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List:       kde-artists
Subject:    toolbar icons
From:       Torsten Rahn <torsten () kde ! org>
Date:       1999-12-19 7:36:48
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> our toolbar icons.  They have served us well to this time.. but they
> have a few problems which need fixing.
>

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finally!

>
> 1) They only come in locolor (8-bit) when most of us are now running
>    hi-color systems
>
> 2) They only come in "small" size (no medium or large versions)
>
> 3) Their size is wrong
>

Yes!!! It's really great that you did some research on this. This is
something that
bugs me (and other people) since kde 1.0-beta4!

>  However, this isn't quite true!  If you look at the toolbar
icons closely, you'll see that MOST (if not all) of them are in fact
> 16x16 icons with a 3 pixel transparent border around them.

I found this out when I was trying to use non-toolbar icons in a
toolbar.  I noticed that the toolbar buttons assume that the
transparent border is there.  This is wrong!  All widgets using icons
> MUST assume that the icon is "full".

Most people did it like this because there was a lack of the toolbar-widget.

If one would use the full toolbar-area the pixmap would hit the edge (i.e.

the shadow/highlight) of the button. That would look very unprofessional.

Therefore it was part of the artists work to leave a transparent border

around the icon. Of course it should be the toolbar that should reserve this

space making it impossible to use it.

There are two possible solutions to this.

1) Say that the small size of the toolbar buttons is 22x22 but strip
   off the transparent border off of the icons and make them the 16x16
   icons that they really are.  The buttons must compensate for this.

2) Redraw the toolbar icons to take up the full 22x22 size.  The
   toolbar buttons would then have to be bigger than that to have some
>    sort of buffer (for aesthetic purposes)

I favor 2). First because I doubt that all icons measure 16x16. I

think there are lots of icons which use about 20x20.

Second, it's really hard to paint very good-looking meaningfull icons on

16x16 especially using locolor. 32x32 is already way too big for most

applications and screens. Therefore 22x22 or 20x20 would result in good-looking

and screenspace-saving icons. The border around should measure 2 pixels

on each side. (Jost -- what do you think?)

I favor 1).

My proposed to solution to problems 1) and 2) are the same: integrate
> the toolbar icons into our current icon scheme.

Yes!

We know have (for example):

$SHARE/icons/small/locolor/apps
$SHARE/icons/small/locolor/devices
$SHARE/icons/medium/hicolor/mimetypes

I propose that we extend this by adding the following subdirs:

icons/small/locolor/toolbar
icons/small/hicolor/toolbar
icons/medium/locolor/toolbar
icons/medium/hicolor/toolbar
icons/large/locolor/toolbar
> icons/large/hicolor/toolbar

I agree -- where

small = 16x16

medium = 22x22 or 20x20

large =32x32

It would be possible to support medium lo/hicolor and large hicolor for KDE 2.0.

(We really can't support all sizes.) But all other sizes/color-depths should

already be technically implemented.

ADDITION:

Something that would really improve the look of our toolbars (i.e. make them more

decent) would be  desaturating toolbar icons on mouse-out and displaying them

normally on mouseover. If you don't know what I mean have a look at:

http://people.redhat.com/jrb/GNOME-PIXMAP/index.html

the very last image on the page shows a beautiful apple made by TigerT.

It would be very nice to have at least the first (greyed out) and the last effect

(less saturation) for hicolor-icons (If the user selects locolor-icons this

option should be disabled).

(I would vote for the last one being default to avoid making KDE look to triste.)

Right now our toolbar-buttons look very colorful. One should know that toolbar-icons

usually are a completely different thing than application-icons:

- Toolbar-icons are usually more symbolic and simple to improve usability:

You use toolbar-icons much more than application-icons

and need to find them fast. To seperate them visually from application icons

(and to avoid that the desktop looks too blarring colorful) there are two

things one may may do:

1) the artist prefers a certain shade of color (like Netscape / Corel does

with their browser using shades of blue/violett). We already do this with

KFM, too: this is the reason why the KFM looks so grey. Many people already told me

that they would like to see the Netscape/Corel-like look instead and I agree very

much on this wish.

2) greying out/ desaturate the toolbar-icons on mouse-out. This would have to

be done by the programmer as providing two different pixmaps would be too much

work for the artists in an OpenSource-project.

Application-icons on the other side are usually much more beautiful and less

symbolic. Instead they try to be much more unique and original -- they are the

brand of the application and are used to "advertise" the application in the

users head (Think of the CorelDraw icon e.g. -- If you wouldn't know what

this icon is about you would never guess that a vector-graphic-application

starts once you click on it). Toolbar-icons are tools one just wants to

use. Making them too detailed, color- and beautiful decreases usability a lot.

So if you implement the desaturation/...-effect this should be done for toolbar-

icons only (or you should be able to switch it on and off for toolbar- and

application-icons separately.)

Torsten

Thoughts? Comments?
--
Kurt Granroth            | http://www.pobox.com/~kurt_granroth
KDE Developer/Evangelist | SuSE Labs Open Source Developer
granroth@kde.org         | granroth@suse.com
           KDE -- Putting a Friendly Face on Unix

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