Thursday, March 23. 2006Arrrr... Artwork!
Good news, everyone!
OK, so Futurama won't return, that's really rather sad. But here's the good news: We finally succeeded in finding a group of talented artists for amaroK. That's right, we now have an official amaroK-Artists team. Currently this team consists of Derek Nelson and Lee Olson, and they've already done some wonderful work for us, created splash screens and release images, and set up all of the infrastructure needed for the team. If you are interested in joining the artist team, check out this page on our wiki. The coolest thing is that amaroK will finally get its own complete iconset. Here's an early preview:  Looks sweet, doesn't it? Me, I can't wait to see it in action  PS: Here's a technical question for developers: We would like to make it so that the user can switch in amaroK whether to use our custom icon theme, or the normal system icon theme. Is there a way to switch between different themes application wide? Trackbacks
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Very nice icons, but the dice icon is technically incorrect.
When you count the dot's on one side and on the oposite site you'll have to end up with 7. When you look at the dice in the iconset you'll notice that the top has 4 dots, therefor the bottom should have 3 dots, but in the icon we can see that the right side has 3 dots.
Does it really have to be a standard d6, or is the "oh that looks like a die" enough for the normal user? But, yeah, I'm guessing that changing it wouldn't be too hard, and it would be the sort of thing that'd bug me.
Any chance of having the random button look like a d20? !:^)
The icons look great. One question: will they look as good in 16x16 or 24x24? I think the dice should have more contrast.
Anyway, I'm waiting to see what these will look like in the upcoming amaroK 1.4!
On another note: Futurama will return (at least that's what the rumors say). Just not on TV but on DVD-Movies...
Let's hope for the best
I hope I'm not misunderstanding, and I don't mean to come off as a troll, but does this mean that amaroK will be completely ignoring the user's KDE icon preferences for icons that are already defined in the selected icon set (playback controls, etc.)? amaroK already does a couple of things in non-standard ways -- the tool buttons on the left-hand side of the library window and the pulsing gradient on selected playlist items come to mind -- and it's really bothering me that one of the most powerful "killer apps" on the Linux desktop has such utter disregard for the conventions and UI/UX principles of the environment it's designed for.
Do not worry - it will not disregard your icon preferences, if you set them yourself (like if you use Noia), it will only replace the ones that are default
Like most other apps also do
That's actually not how I've planned this. The idea is rather to replace all icons application wide by default. And then, we might add an option in amaroK to switch back to your system icons, if technically feasible.
Actually I agree to Jeff. Replacing the whole iconset is an absolutely bad idea. You should rather focus on making the queue-information more beautiful. Also, the way the list item is highlighted in the current alphas seems rather out-of-place. I like themeing the information window, no question about that, and I especially like the new volume control! But I don't like a new iconset. The new volume control made sense because the old slider wasn't really reminding to volume at all, and I would even agree to putting it into kdelibs.
The nice thing in KDE is that everything integrates so well with the rest. Compare it to Windows, and you will find out that KDE makes you feel less the application but actually just the task you're doing. You just click "Write an E-Mail" instead of "Send to Outlook". KDE4 development tells us that this is the right direction to go. Unify the apps to make users be able to focus on the tasks. So why should AmaroK go the other way? Most people that use konqueror instead of firefox for webbrowsing use it because it integrates so nicely with the environment, because GTK just looks different and does things different. I see this too with JuK and AmaroK, though not that hard. Clearly, AmaroK is way better suited for listening to music, and clearly, Firefox renders web pages just way better, but some still prefer a consistent desktop. It is nice to see that you have an AmaroK-Artists-Team. Go and create nice-looking icons for those actions which don't have one yet in the default KDE iconset. Don't get me wrong, AmaroK is one of THE killer apps on Linux, and I love it! And an artists team will clearly help you in the future, this is one of the things most app developers wish to have but never get ^^. I would suggest that you let your artists re-design the now playing music item in the list. It should look pretty much like the KDE-standard, but still provide a bit of eye-candy, and maybe combined to features? eye-candy is normally useless if it doesn't bring a feature that can't be realised without it.
