Unified Devtools Mockups
Rob Campbell
Stephen Horlander just finished up some mock-ups showing a proposed "dark themed UI design" for our unified devtools inspired by Alex Faaborg's recent dark design, shown here:
http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/projects/webDeveloper/web%20developer%20toolbar%20i1.png
I've put up copies of shorlander's work up here:
http://people.mozilla.org/~rcampbell/images/DevTools-i01-(Win7)-(Aero)-v03.png
http://people.mozilla.org/~rcampbell/images/DevTools-i01-(Win7)-(Aero)-v04.png
Some of the questions we've been discussing include:
1) Do you like the dark design theme? (I do!) Will text editors be light on dark text? (probably not)
2) Will addons be able to drop their own high quality icons into the palettes? (certainly, but our goal is to provide a nice set of icons for our own tools out of the box, addon developers will be able to drop whatever they want in there)
Alex suggests for our own icons we should probably be using "512x512 versions, even though we don't need them for the UI".
Tell us what you think. Don't be shy.
--
Rob Campbell
- blog: http://antennasoft.net/robcee
- twitter: http://twitter.com/robcee
Axel Hecht
Reading through faaborg's mockup, we should be cautious on assumptions
on how visuals connect to cultures, even to subcultures. Not that I find
anything as deep as Bjork in what Stephen did. Just want to point out
that a particular visual design might not link to the same music and
comics that you think it would in other parts of the world.
Axel
Mihai Sucan
Le Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:42:10 +0300, Rob Campbell <rcam...@mozilla.com> a
écrit:
> Hi fx-ers,
>
> Stephen Horlander just finished up some mock-ups showing a proposed
> "dark themed UI design" for our unified devtools inspired by Alex
> Faaborg's recent dark design, shown here:
>
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/projects/webDeveloper/web%20developer%20toolbar%20i1.png
>
> I've put up copies of shorlander's work up here:
>
> http://people.mozilla.org/~rcampbell/images/DevTools-i01-(Win7)-(Aero)-v03.png
>
> http://people.mozilla.org/~rcampbell/images/DevTools-i01-(Win7)-(Aero)-v04.png
Really good work!
> Some of the questions we've been discussing include:
>
> 1) Do you like the dark design theme? (I do!) Will text editors be light
> on dark text? (probably not)
I like the dark design theme. I only would like the source code views to
use dark text on bright backgrounds - to avoid eye straining.
> 2) Will addons be able to drop their own high quality icons into the
> palettes? (certainly, but our goal is to provide a nice set of icons for
> our own tools out of the box, addon developers will be able to drop
> whatever they want in there)
Icons look very eye candy, I like them. Also, looking at the other
devtools from the other browsers, we can see they also have made very nice
icons.
However, I do have one thought about icons: I am not sure how much meaning
there can be to icons for devtools. It might get hard to find good iconic
metaphors for some of the tools.
> Alex suggests for our own icons we should probably be using "512x512
> versions, even though we don't need them for the UI".
>
> Tell us what you think. Don't be shy.
Another thought: doesn't the global devtools toolbar duplicate the
devtools menu? We could have just one menu item for "Web developer
toolbar" or something.
Best regards,
Mihai
--
Mihai Sucan
http://www.robodesign.ro
Mike Shaver
> I like the dark design theme. I only would like the source code views to use
> dark text on bright backgrounds - to avoid eye straining.
I like the idea of a different scheme for source code views and text
entry fields, yeah.
Mike
Mike Ratcliffe
inspector because there is a lot of text there now that we have removed
the categories (over 180 lines of text).
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Kyle Simpson
>> use
>> dark text on bright backgrounds - to avoid eye straining.
>
> I like the idea of a different scheme for source code views and text
> entry fields, yeah.
Is it possible to have the light-on-dark vs. dark-on-light be an option? I
know I'm in the minority, but I'm not the only one on the internet who
strongly prefers light on dark, even for code editing. All my code editors
are light-on-dark theme. Doesn't strain my eyes at all, in fact
dark-on-light strains my eyes more.
