The Issue:
"A few years ago something as simple as connecting into a wifi was a difficult and scary task to perform under our workspace, and most of the times it just did not work. Nowadays networking is not a problem any more, plasma-nm works reliably and we keep iterating on its design with the mission of having the most beautiful, clean and functional interface possible. And it is here we need your help.

We need some icons to be done for Plasma-nm that integrate with the current theme."

Icons that need to be made:


Further issues:
- the icons need to be monochromatic to fit into the move from Plasma to Plasma NEXT (ie use only one color)
- the icons for mobile networks (the last huge stack of identical icons with text under them) can be mostly ignored and replaced with one set of ordinary mobile network bars, one set of bars for "slow network" and one for "fast network".
- the icon examples are as follows:
- Network
- Network wire
- Network wire secure
- Unknown Wired Network
- No Network
- Network-but-something-is-wrong and need attention
- Wifi network (different levels of wifi strength)
- Wifi network (different levels of wifi strength) that is secure
- Wifi network (different levels of wifi strength) but something is wrong and need attention
- Bluetooth active
- Bluetooth inactive
- VPN
- Mobile network
- Mobile network Slow
- Mobile network Fast
- Mobile network Secure
- Mobile network Slow Secure
- Mobile network Fast Secure

More information:
Ok so the tricky bit here is marrying these icons to the future system tray icons. For a good sense of the direction we're all taking here is a screenshot of Sebastian Küglers Plasma NEXT set up. Notice the system tray icons and the fact that they are monochromatic.



The contact in question is Jan Grulich: jgrulich at redhat dot com

Post all suggestions, ideas and sketches here

Can We move away from the monochromatic icons? I never liked the decision to move in this direction ─ it looked like blindly following trends. Color actually provides information to the user: if something is gray, it may just be disabled, inactive and in general not worthy attention. Also, we can't theme third party icons (like VLC) and monochromatic icons next to the colorfull ones looks just odd.

Would it make sense to use a similar aproach on all the icons as Android does? e.g. not write the full "LTE" or "GPRS" etc. but indicate with one or two letters? Upcoming connection standards might use even longer "names" than current ones, and 4 letters is already looking a bit crowded. It could also be easier for the user because (s)he is already seeing the same thing on his/her phone (don't know how Apple does it on the iPhone).

Sir_Herrbatka:
Well the monochromatic system icons does have its downsides as you lose one vector of information (like the shaping saying something about what it is, if it moves in some way, maybe blinking, thats another vector of information and color is a third) but the issue with color have been that they are seen as too jarring when the color is constant. System tray icons tend to have two modes of information - two levels of how they tell us stuff:
Passive, the icon is just there = "Hi everythings cool, don't worry about me here are some details on how things are" (like the bars in a wifi icon)
Active, the icon is pulsing, changing color, or the background is changing = "Dear god! Hey! I need attention now. Something is amiss!" (like low battery icons)

Color could add more but in general that level of information tend to be too much (this is of course not true for all - there isn't a perfect right/wrong here but this is the logic behind the choice) - two levels work and its easier to sneak things into a new theme (since the colors of future system tray icons will pick up the system theme color)

Ripper17:
Spot on!
I can't stand the text myself and after asking the devs what they ment with the letters I got: "Its to know if the network is slow or fast" - so I thought - well lets just ignore the letters completely and go for "Normal"(just the bar) "Slow Network" (the bar and some symbol) and "Fast Network" (the bars and some "fast" symbol) - what do you think?

jensreuterberg:
This could work, but I'm not sure.
OK, first things first: I have a hard time remembering which is the fastest connection on my phone (I know "H" is faster than "E" but what about "3G" etc.?) so I'm assuming that lot's of other people are going to have the same problem. For those, a label like "E" or "EDGE" will probably have no meaning.
However, what is "fast", what is "slow"? For rural areas (or countries without a good infrastructure), a 1MBit connection might be very fast, while in big cities it will probably be seen as very slow. Same goes for mobile transfer rates - people with LTE will think of HDSPA as slow, while people usually only having EDGE will see HDSPA as quite fast (I hope I got that right, but you know what I mean...)
Also, how many differentiations do we need? Only slow, normal, fast? How would that map - and how would it map on different connection types? A LAN with 100Mbit is probably "normal" (at least in a corporate environment), but WiFi with 100 MBit would probably still be considered as fast and mobile as "incredibly fast".
I don't think it's a good idea to have the same icon-overlay for "fast" used for different speeds?