Will the SVG sources for the icons be released so that they can be tweaked? That's the plan for the Oxygen Icons (http://oxygen-icons.org), which will the be default theme in KDE 4.
http://admrlpix.tripod.com/amarokicons.svg.tar.gz Here is the sources for the icons they **ARNT** updated but if you want to mess with them here they are
wow.. this is such a bad idea on so many levels and retrograde....
please, before making this the default in amarok ask yourself how this benefits the user. then step back a moment from the little universe that is your application and consider that it's one piece of a much larger system. there are reasons we have things like icon themes that all apps use, and "so people don't have to draw their own icons" isn't really one of them (they can copy each others icons and include them in their software packages just like they used to). no, we have icon themes to allow for a certain amount of consistency which actually ends up benefiting people and makes the entire desktop look a lot less like a pile of mashed potatoes and more like a designed whole. what is the problem you are trying to solve here exactly: branding? "because we can"? "we don't like the crystal icons"? "we don't like that users can easily change our icons"? really, what next, an amarok-only widget theme? sigh
I totally agree with this. While I do think that those icons are beautiful and much cooler than the original Crystal ones, I'm quite concerned that the amarok devs prefer a shiny appearance over KDE-wide consistency.
If you're really not satisfied with the current icons, why don't you try to get them into kdelibs Crystal, so the other media players make use of them too? Or do you especially aim to be different from them? Don't misunderstand me, I love amarok, but this is a Really Bad Idea (TM). You should at least make it opt-in, where the standard icons are selected by default and you can change to the new ones, not the other way round. Please.
To play devils advocate:
At the moment we use the majority of system icons, which is nice, but lacking in a number of areas. For example, where there is no fitting icon to represent the action or item, eg, Podcasts - we have to come up with our own icon to fill the space. This in itself offers a break in consistency, which could be overcome by providing a comprehensive icon set for the application. I would forsee that a system-wide icon set could over ride these shipped icons - an example is how Nuvola replaces the crappy default KMix icons.
Aaron, the basic problem is that if someone uses a non-crystal icon set then our custom icons and the icon set clash with each other.
Add this to the fact that some crystal icons are randomly distributed with kdelibs, some with kdebase and its not easy to tell which is which... you can see why markey has always wanted a consistent icon set.
As one of the users of such a "non-Crystal" iconset, I'll chime in: I don't want apps to replace my Bluecurve icons with custom icons, especially not custom icons like these, with an even more "shiny" look than Crystal, thus not looking anything like Bluecurve. Adding custom icons for the stuff which is not in the standard iconsets is an acceptable compromise (just make sure your icons don't look too excentric and it will not even be noticeable - the current amaroK icons are fine), replacing the system icons for common things like "play" isn't.
> This in itself offers a break in consistency
ship crystal icons and there is on break in consistency -by default-. i also understand there are rheinhardt icons available: ship this too. my real concern is turning this on by default, thereby hurting the default experience for most of the people who use amaroK just to "optimize" it for the corner case where someone uses a different icon theme for which the special icons don't exist. now imagine if every app shipped their own icon theme by default because a handful of icons they needed were missing. what a mess. why even have icon themes! i really question the value of this feature in general, but i can see that being a personal preference. turning this on by default, on the other hand, would really make no sense and be a net-loss for the desktop experience.
> if someone uses a non-crystal icon set
which is not the typical case. i think the mod-crew is being listened to way too much here. most people leave things at the defaults, particularly when it comes to icon themes. if amarok should have its own icon theme -by default- then it simply looks 100% inconsistent -by default-. sounds like a case of shooting yourself in the head just so you miss the foot. > Add this to the fact that some crystal icons are randomly > distributed with kdelibs it's not exactly random. the ones in kdebase/pics are application icons (e.g. for emacs, designer and 400 others) and the rest are application specific (e.g. kicker/data/icons). if any of those application specific icons are actually useful outside of that application (so 2 or more apps use it) they can be moved to kdelibs rather easily. of course, that would take interacting with upstream, but that's hardly tricky or difficult.
