Re: [ide-dev] Window Dressing

[Miles Parker <miles.parker@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was going to mention that I liked the buttons on Doug’s earlier screenshot a lot. Don’t know how well they’ll work under 16px though. Which brings up the next point which is that we need to think about 4x / retina displays. The fact that much of platform infrastructure and ui and most project code assumes 16px . (One of the Eclipse smells is that every project ends up w/ its own image handler..) Part of what makes the Eclipse icons so boring is that they’re actually conveying a lot of information, especially when you start adding the overlays in. And then we need to make sure that all of the icons get to the right place in all of the various bundles. So to do this right is a bigger project than just having a good designer come up w/ some core replacement icons. Along with the icons, we should also have a new set of guidelines and (ideally) conversion tools and templates.

I think the icon sponsorship idea is great!! I could see many people saying “sure I’ll kick in $10 so that I can look at a nicer workbench every day” and companies that rely on IDE/RCP might say “yeah, I’ll kick in 2k to give my users a better looking IDE”. So the question is, given above, how big of a pile of cash would this need to be? If folks could come up w/ a good estimate then we could judge what sort of campaign would be needed to make it happen.

BTW, I think complexity — the sheer variety of icons — is a separate issue. Personally, I almost *never* use the actual coolbar, except for perspective shifting. That’s because almost everything I care about is selection or view specific. So for me, object icons are really as important as action icons. And we really need to do something about the CONTEXT MENU FROM HELL, but that’s a different story...


On Dec 10, 2013, at 7:30 AM, Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> +1 but my biggest problem is that there are too many icons thrown at that user. Even making them look modern, it’s still overwhelming for new users. In Momentics for BlackBerry, we’ve actually hidden almost all toolbars from the user and it’s pretty clean. And even this is too many.
> 
> <Screen Shot 2013-12-10 at 10.28.35 AM.png>
> 
> 
> From: Mickael Istria <mistria@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: Discussions about the IDE <ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 at 3:51 AM
> To: "ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx" <ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [ide-dev] Window Dressing
> 
> On 12/09/2013 11:00 PM, Miles Parker wrote:
>> If you gave me a small pile of cash and let me spend it on whatever I wanted to to improve Eclipse user experience*, I’d say… “Icons!"
>> Seriously. The current icon set is more than showing it’s age. Despite devs wanting to think that we’re above all of this, L&F _matters_, and I think a new set of core flat, simple chromatic icons would do wonders for user perception and help us all enjoy using the tooling more. It could also align w/ a move toward more web oriented tools.
>> 
> I agree it's a place where much improvement can happen, and with immediate benefit for user-experience.
>> *I recognize that noone is ever going to do that. This is just a thought experiment. ;-D
> You know, the foundation has sponsored projects logos this year. Maybe we could come to a way to get it sponsoring new icons.
> I also believe that it's worth evaluating the price of such effort (how much a design company would ask for all icons). Then it could be funded by the community (of adopters and users, individual or companies) just like a kickstarter project. People commit to a donation to make it happen, and when there is enough money promised, Foundation retrieve the cash and pays for the new icons, that we integrate once they're ready.
> -- 
> Mickael Istria
> Eclipse developer at JBoss, by Red Hat
> My blog - My Tweets
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