On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, Matthijs wrote: >But I have to agree with Glen: the icons in the File | New menu also >are too small for this design. They are the same as the large icons, >but smaller icons have to be stylished because you can't see the >details at that size. Is it possible to simplify the smaller icons in >the 2.0 release? > >Look at the icons in 1.1: the large icons have seagulls on them, the >small icons *don't have* the seagulls. That's because of the details >get lost at that size.
This doesn't sound good: I already think that the OOo 1.1 icons are worse than the old StarOffice 5.1 icons, so much so that in my installation I've replaced the former with the latter so I can more easily distinguish between spreadsheets, writer documents, etc. (When you look closely, the OOo icons are basically the SO ones shrunk down to the point of inscrutability and then stuck in a generic OOo motif which makes them all look the same.) Icons should be simple and clear so that you can distinguish between different objects. If they're not, there's no point having them at all. (The same goes for toolbar icons.) To achieve this in a 16x16 pixel space typically means the icons have to be very stylised and usually boldly coloured, since differing colours make it much easier to distinguish between icons. Unfortunately there seems to be a trend by many software developers towards imposing a brand style on their icons so that they all look similar, also to make them look "sophisticated" rather than strident, which usually seems to boil down to using insipid shades of grey. As an example of good icons, look at the small file icons for the ACDSee image viewer. They all have a "house style" in that they have a similar form so you can tell they are all image file icons, but they are also very simple -- simply two rectangles with the three-letter file type written on -- and yet they are also easy to distinguish between, as each file type uses a completely different colour for its central rectangle. This use of extremely simple designs that share a common feature but also have an aspect that differs strongly is an approach OOo could learn from. -- _______________________________________________________________________ Please reply to group only: Do not 'CC' replies to me. _______________________________________________________________________ Nihilism should commence with oneself. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]