Well in the context of the fact that we still just depend on kdelibs 3.3 its not that useful to get stuff moved into kdelibs.
Don't some distros ship with their own icon theme?
> Well in the context of the fact that we still just depend on
> kdelibs 3.3 its not that useful to get stuff moved into > kdelibs. you won't depend on 3.3 forever. fixing things usually implies future releases; and if you can fix something in the long term that's a good thing to try and do. > Don't some distros ship with their own icon theme? yes; and if they do and ship amarok they ought to ship icons for it as well ... if not, they can turn on this "custom icons" feature .. this is what (good) distros do: integration. there's no reason to make amarok ignore the icon theme by default because of this.
First of all, the iconset is not nearly as great, as some people say here. The dice icon got the aspects totally wrong. The strange icon right to the play icon (with the two circling arrows) is butt ugly, as it's too narrow and too compendious. Regarding consistency, why do some have this grey round background thingy and some don't? Where's the point?
The note in front of three staves is also kind of silly, why not just remove the staves? Furthermore I can only agree with aseigo. You should assume that the user choses a sane system wide icon-setting (image that it's a gnome like brown icon set, your blueish new icons would look terrible). I can only hope that you won't introduce these icons as the new default in amarok, as that would be one of the worst decisions of the amarok project in terms of user experience. Please, please think about! Try to get the missing icons in the default icon set and deliver a replacement icon in the mean time. But do not change all of these icons.
Please don't make this iconset or any other Amarok own iconset as the default iconset. System wide consistency and user experience is much more important. You have to find another way for missing icons. You could make the missing icons for Crystal and Oxygen icons, and contact the people in charge of these icons to integrate the work.
You can provide a full replacement icon theme for Amaok, but it shouldn't be default, even if it's more beautiful.
oh, right, that's what i didn't think of at first.
you CAN indeed make a replacement icon set for Crystal that just contains your new icons (replacing the standard play icons, dices & co.) and uses Crystal as fallback. That enables you to rely on the standard icon names while making it possible to have the "better" icons available too for those who want them. Now that would be a feasible solution, wouldn't it? (And totally comply with good standardism, and stuff.)
I notice a lot of "you should do this, you shouldn't do that" type comments, but no "I'll do those as crystal if you like" type comments...
basically, if noone helps, you suck it up as what you get.
ah, the "help or shut up" defense. brilliant =)
what's interesting about this situation is that creating the whole icon set is actually more work that creating the fewer icons needed for crystal. there is a crystal icon HOWTO and there are ways to get icons done. remember when amarok did an icon contest? they had quite a few responses, no? and if you are looking for "contributor cred" to be able to shore up opinions, i'll throw my "i work on kde libs, which you may know as the ones amarok happens to use" card on the table 
Creating additional icons for one iconset is a missed idea, since it will work only for that one iconset. The truth is, you CAN'T create iconset for everything. App NEEDS it's own style, needs to be memorable and unique, and it needs a CONSISTENT iconset. So there is a natural need for custom icons. Why every KDE app should look the same? If you insist on system-wide look, just enable one option in config. I fully support the whole idea AS LONG as there is an option to fallback to system's defaults.
> App NEEDS it's own style, needs to be memorable and unique, and it needs a CONSISTENT iconset.
