visual refresh and Tango?
Mike Shaver
Fx2 have looked at the Tango Project's work. It looks decent from a
quick read, and they're working in some cases from a basis of our
existing Winstripe/Pinstripe work, so I'd be interested to hear
others' thoughts on it.
Even if we don't adopt their icongraphy and guidelines wholesale, it
seems like there could be some useful things to crib.
http://tango-project.org/Tango_Desktop_Project
http://tango-project.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
Mike
Steven Garrity
> Wondering if any of the people involved in the visual refresh work for
> Fx2 have looked at the Tango Project's work. It looks decent from a
> quick read, and they're working in some cases from a basis of our
> existing Winstripe/Pinstripe work, so I'd be interested to hear
> others' thoughts on it.
Mike,
I've been working a bit with the Tango project. We'd love to see some
Tango stuff in Firefox. I'm not sure it's the right fit for Windows/Mac
(especially Mac, since it has such a well defined visual style to work
with). However, I might be a good fit as a default theme on Linux.
Mike is right that some of the visual styles of the Tango
guidelines/icons are indeed inspired by the great Winstripe/Pinstripe
themes that Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander created. It was also
created to help app developers (like Firefox) have a visual style with
which to blend in (like we do on the Mac, but not as much on Windows).
Obviously, there's a critical mass necessary that isn't there yet.
However, the Tango style was also created with other visual styles in
mind. While it isn't a perfect match, it doesn't look completely foreign
on Windows, Mac OS X, and especially Gnome/KDE. This aspect is one that
makes it a particularly interesting fit for Firefox/Thunderbird.
Of course, it will be ideal when Firefox can pick up the gtk-stock icons
(see my comment on the wiki:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:FX2_Visual_Update). In the mean time,
though, and for those areas where there are no appropriate stock-icons,
Tango could be a good fit.
We've already got a few shims in place. Along with, Nico Kaiser, Garrett
"BlueCurve" LeSage (now at Novell), we've got Tango icon themes for
Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1565/) and Thunderbird
(https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2258/).
The Tango crew would be glad to help out in any way we can.
Let me know if I can answer any questions about Tango - cheers,
Steven Garrity
Mike Beltzner
> Even if we don't adopt their icongraphy and guidelines wholesale, it
> seems like there could be some useful things to crib.
Perhaps the most useful thing to crib would be their idea of guidelines
and colour palettes, and the idea of putting all of the icons together
on a web page to be able to quickly scan them all for consistency and to
see how well the entire set "hangs together". Some of those icons look
good, but there's a bit of a lack of consistency of perspective and
detail across the set.
(crossposting to dev.apps.themes where most of the visual refresh
discussion has been going on; the initial idea behind that was to keep
what is usually a subjective conversation about visuals out of the d-a-f
forum which is meant more for discussions of UI design and
implementation ... perhaps that thinking was wrong and we should merge
back, though -- thoughts?)
cheers,
mike
--
mike beltzner, user experience lead, mozilla corporation
Mike Beltzner
> http://tango-project.org/Tango_Desktop_Project
> http://tango-project.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
Shaver and I chatted more on IRC, and he came up with a couple of other
interesting links:
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/
http://somerandomdude.net/srd-projects/sanscons/
Fran...@gmail.com
Mike Beltzner wrote:
> Mike Shaver wrote:
> > Even if we don't adopt their icongraphy and guidelines wholesale, it
> > seems like there could be some useful things to crib.
>
> Perhaps the most useful thing to crib would be their idea of guidelines
> and colour palettes, and the idea of putting all of the icons together
> on a web page to be able to quickly scan them all for consistency and to
> see how well the entire set "hangs together". Some of those icons look
> good, but there's a bit of a lack of consistency of perspective and
> detail across the set.
>
I keep reading around here that 'themes by committee don't work'. Good,
we're all agreed on that. How about getting a few good designers in to
do the job?
