https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=391976 User sh@novell.com added comment https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=391976#c6 --- Comment #6 from Stefan Hundhammer <sh@novell.com> 2008-06-05 06:02:12 MDT --- (In reply to comment #5 from Jakub Steiner)
When I created the status icons* for the package manager I clearly stated that it's impossible to create a clear metaphor for these
Coming from an icon designer, I find that hard to believe.
and they need to be accompanied by a text label.
An icon that _needs_ a text label is utterly worthless - it only clutters the screen.
This whole UI approach is problematic
Huh?
and isn't fixable by creating 'better' icons. You can take effort to make the symbols distinguishable but there's nothing that you can show to 10 people and have them tell you 'this means it's an implicit dependency'.
Of course, like with all icons everywhere in every application, there is some kind of learning curve involved. It helps when icons have some mental connection to whatever it is they represent, but that only makes it easier to memorize what icon means what. But you still have to memorize it. For certain kinds of abstract ideas there is just no clear real-world counterpart - nothing that could be represented by an icon or image, let alone with just a couple of pixels. In those cases, just about any icon will do, provided that it's recognizable after the user has gone through the memorizing process.
My only suggestion is to revert to the old set if you feel like this is a regression
We are certainly not going to change it back again at this phase. And once the distro is released, there will be hundreds of thousands of users getting accustomed to those new icons. After that, going back to the previous icon set would be even more ill-advised. Not only would that make us look very stupid, the users would have to un-learn the new icons and get used to the old ones again.
(I absolutely hate the lack of alpha channel and the associated ghosting visible on the screenshot too).
I absolutely hate applications getting unusable because externally-loaded icons are not available for one reason or the other. That's why we stick with XPMs. And they also support transparency; just not a full-fledged 8 bit alpha channel. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.