> So there is a natural need for custom icons. Can you see the oxymoron here? Custom icons are very clearly inconsistent with all the rest of the desktop. If every app does custom icons, the whole desktop experience will have no consistency at all. Having a consistent icon set within the application is possible by default, missing icons can be added to Crystal, no matter if they're included in kdebase Crystal or as application add-on Crystal icons. But replacing Crystal is a REALLY BAD IDEA. > Why every KDE app should look the same? Because it's kind of strange that the same action has different icons in different applications? I don't want KDE to be Windows, you know. > If you insist on system-wide look, just enable one option in config. No, it must be "If you insist on a custom amaroK look, just enable one option in config". Just like the color scheme, which is KDE colors by default and custom amaroK with one simple config option. C'mon, this is ridiculous! Don't you know that aseigo is always right
>> App NEEDS it's own style, needs to be memorable and unique, and it needs a CONSISTENT iconset.
>> So there is a natural need for custom icons. >Can you see the oxymoron here? Custom icons are very clearly inconsistent with all the rest of the desktop. I'm not talking about that kind of inconsistency. Just look at ordinary KDE app, or even amaroK if you like: some icons are missing in the default iconset, so they are replaced by icons from other iconset. Other icons fall back to low-res versions. Some actions and/or entities has no corresponding icon, so devs has to use some similar ones (got "Album" icon? No? Oh well, we will have to use "CD" icon instead...). Those kind of inconsistencies are unfortunately present every here and there on the desktop, and are much worse than what you are talking about (not mentioning that they kill the apps unique style). The result is that developer has no control of how his application will look like on Joe's screen (!). You call that a consistency, I call it a chaos. On the other side, if developers uses their own iconset, they can make it sure it's good looking and consistent, because they can tweak it as they like. Look at my amaroK toolbar: http://ljubomir.simin.googlepages.com/consistency.png Pay attention to "Shuffle" button - it's too big, uses different colour palette, and looks different. Who should I bother with it? Iconset maker? Are you suggesting that EVERY iconset for kde should contain ALL icons used in spreadsheets, audio players, system tools, edutainment apps, login managers, and ALL OTHER possible kde apps, which would satisfy needs of ALL of them? Trust me, it's a hell to create, maintain, and use. Or maybe you think that we should have only one OFFICIAL iconset? Give me a break. Consistent look for basic tasks and actions should be familiar among the desktop, but lets not make our life harder (and uglier) for sake of fake consistency. >If every app does custom icons, the whole desktop experience will have no consistency at all. BS. "Same icons issue" is just a fraction of "desktop consistency", and I doubt it's more important than "good icons issue". Our policy of getting EVERY POSSIBLE icon into an iconset is wrong. It kills creativity, and slows down the development. You can't ENFORCE developers to use only YOUR icons. I would not write a single app for kde if I would be limited to "system icons". It IS good for ones which are the PART of the KDE project, but far from acceptable for "independent" apps. BTW, how many ISV's write apps for kde? Man, I'm so happy amaroK is in extragear. >Having a consistent icon set within the application is possible by default, missing icons can be added to Crystal, no matter if they're included in kdebase Crystal or as application add-on Crystal icons. So you ARE saying we should all use "The Only Approved Iconset TM". And what about other iconsets? Noia, Nuvola, Reihard and many others? We should patch all them too? We're unfortunately bringing us into a situation: "use crystal or die". Tomorrow it will be Oxygen. You really think it's gonna so rock, and bring every possible icon, for every possible app and action, and be so cool that nobody will want anything other? And that no additional icon won't be needed in future? And it will be easy to maintain? Wake up. Secondly, between "consistent" and "good" is hell of a difference, and the "consistent" itself is hard to achieve with your solution. >But replacing Crystal is a REALLY BAD IDEA. No, it's not. Mixing crystal with non-crystal is. >I don't want KDE to be Windows, you know. Don't make me laugh, it's no argument. The easiest thing to do is to stick somebody an "EVIL" sticker. >> If you insist on system-wide look, just enable one option in config. >No, it must be "If you insist on a custom amaroK look, just enable one option in config". Just like the color scheme, which is KDE colors by default and custom amaroK with one simple config option. No, you are not right . There is no sense in creating an additional (and unique) style and disabling it by default. It's like creating and advertisement and not showing it on TV. It's not experimental (like XGL), nor dangerous (unlike DMA on hdd's sometimes). AmaroK SHOULD feature it's own style, and if you dislike it - turn it off. Distros can do it by default anyway. And funky-monkey is turned off because almost nobody likes it >C'mon, this is ridiculous! Don't you know that aseigo is always right Right, everybody loves Aaron.
