New Icon Set...[echo]...

[David Nielsen]

lør, 05 08 2006 kl. 11:44 -0400, skrev Diana Fong:
> Chris Chabot wrote:
> > Hi Diana,
> >
> > I'm still getting:"Attachment 'echo_0.10.tar.gz' does not exist!" on 
> > the wiki page.
> >
> >    -- Chris
> 
> 
> Gah!  The whole Fedoraproject.org site not even loading at the moment.  O_O
> Though just before it broke, I checked and the file doesn't exist 
> anymore.  Nor does any record of it exit in the wiki's history.  I'm 
> baffled...and a bit worried about what else might be lost but haven't 
> been noticed.
> 
> Ok, I've loaded the temporarily to...
> 
> SVG+PNG:  http://people.redhat.com/dfong/icons/echo_0.10b.zip
> 48x48 PNG: http://people.redhat.com/dfong/icons/echo48_0.10b.zip
> 48x48 png images packaged as an icon theme by Leon: 
> http://people.redhat.com/dfong/icons/Echo.tar.gz
> 
> Diana
> ps. the "b" version is not the same as the original, I've included the 
> recent icons submitted in there as well...it's only about 8 more than 
> last time...Leon's tar is based on the original set.

The following might seem cruel, I apologize in advance.

The icons look decent when they are big but when applied to my desktop
it's a completely different case. The highlights on the back/forth
buttons makes them look washed out and faint, in other words really
really bad, like they have no outline, no shape. The size difference
between those icons and the pause one makes the pause button look HUGE
and very defined, it just doesn't look like they are meant to fit
together. The size relation issue seems to be fairly common, a good way
to see this issue is going to the Theme settings applet and look at the
difference between the Install icon and the remove icon. Add is HUGE it
also has a strange highlight effect that makes it look a bit odd (it
looks bigger in the buttom than the top - color choice causes this I
suspect), the remove icon just below it looks like a tiny blue blob of
paint.

When looking in the menus it doesn't get much better, the prespective
makes the icons look small and the amount of details turns them into
tiny blobs of paint, it's literally impossible to tell what information
the icons are trying to convey. Which is after all the purpose of icons,
without the explanatory text next them it's close to impossible tell the
purpose - to simulate, set your language to something you can't read and
try to navigate the menus.. not a fun experience to be honest. The
biggest offenders here would be the Office and Graphics entries. 

Compared to the current Bluecurve icons Echo seems to lack clearly
defined outlines which makes them much less usable especially at small
sizes, likes those we use by default in our menus - the single most used
iconsize on the Fedora desktop as far as I can tell.  

I admire the effort but honestly if this makes the default desktop for
FC6 I feel it would do the users a major disservice. It would hurt
usability for the majority of users, especially those of us with
slightly less than perfect eyesight.

There is sadly no nice way to say this, so in the interest of being
brutally honest for the good of our users. Echo is plagued with issues
and is only a giantic step down from Bluecurve or Tango visually. The
icons look decent only when they are huge like the way they are
displayed on the wiki but on the actual desktop they are nothing short
of a disaster.

My apologies for any hurt egos,
David