Look at this : https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1977/
This is not suitable for the general user base as it was designed
specifically for business users. But it does demonstrate what Firefox
CAN look like. It does show that we can lead and not follow, on browser
UI - we don't have to look like IE any more. Yes, I know it's one of
mine, that's not the point.
This type of unified style can already give us an edge in the corporate
market, all that is needed is a similar approach for our general user
base default. Just throwing ideas about.
BTW ...don't look at me on this, I'm well tied up on paid projects,
haha.
Frank :)
Fran...@gmail.com
appear.
Whenever the subject of themes comes up, immediately everybody thinks
...toolbar buttons... and the rest just seems to get forgotten about,
and it shows.
I'm just trying to encourage a different way of thinking on this and to
point out that a theme is SO much more than that.
:)
Kevin Gerich
> Mike Shaver wrote:
>> Even if we don't adopt their icongraphy and guidelines wholesale, it
>> seems like there could be some useful things to crib.
>
> Perhaps the most useful thing to crib would be their idea of guidelines
> and colour palettes, and the idea of putting all of the icons together
> on a web page to be able to quickly scan them all for consistency and to
> see how well the entire set "hangs together". Some of those icons look
> good, but there's a bit of a lack of consistency of perspective and
> detail across the set.
Tango would be a great choice for the colors of the Linux theme. Color
palettes should be per-OS though. Winstripe uses the XP icon color
palette, Pinstripe uses colors that are more apropriate to Aqua, even
though the Apple HIG doesn't actually specify a palette. The color part
of the Windows Vista UX guidelines hasn't been written yet.
Kevin
Mike Beltzner
> I keep reading around here that 'themes by committee don't work'. Good,
> we're all agreed on that. How about getting a few good designers in to
> do the job?
Already on it, actually :) There are a couple of designers (I'm going
to encourage them to participate in here) who are working on some new
theme concepts for us right now. Of course, their deliverables will be
submitted for public comment just like anyone else's would ...
> CAN look like. It does show that we can lead and not follow, on browser
> UI - we don't have to look like IE any more. Yes, I know it's one of
> mine, that's not the point.
Keeping a look and feel that's native to the OS is essential. Numerous
experimentations with look and feel in software (Java's Swing, the
original Netscape UI) have shown that users don't react well to
applications that don't fit in with their operating system's default
windowing look and feel. I actually don't think we look any more like
IE now than we have to for the sake of keeping a native look and feel.
(Our icons are very different, the basic chrome structure is
different, etc.)
cheers,
mike
--
[ mike beltzner / user experience lead / mozilla corporation ]
Fran...@gmail.com
Mike Beltzner wrote:
> On 10 Apr 2006 01:27:53 -0700, Fran...@gmail.com <Fran...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I keep reading around here that 'themes by committee don't work'. Good,
> > we're all agreed on that. How about getting a few good designers in to
> > do the job?
>
> Already on it, actually :) There are a couple of designers (I'm going
> to encourage them to participate in here) who are working on some new
> theme concepts for us right now.
Good one, Mike. Just out of interest, are they working to a clear brief
on this or are you letting them run with it?
>Of course, their deliverables will be
> submitted for public comment just like anyone else's would ...
My guess would be that they would not expect anything less.
You are right about keeping in tune with the OS, in our core market
that would be Windows, which is why I was surprised at so much Mac talk
around. As someone said to me a while back, "One man's Aqua is another
man's, Baby Blue."
Good to hear you're on it, Mike.
Frank :)
Aronnax
Hi,
i really don´t understand the discussion on mozilla.dev.themes so far.
for icons you want
- colors
- the silhouette of the icon should show a distinguishable shape
- vector graphic
and "Modern icons tend to be very sharp with their use of line and
contrast, and most crib off of the OSX trick of using plastic-like light
reflection to make the icon sparkle and shine."