> Who should I bother with it? Iconset maker? Are you suggesting that
> EVERY iconset for kde should contain ALL icons used in spreadsheets, > audio players, system tools, edutainment apps, login managers, > and ALL OTHER possible kde apps, which would satisfy needs of ALL of them? I understand this statement as "theming is futile, don't even try it". My Lila icon set is very well relatively complete, and does also cover the most important amaroK icons, so it is possible to do that. The inconsistency in your toolbar is caused by your icon set covering some icons (play, pause, etc.) while missing out others, including the shuffle button which is still Crystal. This is not the default, so please don't blame the amaroK icons to be inconsistent by default. It's your decision to prefer an incomplete iconset over the default, but that doesn't make the current way of icon usage incomplete or inconsistent. The question here is what to do by default, not how to manage customization. Oh, right, and I surely want my icon set applied when it is selected in KControl's icon set selector, the last thing I want the user to do is having another knob to tweak in the amaroK settings to also get the icons there. So much for custom icons by default. > So you ARE saying we should all use "The Only Approved Iconset TM". > And what about other iconsets? Noia, Nuvola, Reihard and many others? > We should patch all them too? They bring their own style, and they replace what they want to. In order to do that, they rely on standard icon names, so that only one play icon has to be included in the icon set, and not 23 for every application which likes to do custom icons by default. A standard KDE application should use Crystal, and leave it to the other icon sets to decide what they change or not. When Oxygen arrives, they should use Oxygen by default, and leave possible Crystal maintainers (and others) to customize it. > You can't ENFORCE developers to use only YOUR icons. > It IS good for ones which are the PART of the KDE project, > but far from acceptable for "independent" apps. amaroK clearly sets out for becoming the standard media player for KDE. (Maybe they are already.) They are hosted on KDE's web server and Subversion source code repository. They are featured on the dot and other official KDE resources. amaroK being in extragear doesn't mean it's not part of the KDE project, it means that it can follow a different release schedule than the standard KDE modules. extragear applications have to be approved by core KDE developers before they get there, and each and every app in extragear is an "official KDE application", so don't argument with amaroK being an independent application that has nothing to do with KDE. It's a core app, and should behave like one. And no, I don't give a damn about ISVs being inconsistent with all of the other desktop. That's because they are not part of the KDE project and allowed to do what they want, it's only their business, not mine or that of KDE. > >I don't want KDE to be Windows, you know. > Don't make me laugh, it's no argument. The easiest thing to do is to stick somebody an "EVIL" sticker. I didn't mean that as an "EVIL" sticker, but that's how it is. If you know how every Windows app likes to draw its own "Save" icon then you know what I'm speaking about. This is clearly not the way to make newbies comfortable with computer systems. If you ever attended some usability course then you know that consistency is a core requirement for good usability, and the user doesn't want to distinguish between applications, but between tasks. What we need is a consistent system (by default! ), not a conglomeration of consistent apps that have nothing to do with each other. (This is also called "integration" and one important feature that KDE manages to do better than GNOME, so let's not drop that so easily.)
>I understand this statement as "theming is futile, don't even try it".
