[openbeos] Re: Haiku icon

I've avoided adding my two cents for a while, no one really likes ending up 
with a pile of coppers!

Just a few points to make that are hopefully worthwhile:

1) I'm with DarkWyrm on the usability crusade, but for a deskbar icon there is 
really no particularly "usable" solution. Windows came close with "Start" but 
I'm sure everyone's heard the jokes about having to "press start to turn the 
thing off". The only truely self-evident label would be something like "Click 
here to do stuff" but that's a little unweildy. However, there is not a very 
complicated set of uses for the deskbar button - you click it and a menu pops 
up. Therefore once the user has discovered that is where you click to do stuff, 
the actual image of the button doesn't matter at all. How to get that first 
click? I'd suggest a "Welcome To Haiku" window that appears on first boot with 
a few little tips like clicking on the Deskbar button to launch programs.

2) Full-colour leaf icon - it looks quite nice in the little deskbar 
screenshots. However I just get the feeling it would look out of place in the 
full BeOS screen. BeOS icons are 8-bit, usually clear, simple icons. A small 
photographic-looking leaf on rippling water seems a bit wrong somehow.

3) The whole approach people are taking to icon design is like it is a binary 
hack onto R5. We have the code for this people! If you have a logo that looks 
great full-width but doesn't work in the half width size, there's nothing to 
stop changing Deskbar to support two different bitmaps for the two cases. If an 
icon would look great if only the button were 2 pixels taller, that is also 
something that could be done (it would have implications for deskbar anchored 
along the top/bottom of the screen however).

4) The personal bit: I like stippi's current leaf. It keeps the iconic 
simplicity of beos but adds the nice gradient thing to make it look more 
stylish and fresh. As for the cut off - I'd prefer it to a smaller leaf I 
think. Perhaps a bit of rotation would mean the whole leaf could fit in to the 
space available.

The bikeshed should definately be red btw, otherwise I'll bailing.

Simon


> From: "mmadia" <mattmadia@xxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 2006/03/17 Fri AM 07:32:17 GMT
> To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [openbeos] Re: Haikiu icon
> 
> 
> > My first issue is that it doesn't look at all like a button. 
> here's 3 sets.
> 
> db.max-e-water_leaf-118x22-all-button-beshare-c.png was based on 
> beshare's buttons.
> to me it looked too dimensional.
> 
> db.max-e-water_leaf-118x22-all-button-borderless02-c.png
> is a 1px transparent border all around.
> 
> I could create the smaller sized ones as well.  
> right now, i'm working with the larger ones because that's my 
> preference :P
> lemme know if anyone wants them.
> 
> note: from now on, the last sections of the screenshot "button-beshare" 
> will correspond to the graphic in the deskbar-trial-images-
> open_in_quickres-v* file.
> 
> 
> > See, Mike S, this is what I was talking about. mmadia jumped in and 
> > made
> > it happen, he didn't just sit around and grouse about it. He pitched 
> > in
> > to help. You can be SURE that, if we end up in agreement on the
> > water/leaf, *HE* will end up with a credit......
> > 
> since a thumbless gorilla can code C/C++ better than me, it's one way i 
> can help.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> > > thanks,  do you mean the grey border of the button?
> > > this is the best i can do, the 1px on the far right might be a
> > > result of dragging clippings from ShowImage.
> > 
> > Well, that 1px needs to go, but I meant the remaining gray of the
> > deskbar. Looks a bit Win95'ish to me. That should be changed too,
> > but AFA the start button goes, yours is tops! :)
> > 
> > Helmar
> 
> turns out the 1px on the far right is part of Deskbar. 
> the deskbar logo can't cover it up.  
> it's color is 184, 184,184.
> when the deskbar is clicked, it's color changes to 152, 152, 152 ( as 
> does the top and bottom borders)
> however in the screenshots it sometimes shows up as white or not at 
> all.
> possibly a bug in R5's ShowImage?
> 
> so, i made db.max-e-water_leaf-118x22-all-button-borderless03-c.png  , 
> which utilizes it for a button effect :)
> the 
> 
> there's some random odd-balls in the quickres file too. 
> 
> =mmadia
> 
> 

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