Apple launched the long awaited MacBook this morning, replacing it's iBook line and the 12" Powerbook G4. The new Intel-based portable features a 13.3" glossy widescreen display at a native resolution of 1280x800 pixels.

InterfaceLIFT is pleased to announce immediate availability of over 600 widescreen wallpapers for the Apple MacBook and other laptops running at the same resolution. According to our web traffic logs, over 5% of InterfaceLIFT visitors are currently running their displays at this resolution.

Apple has released 11 sets of buddy icons for use with iChat. The icon sets are only available to .Mac members until June 1, 2006.

Communicate your mood and your interests to online buddies whenever you use iChat. It's easy with these Apple-designed icons, scaled for use in the iChat interface and available free to .Mac members.

For more information visit the .Mac blog. There is also a page explaining how to use buddy icons in iChat [.Mac login required].

Version 2.3 of ShapeShifter, a theme switching utility for Mac OS X, brings numerous bug fixes, and new theme capabilites and features including:

• Dark themes with light text colors are much more usable within Carbon apps such as Photoshop. ShapeShifter now honors the Aqua/Graphite setting in menu highlights for themes that were designed to differentiate between the two.
• DVD Player can now use custom application skins.
• guiTweak now works properly on "pct" images.
• ShapeShifter's Download tab now has a shiny indicator that lights up when new themes are available for download.
• guiTweak now allows you to manually set colors in any theme. For each color present in a theme, you can change them to the color of your choosing, let Core Image set them, or remove them from the theme. You can use this to easily turn off stuff like Mail list background or Dock customization, or to add it to a theme that doesn't have it. You can also tweak text colors after hue shifting a theme.

ThemePark is a Mac OS X application that allows you to create guiKit themes for use with Unsanity's ShapeShifter theme-switching utility. Version 3.0 brings the following new features and bug fixes:

• The structure of Application skins and the application portion of icon sets can now be completely customized, and new application skins may be added. The customized templates can be shared with other ThemePark users. You no longer need to wait for a ThemePark update to add a new or updated application to your theme.
• Added a new element editor which combines an image and a mask into a single editor. This simplifies creating iTunes application skins dramatically - the images no longer need to be broken apart into image and mask sections.
• Added the guiKit variant manager component that first debuted in the guiTweak portion of ShapeShifter.
• It's now possible to change the pressed state text color of push buttons independently from the other text colors.
• Added support for 'wbmp' resources, as used in Microsoft products. The support includes transparent integration of the "magic pink" BMP hack.
• Moved the window backgrounds in the Backgrounds category in with the rest of the window elements and consolidated them so only one background needs to be edited. Did the same with the Toolbar Background elements.
• The 'ppat' editor has gotten some speed improvements.
• Converted documentation to HTML.
• "Receive from Photoshop" no longer breaks in one file after closing another file.
• Resolved an issue that prevented "Receive From Photoshop" from working with certain images, such as Metal Button 9 Piece (Middle).
• The DVD Player app skin is present again, and rendering issues in it have been resolved.
• The save panel for a theme no longer gives the option to save as a Read-Only theme, since it never actually did anything.
• Discarding modified elements on a variant's description no longer results in a broken tpark file and an unexportable guiKit. Also fixes tpark files that may have been broken by this.
• Resolved an issue that prevented files from being opened by double-clicking them or dragging them onto the ThemePark icon if you didn't use a customized ThemePark display font.
• Miscellaneous fixes to all image manipulation code.

Today we are proud to release two new stock icon collections for software and website developers. Aquality Base Kit features 160 stock icons that follows the Mac OS X aqua guidelines with shinny reflecting highlights. Colors from a rich color palette combined with the floor shadow effect makes them fit perfect in both applications and web products that needs a aqua feel. A 40 icon Aquality Add On Kit 1 is also available. Click through to see a preview of every icon offered in the set.

If your project requires extra special attention, Bombia Design (the makers of Iconkits) offers custom design services to make your software or web site really stand out from the crowd.

We currently offer 13 interface icon collections in our Stock Icons section. The collections span a wide range of visual styles to give your project the professional look and feel that your customers demand. Prices are affordable and range between $69 to $299 for up to 160 icons in whatever file format your project requires.

