Hi,
Non-contrasting borders of app icons lead to this situation of unrecognizable icons (Plasma 4 panel + task bar, I believe possible in Plasma 5 too):



It's not a superficial case, just Breeze + translucent Air theme and some wallpaper. It can happen with many combinations of wallpapers and icons.

How do you think this could be fixed? If not in icons maybe in the plasmoids itself, do you think? (actually any plasmoids that render icons)

Definitely not adding a shadow or a border to the icons, nope, not all, not happening. I absolutely hate borders in SVG files, I prefer to spend 3 hours doing line(s) to make up for a border than just use a border on an object.

Also, isn't the point of the Air theme to be that transparent?, don't other themes apply some sort of blur behind text and icons in that plasmoid?. Changing the entirety of the icons just for one theme on a very specific use doesn't seem reasonable.

(In any case, orange wallpaper+orange icon.. that was kind of cheating - An almost black background and the terminal icon on top.. pretty sure the same would happen.)

With that said, if the plasmoid can blur the icon that probably would fix it. Or that the selected state gets darker or with more opacity.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Definitely not adding a shadow or a border to the icons, nope, not all, not happening. I absolutely hate borders in SVG files, I prefer to spend 3 hours doing line(s) to make up for a border than just use a border on an object.

Also, isn't the point of the Air theme to be that transparent?, don't other themes apply some sort of blur behind text and icons in that plasmoid?. Changing the entirety of the icons just for one theme on a very specific use doesn't seem reasonable.

(In any case, orange wallpaper+orange icon.. that was kind of cheating - An almost black background and the terminal icon on top.. pretty sure the same would happen.)

With that said, if the plasmoid can blur the icon that probably would fix it. Or that the selected state gets darker or with more opacity.

@Uri, thanks for the info.

It seems that none of popular Plasma 4 themes I tried (12 or so) do anything near the borders. I of course don't suggest to alter the icons, just noting themes in Plasma 5 shall be tested against the issue and do something about the Breeze icons - and any icons that lack deep gradients or borders. BTW, app icons have subtle gradients in Breeze, but firefox still looks like this, an orange blob with some blue on my supersharp screen:



Look, the gray background isn't cheating, orange on gray is still relatively noncontrasting

Blur applied to Breeze icons by Plasma would suck. Sharp monochromatic borders applied programatically might work and is technically possible even if I don't recall anyone doing that. Can this be analyzed as design and usability level?

Some white icons such as Kate's is properly protected against the issue - in Breeze Kate icon has non-white border, that's natural part of the icon, not something extra. That's an approach.

Regarding cheating - it's not the case here, pretty standard KDE's wallpaper. How about some guidelines for colors of surfaces where app icons are displayed? For Plasma and apps. In the era of Windows aesthetics icons had borders or shadows. If we drop this approach perhaps we'd need to have certain assumption regarding the background. So Plasma themes don't implement their panels or containers freely but colorize them somehow of apply the mentioned borders.

It would be nice, that the active window, you colorasse as the icon, similar to the " icon only task manager"

PS: Interesting that the one of most suitable Plasma 4 themes seems to be the GNOME-Shell-KDE IMHO:

(This is obviously not the Breeze theme but it's the closest)

The Firefox icon does use a brighter gradient than the others and there's no problem with the panel having this much transparency for example..

The background is a lot brighter and higher in contrast, still, the Firefox icon is distinguishable.

Thee background is flat and the color is similar to the icon gradient, still the icon is distinguishable.

No panel background, just the icons. Visible.

You could say here that the dark icons aren't contrasting with the panel and that they need a white border.

Point is, if the background color is the same (or is close) to the color of the icon it's obviously going to make the icon less contrasting. The supplied default wallpaper and the default Breeze theme do not have this issue; one that is triggered when the user changes the wallpaper.