Talk:ODF icons i-team
Vote for a Roll-Back to Color Icons
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--Underdog 12:16, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
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Voices For a Roll-Back to the Color Icons, NOW!
Say what? This is a satire, right? A bit of fun? No? You are dead serious?
THAT IS JUST FREAKING NUTS!!! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?
"So following the recommendation of the community council we would like to make the icons better. That’s why we are creating an i-team"
This is coming from the same folks who once said "they are just icons" and therefore introduced them into the minor release 3.2.1. So now they are creating an i-team (???) of users and EXPERTS (!) for "just icons" to come up with some incredibly mysterious and ingenious way of making monochrome icons more usable? This is an outrage and your antics are preposterous and unacceptable to this member of the Community... whatever is left of it.
I apologize for my tone, but I am one of 240 now embittered contributors to Issue 112141 which deals with these monochrome-with-blue icons extensively. You will find an easily implementable "solution" to the user-unfriendly icons in that issue which is posted here: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=112141. (Refer more directly to Maurice's post above.) And if you don't like that, just re-introduce the icons in 3.2.0. Simple, fast and effective. You don't need to be an "EXPERT" to understand that, people!
I reject even the CONCEPT of having to form a TEAM to decide how to make these icons more usable! Here is what you should do IMMEDIATELY until further notice:
1) Reinstate the 3.2.0 colored icons now!
2) Work out some other viable icon ideas with your "EXPERTS"
3) Submit the best ideas to the community (users!) for approval, making sure to include a broad spectrum of users (home, office, corporate) and "experts"!
4) Then and only then would you be potentially ready to introduce the new icons in a MAJOR release.
I get the feeling you think the burden is on the user to come up with better icons, but the truth is, that burden falls on you! Let me show you why by your own requirements:
1) ODF IDENTITY = BLUE Next to gray, black or white, that is one of the worst colors to choose because most system and application icons on Windows OS (iexplorer, outlook express, network environment, msword, hlp (Help), notepad, msi installer, just to name a few) as well as other ubiquitous applications like Skype, Thunderbird, QuickTime, TrueCrypt, Acronis True Image, TeamViewer, are blue. Additionally, default themes on Windows OS and KDE are set to - guess what? - blue desktop background, blue Start Menu, blue background on user login screen. Get the idea. So: "for better communication-usability (can senders & receivers name their preferred file type which avoids conversion problems?)" A: No - and what "conversion problems" are you talking about? If I convert an ODF document to, say, doc(x) format both are blue? What problem do you have with conversion? What are you converting? I know no user who has ever complained about confusing the previous OOO icons. Justify your choice of blue!
2) CORE FUNCTION = FORM plus gray, black and white for storage-usability (can users find documents fast?) For dogs, perhaps. For humans, no. Definitely not! Why in the world was gray, black and white chosen. AGAIN: JUSTIFY YOUR COLOR CHOICE! Moreover, the icons are generally small (32 x 32 or less) and not enlarged as is shown here. Gray, black and white do not make for instant form recognition. Color is essential!
3) STATUS FUNCTIONS = COLOR badges for emerging collaboration-usability (can users see a document status before opening?) What do you mean by "status" of a document? What is "emerging collaboration-usability"? I work in the IT field extensively in Europe and have never run across any "collaboration" issue regarding icons! For icons 32 x 32 or less that little swatch of color becomes insignificant. Solution: Combine 3 with 2 as it was in 3.2.0
PS: Changing the icons does not require any changes to source code, only repackaging, thus making a rapid implementation of our suggestions easy!
--Underdog 12:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