We are pleased to announce the opening of our new Microsoft Visual Styles section. A special thanks go out to the themers and stylers who have graciously contributed their content already, including b0se, vStyler, Playboy, Neurosis99, danimator, dobee, teschio, icube00, Evgeny, Mohsin Naqi, Alan Zeino, KoL, and Evgenij Kursai. The section currently offers 15 visual styles for Windows XP, but many many more are coming soon.

Please join me in welcoming John Mull to the InterfaceLIFT team. John will be heading up the new section and has made the whole thing possible. If you have any suggestions for improving the new section, or anything else on the site, don't hesitate to let John and myself know by emailing us through the 'contact' link at the bottom of any page.

If you are the author of a visual style and would like to see it posted on InterfaceLIFT, please visit our submission form at http://interfacelift.com/themes-win/submit.php (login required).

Stay tuned for more exciting changes in store for the InterfaceLIFT community.

InterfaceLIFT and Iconkits.com are pleased to announce that they have partnered to make professional quality interface icons available to developers for use in software and web site projects.

We currently offer 11 interface icon collections in our Stock Icons section. The collections span a wide range of visual styles to give your project the professional look and feel that your customers demand. Prices are affordable and range between $69 to $269 for up to 160 icons in whatever file format your project requires.

Today we are proud to release a new stock icon collection. Que Base Kit features 160 bright icons with sharp borders that will give your project a clear and crisp look. These icons are also available in scalable vector format, perfect for print and web applications. Click through to see a preview of every icon offered in the set.

If your project requires extra special attention, Bombia Design (the makers of Iconkits) offers custom design services to make your software or web site really stand out from the crowd.

On Thursday our webmaster rolled out a moderate upgrade to the InterfaceLIFT code. Traffic levels immediately skyrocked to an all time high so it looks like it's well received.

New site features include the following:

• Content can now be sorted by downloads, ratings, and comments.
• Lists of wallpapers can be restricted to a single resolution.
• Page number navigation improvements.
• More intuitive contextual navigation.
• Personal favorites lists for registered users.
• New rating system.
• Users may now post comments on mac and windows icons in addition to wallpaper and mac themes.
• Ability to handle much higher traffic levels.
• Numerous bug fixes.

We're not standing still. You can expect more improvements to be rolled out soon. Here's a list of some of what we've got planned for you:

• Addition of a Windows visual styles section.
• Addition of a Linux icons section.
• Graphic re-design of the entire site.
• No more pop-under advertising!
• Brand new folksonomy-based tagging system (to replace categories).
• Ability to view profiles and favorites lists of other InterfaceLIFT visitors.
• Ability to subscribe to RSS feeds of specific artists, users, tags, and resolutions.
• Friends and testimonials in user profiles
• User avatars in the comments.
• Graphical plots of download statistics.

Special thanks go out to all of our regular visitors and of course our over 1900 content submitters. As always, please feel free to send us feedback. We respond to as many as we can and we definitely read every message. This is your site, help us make it even better.

--Jeff

Here it comes! The new and incredible Aero Stock Icons collection from the Yellowicon Studio. Primarily developed taking the new upcoming MS Windows Vista interface as standard, this prodigiously wonderful icon collection offers you over 170 state of the art icons. Designed by Yellow Icon?s artists taking the maximum advantage of the available resources and guidelines of the Avalon Graphic Subsystem, the Aero icons will be now also provided in high resolution of 256x256 pixels, as used in the new MS version. And the best part, it will be also compatible with Windows XP, Mac OSX, Linux and Web applications! The Windows Vista release is scheduled to the 2006 second semester, so the Yellowicon Team is offering you the greatest and perfect opportunity to put your project in advance of all. What are you waiting for? Come to Yellowicon and check it out!

For other royalty-free icon collections by this and other artists, see the stock icons section of InterfaceLIFT.

The FastIcon Studio recently released a new icon collection for web designers and software developers. Vista-Land Stock Icons, developed in style inspired by the look and feel of the newest MS Windows Vista interface, with 125 icons for toolbars and navigational elements and can be used in any operational system. The icons are delivered in Windows, Mac OSX and Linux format in all normal sizes from 256x256 to 16x16 pixels, and in the following formats: .PNG, .ICO, .BMP, .GIF, .TIFF and .ICNS. The Vista-Land is available today for just $ 249 USD.

For other royalty-free icon collections by this and other artists, see the stock icons section of InterfaceLIFT.