Ok - every designer could work with this information - you should now
simply give some of them an order to create some samples
or do you want some new professional icons now and for free?
it needs only a few minutes for something like this ;-) and than some
variations for Windows, Mac and Linux needs no time as well ;-) - and
every good designer looks, as we know, every day in this discussion -
thanks for it, so we will see many, many variations in the next days ;-)
and then a committee can merge all together until everybody is happy
with the result ;-)
-----
and by the way
(for the Mac theme only) the icons up to date are good - could be better
naturally - but are not the reason, why so many dislike (hate) the up to
date Mac theme and even some missing Mac features are not the reason -
it is the whole impression - it is the context of icons, the toolbar,
the bookmarkbar and tab design in the first place that doesn't hit the
taste of the Mac user
A discussion only about new icon-guidelines (but then the same kind of
icons) could naturally solve the problem as well ;-)
Regards
Aronnax
http://www.takebacktheweb.org/
hold...@gmail.com
implemented? I kinda think the visual refresh should wait until that.
Then per-OS styling is a bit more of a CSS issue. In fact, then we
could start talking about theme's allowing users to select a color
scheme. Not to mention being able to scale buttons to whatever size was
wanted rather than limiting users to large and small.
I know its a bit in the future, but it would make the graphical refresh
would seem much more... exciting? Useful?
Boris Zbarsky
> Can anyone on here push to get src="SVG FILE" on image tags
> implemented? I kinda think the visual refresh should wait until that.
I doubt that SVG will ever get light enough to be usable this way without major
memory issues. Sorta inherent in the design of the language....
-Boris
Mike Beltzner
> on this or are you letting them run with it?
The RFP I put out asked for:
- 6 new concepts for the default theme (based on existing chrome structure)
- all icons (including those in the customize panel)
- toolbars
- closebuttons
- drop down glyphs
- url bar glyphs (ie: the lock, the RSS button (although that's
standards-ish now)
- warning and error glyphs
> You are right about keeping in tune with the OS, in our core market
> that would be Windows, which is why I was surprised at so much Mac talk
> around. As someone said to me a while back, "One man's Aqua is another
> man's, Baby Blue."
Yeah, I pointed them to the wiki documentation as well, and mentioned
the OS native look and feel requirement. Other than that, I didn't
really want to limit their creativity.
ehume
on a web page to be able to quickly scan them all for consistency and
to
see how well the entire set "hangs together". Some of those icons look
good, but there's a bit of a lack of consistency of perspective and
detail across the set."
I think that consistency is way oversold. If you look at highly
consistent remote controllers, for example, the ones with the most
consistent buttons are the ones you can't figure out how to use. The
ones with different shapes, sizes and placements of buttons are far
easier to use. IMO, the first considerations should be that an icon
says what it does and is easily distinguishable from other icons.
Although the former cannot always be accomplished, that latter is
generally something a developer can do - unless are design orthodoxy is
slavishly adhered to.
The lighting and perspective issues that the Tango site mentions are
nice, but must IMO be subsidiary considerations.
Ed
Mike Beltzner
> I think that consistency is way oversold. If you look at highly
> consistent remote controllers, for example, the ones with the most
> consistent buttons are the ones you can't figure out how to use. The
> ones with different shapes, sizes and placements of buttons are far
> easier to use. IMO, the first considerations should be that an icon
Design consistency does not mean that items have the same shape, size
or placement. It means that they use a consistent colour palette, and
are drawn in a consistent style in terms of line weight, detail,
perspective and use similar metaphors and shape changes within their
own set to communicate similar concepts.
Look at that good remote control again: all the number buttons will
have the same shape, so that you can instantly group them (by sight or
by touch) and find the familiar pattern of a number pad. Up/Down
buttons will have the same shape as well. That's consistency.
> says what it does and is easily distinguishable from other icons.
> Although the former cannot always be accomplished, that latter is
> generally something a developer can do - unless are design orthodoxy is
> slavishly adhered to.
>
> The lighting and perspective issues that the Tango site mentions are
> nice, but must IMO be subsidiary considerations.
>
> Ed
cheers,