notmart wrote:

veqz wrote:That's actually the very thing that i'm not really fine with, seems to ignore completely how psychologically iconography works, pretty much since cave-painting days, so something slightly more ingrained in human nature rather than the relatively new concept of "computer icons".

The one and only goal of any graphical representation of anything, being an object or an action, is to convey the meaning of what you want to represent, and that just like text, is something that to work has to be ingrained in the pattern recognition of the brain. When an icon has been in a way forever, the brain recognizes the meaning of the symbol in the context of the UI way faster than it can actually decode what real object is, therefore what that object means in this context, it's just an ideogram based language, not unlike Chinese.

I completely agree with this. Whenever applications use non-standard idioms for their icons, I'm completely confused and it takes me ages to figure out even what the save icon is. It's one of those things which are not worth changing just for the sake of it.

Regardless of whether one likes the looks of it, the Oxygen icon set is really excellent in that point: especially the common action icons are extremely clear and easy to recognize.

All great feedback thanks everyone. We'll go over each piece of feedback and work to make the icons in the plasma theme even better. If a more significant change is required (like a metaphor change) we'll work with Uri to come up with a better one and change it in both the main icon theme and the plasma theme.

I don't want to wander into the icon metaphor bikeshed but, in the interest of complete openness, I'll address metaphor changes for a second. I totally understand the concerns about metaphor changes, and we won't and don't take them lightly. I should say though that, there may be one or two places we'll take a chance on a different metaphor. I think these should be rare, but the fact is that the full understanding of the success of any change will be informed by the excellent icon tests that Bjorn has been conducting, and by their use in the full context of the application environment over time (a conversation I had with Bjorn as well). As said, we'll try to keep these rare. But much like some flexibility is needed to explore new functionality over the course of a release or two, I think similar flexibility might be needed to explore new visual metaphors as well. So, in the rare instance that Uri elects to preserve a particular metaphor, I'm asking for some patience. In time we'll have all the data we need to decide if such metaphors require changing or not.

Now back to our regularly scheduled icon improvement exercise.

3¢
- the new klipper icon has too many details (for this size)
- unless license restrictions, i'd expect the USB icon to be the USB icon (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_ ... sb-svg.svg)
- no idea what a person w/o a technical background thinks about it, but the new network icon /is/ a resistor to anyone remotely familiar with circuit diagrams

luebking wrote:3¢
- the new klipper icon has too many details (for this size)

Agreed. Also in comparison with the other icons

- unless license restrictions, i'd expect the USB icon to be the USB icon (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_ ... sb-svg.svg)

Hm, Device Notifier isn't exactly "USB": It contains optical discs and memory cards as well. The same holds true for the current icon, though.

- no idea what a person w/o a technical background thinks about it, but the new network icon /is/ a resistor to anyone remotely familiar with circuit diagrams

I don't have a background in electronics, so I don't see a resistor in it, but not "network", either. So yes, we'd have to come up with a better metaphor.

New wired network icons in both the main theme and plasma theme are already on the way.

colomar wrote:Hm, Device Notifier isn't exactly "USB": It contains optical discs and memory cards as well. The same holds true for the current icon, though.

We can use the floppy disk icon then!

But more seriously, perhaps the USB icon combined with the Eject symbol somehow?

colomar wrote:I don't have a background in electronics, so I don't see a resistor in it, but not "network", either. So yes, we'd have to come up with a better metaphor.

Two fixed resistors (variable resistors also exist) labeled R1 and R2 in series:

veqz wrote:Two fixed resistors (variable resistors also exist) labeled R1 and R2 in series:

Well, I do know how a resistor looks in a circuit diagram, I'm just not so used to them that it's the first thing that icon reminds me of

Also the Klipper icon will be changed to use the same visuals as the edit-copy icon from the main icon theme.

I really like these new icons; especially the Device Notifier icon. I also love how the Wifi and full volume icons are made up of smaller curves. Great job on them.

It's not that the old ones were bad, it's just that they never matched anything else.

We'll get 'em all better eventually. Thanks for everyone's patience and willingness to share your feedback.

Just my opinions:

Device notifier - all the DE's/distros that i've seen struggle when it comes to a 'removable devices' System Tray icon, I can't remember seeing one that perfectly captures that it's the icon for removable devices. Linux Mint uses what looks like a little outline of a magnetic hard drive and my OpenSuse 13.1 install uses two rectangles joined by a line - neither of which are as meaningful as our little USB stick (I have no idea what the OpenSuse one represents). I'd personally vote for the little USB stick that we've got now - it's a lot more recognisable than what anyone else has and i really like it too, whoever did it well done!

Klipper - the new clipboard icon looks a bit 'fussy' to me when compared to the simple style of the other icons & visually stands out a bit because of it. It's a brilliant icon in it's own right, i just think it doesn't fit in very well with the rest of them. I love the old scissors icon i'm using now but imagine that too would stand out amongst the rest of the new icons too. I think the simple Plasma 5.0 'one sheet of paper on top of another', whilst it's not my absolute favourite (that would be the scissors icon) - does go with the rest of the new icons the best so would get my vote.

I also think the USB logo is a good metaphor for removable devices. Most of them will be USB anyways.

A quick update, I'm almost finished updating the plasma theme icons based on the feedback here. Here's a quick summary of progress:

* Uri has provided new network icons (both wired and wireless) for both the main icon theme and to use for the plasma theme.
* The klipper systray icon is now using the edit-copy icon from the main breeze icon theme
* I'm going through and updating every single icon in the plasma theme to get stroke widths consistent with the main breeze icon theme (generally 1px stroke).
* There was a bug that caused certain systray icons to render at different sizes. I'm updating every icon in the plasma theme to provide at least a 22x22 size and padding consistent with the main breeze icon theme. Between the bug fix and these updates the icons sizes should be more consistent when rendered in the systray.
* I'm also attempting to update all the icons to ensure they properly align to the pixel grid when rendered at their native resolutions. This means that horizontal or vertical lines or edges should generally be pixel sharp without any fuzziness.

There are well over 100 icons spread out over 50 files in the plasma theme so it is taking a little time for me to get these done. But I only have about 10 or 15 icons left, so they should be ready soon. Some of the last few icons are slightly trickier since they may need new designs as a result of the resizing. Once I get to those, I'll holler if run into trouble finding good designs.

Thanks again for everyone's patience and help.

Andrew, you are, as always, the awesomez!

That's great!