No, it's just not well implemented. >My Lila icon set is very well relatively complete, and does also cover the most important amaroK icons, so it is possible to do that. See the point? "Relatively", "most important"... There are no "most important" icons in your app, every one is important! Every missing one breaks consistency and sense of the action. If you ever reach 100% of icons needed for every app in kde, in a short time new apps and actions will appear, and you will have to always keep up. You will be always BEHIND the developers, so there will always be missing icons. Creating additional icons by developers doesn't fix the problem because it will help only for one particular iconset, while all others will still have missing icons... Developers has to rely on other people to do their artwork, and hope it will be complete, and consistent. It just doesn't work. >The inconsistency in your toolbar is caused by your icon set covering some icons (play, pause, etc.) while missing out others, including the shuffle button which is still Crystal. That exactly is what I am talking about. >This is not the default, so please don't blame the amaroK icons to be inconsistent by default. It's your decision to prefer an incomplete iconset over the default, but that doesn't make the current way of icon usage incomplete or inconsistent. So now it's my fault because I'm using an "incomplete iconset"? Well, lets say I don't like crystal. Please, point me to an "complete iconset". Because every single one I've tried, including yours, is "incomplete", because it misses some icons, thus making my desktop looks inconsistent. And, like I said before, even using only crystal is far from perfect, and that is because of constant need of update, which affects every kde iconset. >The question here is what to do by default, not how to manage customization. We're now circling around. Use Crystal, or suffer. That's not kind of attitude that motivates people. >They bring their own style, and they replace what they want to. In order to do that, they rely on standard icon names, so that only one play icon has to be included in the icon set, and not 23 for every application which likes to do custom icons by default. I know how it works, but theory is different from reality. In most cases icon styles are different, so they do not fit together. You like mixing reinhard or lila with crystal? Even nuvola with crystal, as I showed you on my toolbar, which are relatively similar, can't go together. Maybe you like it, but I doubt that many people do. >amaroK clearly sets out for becoming the standard media player for KDE. (Maybe they are already.) And why, in your opinion, is so? It's because most people think it is the best audio player for kde. And why it is the best? Because it makes the best decisions, it fixes what's missing, or done wrong. You can have your opinion, but IMO amaroK's left-side tab widget, volume slider, or pop-up dialog has much better usability AND are better looking, than their kdebase equivalents. If there were no issues with kde iconing policy, I don't think we would be in this situation now. >They are hosted on KDE's web server and Subversion source code repository. They are featured on the dot and other official KDE resources. amaroK being in extragear doesn't mean it's not part of the KDE project, it means that it can follow a different release schedule than the standard KDE modules. >extragear applications have to be approved by core KDE developers before they get there, and each and every app in extragear is an "official KDE application", so don't argument with amaroK being an independent application that has nothing to do with KDE. It's a core app, and should behave like one. We're entering very slippy ground now. What is, and what is not a KDE application is very problematical to determine. I would never say that amaroK is CORE kde application. But I'm not an amaroK developer, so I'll leave it. >And no, I don't give a damn about ISVs being inconsistent with all of the other desktop. That's because they are not part of the KDE project and allowed to do what they want, it's only their business, not mine or that of KDE. That's bad. Without people developing FOR kde, there will be no kde. Core developers can't make on it's own forever. That is one big issue which projects like rudi try to address. >I didn't mean that as an "EVIL" sticker, but that's how it is. If you know how every Windows app likes to draw its own "Save" icon then you know what I'm speaking about. This is clearly not the way to make newbies comfortable with computer systems. At least they all have a "save" icon. I don't want to rant, but I'm sick of apps with "empty", or "broken" icon here and there. You may blame the developers of those apps, but problems are on iconing side. And it's better for a newbie to have any icon than a broken one. >If you ever attended some usability course then you know that consistency is a core requirement for good usability, and the user doesn't want to distinguish between applications, but between tasks. That is a great philosophy, but a VERY hard to achieve one. In the meantime apps having a proper buttons will help more, than "your-icons-will-be-fixed-in-next-kde-release" attitude. We need more good apps, not more "hig-compliant" ones. Combining those two is what we finally need, but it doesn't go without a pain. >What we need is a consistent system (by default! ), not a conglomeration of consistent apps that have nothing to do with each other.>(This is also called "integration" and one important feature that KDE manages to do better than GNOME, so let's not drop that so easily.) I agree with you on that one
