theme for three days, and encountered no major problems. The theme is an excellent toned down version of Aqua, and I feel that it does its job very well. The colours compliment each other successfully throughout the theme, and although it is by no means incredibly different from other Aqua themes available, the small differences it does offer mean that it is certainly worth giving a try.

Download Soft Aqua v1.0 @ DeviantArt

Credits:
ChiLam - Soft Aqua Ported and Modded by ChiLam.
Max Rudberg - Smooth Stripes Original Author.
tjr - Soft Aqua Original Author.
KoL - Smooth Stripes (Visual Style) Original Author.