Sorry, can't think of a good solution (again: I don't really like the letters), just of some possible issues. Then again: the first step in solving any problem is recognising, there is one (Quoted from "Newsroom", I believe)

sir_herrbatka wrote:Can We move away from the monochromatic icons? I never liked the decision to move in this direction ─ it looked like blindly following trends. Color actually provides information to the user: if something is gray, it may just be disabled, inactive and in general not worthy attention. Also, we can't theme third party icons (like VLC) and monochromatic icons next to the colorfull ones looks just odd.

+1

Ripper17: I know a certain young... man or woman (I mean "you") who wants to sketch up suggestions
If you sketch them up I'll help you with them, what to do you say? Want to collaborate?

jensreuterberg wrote:Ripper17: I know a certain young... man or woman (I mean "you") who wants to sketch up suggestions
If you sketch them up I'll help you with them, what to do you say? Want to collaborate?

I'm positive that you wouldn't want that to happen I'm horrible at doing graphics, sorry.

Martin

ripper17/Martin: No one is horrible at doing anything if they have help.

Its kinda like programming but no one talks about it when you start out - you kinda have to cheat a bit :
1) Check out icons that kinda look the way you want them to look.
2) Download them and try editing in Gimp or something - it'll look messy that's fine.
3) Post them as a draft and then ask for help - and you'll get it!

Give it a shot - if you don't feel like posting them openly email me at jens at ohyran dot se or PM me here and I'll help you out. It's fun and it's worth while and I'll make sure you get a mention in the proper place

I'm still not convinced that monochromatic is the way to go. You could still use color icons and turn them red or put big exclamation mark on top of them or draw fram when they require attention. Monochromatic icons are difficult to distinguish and look bad next to the nonstandard icons ─ like dropbox, rsibreak and so one. At least we could consider separate area for not theme icons on the system tray (or even separate plasmoid for so called indicators) if we really love monochromatic icons THAT much.

Since i work on them for current plasma-nm (not NEXT)

maybe we can keep some of them with minimal style changes

Sir_herrbatka: well for starters lets be clear here, just for onlookers so no one gets the wrong idea - any change done to the icons can be changed by swapping themes. Just like the icons in the Opensuse Theme are different from the ones in Air, the same will apply here. Some themes may have the monochrome icons - some will not.

We wont force monochromatic icons on anyone. That would be waaaaaaaaaaay out of question - this is KDE after all . Half the idea is that I don't know whats best for you and should never pretend to - if there is nothing holding back options (and there are situations where options just don't work practically) the user should have that option.

As for color vs monochrome - I guess we have to agree to disagree on that one but just so you know I've sent a mail to some of the Plasma Devs about systemtray icons being one set and application icons (that get moved to systray) having another, you raised a very good point. So this is me tipping my hat! *tiptip*

It was kinda scary when I was reading about following theme colors. It felt like somethings crazy is going to happen.

The mixed monochrome/color problem annoys many of us, users. Separation wouldn't be the bad idea ─ two plasmoids maybe could help to shift toward indicators concept that gnome uses, and is actually a good concept (just forced to much).

Don't be scared! Trust me things with Plasma NEXT will move slowly and organically so you will have time to test changes bit by bit, suggest changes and try to get a feel on workarounds if nothing else goes well. Its not the perfect way to release something so the press will notice it, but hopefully it will pay off so none of us just wakes up, updates and suddenly nothing is what it used to be.

There is one thing though: I see no difference between "users" and "devs" (or designers for that matter). This forum is for suggesting cool ideas and visuals, asking for help from designers and the community and designers posting cool ideas and help back. This is a common place for everyone, and not to sound like your kindergarten teacher when you where a kid but: "if anyone is mean to you or uses the word "user" pejoratively, you tell me and I'll set them straight"