> See the point? "Relatively", "most important"... There are no "most important"
> icons in your app, every one is important! Every missing one breaks consistency > and sense of the action. If you ever reach 100% of icons needed for every > app in kde, in a short time new apps and actions will appear, and you > will have to always keep up. You will be always BEHIND the developers, > so there will always be missing icons. Well, yeah, that's absolutely right. But you can't solve that with a custom amaroK icon set, as then you don't have two or three missing icons but icons for the whole application seem to be missing even if they're here. And really, no, you don't want amaroK to be themed with this custom theme when the rest of your desktop is Lila, Noia, or whatever. Better have unthemed icons for some menu entries than having the play button look different from all the other parts of the desktop. Really. And while you rant about the Nuvola play not fitting together with Crystal shuffle, I want to remind you that even if it's incomplete, you prefer Nuvola to standard Crystal. Maybe no icon set but the default one will ever be complete, but people like them anyways, and want the desktop themed with the icon set they like and selected, not with a Crystal lookalike (at least not by default). > > This is not the default, so please don't blame the amaroK icons > > to be inconsistent by default. It's your decision to prefer an incomplete > > iconset over the default, but that doesn't make the current way > > of icon usage incomplete or inconsistent. > So now it's my fault because I'm using an "incomplete iconset"? > Well, lets say I don't like crystal. Please, point me to an "complete iconset". > Because every single one I've tried, including yours, is "incomplete", > because it misses some icons, thus making my desktop looks inconsistent. > And, like I said before, even using only crystal is far from perfect, and that > is because of constant need of update, which affects every kde iconset. There is no complete iconset but Crystal, and you'll either live with small inconsistencies of other sets or stay with it. It's not like the icon set makers don't care enough for completeness, it's just extremely hard to get there. But the point is that it's your decision - I mean, it's great that you can select from different icon sets at all, and that some of them are "relatively" complete, and they fit "relatively" well into the desktop. Which is still better than systems that don't provide theming abilities at all (and thus have to do custom icons per application, not even changable most times, and not fitting together with other apps). > Even nuvola with crystal, as I showed you on my toolbar, > which are relatively similar, can't go together. It can go together, I promise you that most people won't ever notice. There's a difference between "not 100% perfect" and "totally unacceptable", and the shuffle icon inconsistency clearly falls into the first category. > That is a great philosophy, but a VERY hard to achieve one. > In the meantime apps having a proper buttons will help more, > than "your-icons-will-be-fixed-in-next-kde-release" attitude. > We need more good apps, not more "hig-compliant" ones. 1. Achieving hig-compliance definitely is a way to make a better app. 2. Application developers can check on the KDE release in use and provide custom icons if the used one doesn't include those. Yes, that's more difficult than just having your own per-application icon set. But, another reason that amaroK is the best music player out there is that the developers don't always take the easy way, but try to do what's best. So now, I'm outta here, I don't feel that this discussion will lead to anything if continued. Have the last word if you like.
Arguments about whether the roK should be using its own icons aside, I see some consistency issues.
Take icons like Play and Stop, and compare them to the one that I guess represents Loop. Play and Stop have defined edges and a simple gradient. The Loop arrows have little edge and a much more drastic gradient. The two icons with windows in the background have completely different-looking windows, both color- and shape-wise. The clock icon looks nothing like any other icon. It's much crisper and lacks gradients. And it has red. The die icon is terribly terribly wrong perspective-wise, as well as not being a real die as mentioned earlier (spots always add up to 7)
"It is nice to see that you have an AmaroK-Artists-Team."That's true:)
I agree with the "don't enable these by default" statements further up. I like the icons very much and fully intend to enable them, but enabling them by default is the a step down a slippery slope of desktop-wise inconsistency.
I link the new icons, but suggest dropping the circular border from most of them. It's my understanding that the first thing people perceive about icons is their overall shape (the border). So having the overall shape be meaningful is a feature in itself.
When an icon set includes a standard border, I glance at the toolbar and see just a bunch of the same shape (circles, or whatever shape is being used). |
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