In response to this thread, I was curious as to what people think

I prefer the colored ones. The mixer and network icons are ok but they don't match the rest of the oxygen icons (or whatever icon theme I use). I prefer a consistent look for all the icons used on my desktop. And the most important I prefer that the plasma themes keep their hands off the icon themes territory!

I prefer monochrome ones, although I understand valid JaKi's concerns wrt theme (in)consistency.

In general I like the look of the new icons, but I'd like them even more if everything in my systray used them.

KDE 3 and early version of KDE 4 delivers option to set filters upon icons.

The same functionality should been implemented to tray icons !

There's one matter - present icons are not grayed all the time. They get colored since some events, so filters must support multiple icons classes.

Definitely prefer the colored icons.

I prefer the monochrome ones, but themeing options would be a good idea

the usual important bits that are missed in this discussion:

* the monochrome icons are function-topically _part of the plasma workspace_, which is why they are rendered in a way that blends with the rest of the Plasma shell. why? they represent system and hardware services.

* application icons remain themed by the icon theme, and colourful, as a means to differentiate them from "stuff about my computer and what it is doing"

* the application and the monochrome icons are kept separated within the tray; you can have separate tray widgets for app status (colorful) and other icons, even.

* we plan to integrate the colorful app icons with other widgets (e.g. the tasks widget)

oh, and the monochrome icons are themable via the SVG desktop theme.

After upgrading to 4.5.0 my first thought was "oh, they used some back-leveled icons΅, but it is all the same to me, as long as they are clear enough in what they represent.

Again,

I like them very much, but I think KDE should work with GNOME, GTK, Qt, Freedesktop, etc. to specify dynamic symbolic icons

http://www.hadess.net/2010/04/symbolic- ... n-gtk.html
http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=974

I really like the effects that can be dynamically applied.

I like! They are 'skeletal' and unobtrusive.

None the less choice is always a good thing.

I for one don't really like the new monochrome icons, for the following reasons.

1. the appearance of the system tray is now inconsistant, not only with the 'application' icons but the tooltips. The introduction of the monochrome icons seems incomplete and thus premature.

2. I have noticed on occasion in the forums that people consider KDE 4.x to be non dark theme friendly, this is something that I agree with as a fan of dark themes. The new monochrome icons don't suit my choice of dark theme in particular the 'notification' icon, which appears almost 'invisible' until a notification occurs.

In short this to my way of looking at things is a retrograde step, and in the very least an option needs to be provided to choose between the monochrome or coloured icons.

aseigo wrote:* the monochrome icons are function-topically _part of the plasma workspace_, which is why they are rendered in a way that blends with the rest of the Plasma shell. why? they represent system and hardware services.

How do they blend with the rest of the Plasma shell, I haven't witnessed any monochrome icons elsewhere. As for consistency with 'system and hardware' services KNemo still uses the older colourful icon, thus negating your argument.

aseigo wrote:* application icons remain themed by the icon theme, and colourful, as a means to differentiate them from "stuff about my computer and what it is doing"

Not so, see my reference to KNemo above, once again it, (the new look) is inconsistent with the overall desktop theme.

aseigo wrote:* the application and the monochrome icons are kept separated within the tray; you can have separate tray widgets for app status (colorful) and other icons, even.

Once again I see no evidence of this, as on my system the monochrome and coloured icons are mixed in the system tray. As for setting up separate tray widgets, ok it's an option but one which would resulted in a more cluttered appearance and detract from the clean elegant feel that I have become accustomed to with KDE 4.x

Furthermore the new 'clipboard' icon being a pair of scissors is more suggestive of the 'cut' function than a generic clipboard (cut/paste & copy/paste), the old icon is more relevant by far.

Sorry but this seems to be a poorly thought out and backward step, one that is hardly in keeping with the overall quality and polish that is KDE 4.x

Also the tone of your (aseigo) comments are reminiscent of the GNOME devs 'we know what's best / put up and shut up attitude' towards users.

So everyone else does monochrome system tray icons these days therefore KDE must have them too? Now that's original.

Personally as a user I prefer the color ones, and I've heard Windows users commented that the color ones looks really good. On the other hand OSX does monochrome really great, while Windows does them poorly. IMHO the KDE ones seems average but not that great yet, maybe they will be. The easiest way to get OSX look and feel is to buy a mac after all. Just to name an example of obvious OSX imitation, it looks like Ubuntu is into this knock-off business these days.

Anyway these things should really be optional and somewhat user friendly to change. Guess users don't care much about defaults if they can be customized right.
So how do you get the colored ones back easily

For the record everything else with the new KDE version was really great. Nice job.

merlyn wrote:How do they blend with the rest of the Plasma shell, I haven't witnessed any monochrome icons elsewhere. As for consistency with 'system and hardware' services KNemo still uses the older colourful icon, thus negating your argument.

No, it doesn't. All that means is that knemo hasn't been updated to take the monochrome icons into account (or the plasma themes being aware of it). And knemo isn't a core-part of KDE. It's a third-party add-on. If it had been shipped with KDE I would agree with you.

merlyn wrote:Also the tone of your (aseigo) comments are reminiscent of the GNOME devs 'we know what's best / put up and shut up attitude' towards users.

Please, refrain from putting words into other people's mouths (or keyboards...). That comment was uncalled for. He explained the rationale behind the decision. You or anyone else may not agree with it and that's fine, but if you want to persuade the devs to change their mind that's hardly a productive way of doing it - not to mention insulting to claim that they don't care about what the users wants.