--Kyle
Mihai Sucan
écrit:
I agree with the suggestion, and then the default doesn't really matter,
as long as dark-on-bright is a one of the available options.
Each person has different eye sight levels/conditions. While
bright-on-dark is tiring for me, dark-on-bright can also be equally tiring
for others. Hence an option would very much be welcome.
Best regards,
Mihai
Rob Campbell
On 2011-07-27, at 17:06, Mihai Sucan wrote:
>
> […]
>> 2) Will addons be able to drop their own high quality icons into the palettes? (certainly, but our goal is to provide a nice set of icons for our own tools out of the box, addon developers will be able to drop whatever they want in there)
>
> Icons look very eye candy, I like them. Also, looking at the other devtools from the other browsers, we can see they also have made very nice icons.
>
> However, I do have one thought about icons: I am not sure how much meaning there can be to icons for devtools. It might get hard to find good iconic metaphors for some of the tools.
It's true. As Axel suggested, not all metaphors are universal. Nevertheless, there's a pretty global community of developers and that hasn't stopped other toolmakers from getting pretty icons for their UIs. The icons will also have text labels available as well which should help alleviate potential confusion.
>> Alex suggests for our own icons we should probably be using "512x512 versions, even though we don't need them for the UI".
>>
>> Tell us what you think. Don't be shy.
>
> Another thought: doesn't the global devtools toolbar duplicate the devtools menu? We could have just one menu item for "Web developer toolbar" or something.
I expect we'll move what we can into the palettes and probably de-emphasize the Web Developer menu. I would expect the View Web Developer toolbar to be in the usual "View" menu.
~ rob
Rob Campbell
On 2011-07-27, at 17:42, Kyle Simpson wrote:
>>> I like the dark design theme. I only would like the source code views to use
>>> dark text on bright backgrounds - to avoid eye straining.
>>
>> I like the idea of a different scheme for source code views and text
>> entry fields, yeah.
>
> Is it possible to have the light-on-dark vs. dark-on-light be an option? I know I'm in the minority, but I'm not the only one on the internet who strongly prefers light on dark, even for code editing. All my code editors are light-on-dark theme. Doesn't strain my eyes at all, in fact dark-on-light strains my eyes more.
I'd like the option as well. The Orion editor has some theming capability which we could expose through an option.
I tend to flip back and forth between light and dark themes (and have a set of different colorschemes I use regularly), so it'd be nice to have some options.
Maybe we could incorporate Solarized for the editors?
http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized
~ rob
Mike Shaver
> Is it possible to have the light-on-dark vs. dark-on-light be an option? I
> know I'm in the minority, but I'm not the only one on the internet who
> strongly prefers light on dark, even for code editing. All my code editors
> are light-on-dark theme. Doesn't strain my eyes at all, in fact
> dark-on-light strains my eyes more.
Assuming we don't do something totally outrageous in building it, that
sounds like something a theme could easily do for you.
Mike
Axel Hecht
> On 2011-07-27, at 17:06, Mihai Sucan wrote:
>>> 2) Will addons be able to drop their own high quality icons into the palettes? (certainly, but our goal is to provide a nice set of icons for our own tools out of the box, addon developers will be able to drop whatever they want in there)
>> Icons look very eye candy, I like them. Also, looking at the other devtools from the other browsers, we can see they also have made very nice icons.
>>
>> However, I do have one thought about icons: I am not sure how much meaning there can be to icons for devtools. It might get hard to find good iconic metaphors for some of the tools.
> It's true. As Axel suggested, not all metaphors are universal. Nevertheless, there's a pretty global community of developers and that hasn't stopped other toolmakers from getting pretty icons for their UIs. The icons will also have text labels available as well which should help alleviate potential confusion.
>
What I meant was more that visual style has different connotations.
While some visual style might look cute and interesting to some, it
might be right out pornographic elsewhere. See pornocat,
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/home.
So this is more on a meta level. It's not just about shaking your head
meaning "yes" in one place and "no" in another, but also that the
artistic presentation of it can be loaded differently.
Not something that's blocking, but something that we should investigate
upfront.
Axel