[OpenLayers-Users] Intuitive and good looking icons

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 01:30:58AM +0800, Jani Patokallio wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> > Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:24:54 -0500
> > From: Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at metacarta.com>
> > Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Users] Intuitive and good looking icons
> >
> > I disagree. I like the default OpenLayers icons, and always have. (And
> > am kind of tired of people acting as if any kind of visual design
> > decision is 'obviously wrong', as people seem to do with the OpenLayers
> > controls all the time.)
> 
> That's a silly attitude.  If people complain about the OpenLayers
> controls all the time, then the problem is in the controls, not the
> people, and I fully agree with Zer that the some parts of current set
> are not intuitive and look amateurish.  Compare with the icons over at
> our friends on Google: theirs are anti-aliased (ours aren't)

Our icons are antialiased?

> and tastefully done in shades of white and gray (ours aren't).

And this is a preference. Design preferences are not facts. They are 
opinions.

If you want to propose changes, I recommend patches be attached to a
ticket, with suggestions. I'm not against changing what we have, I'm
simply stating that I like them, and I think that anyone who says that
they are obviously wrong -- as you are doing, again -- is missing the
point.   

> And oh, if you think these are trivial and that our users are smarter
> than that, then go ahead, find your father/child/techno-illiterate
> significant other and ask them what each button in an OpenLayers map
> does.  

OpenLayers is not an application. It is a library. It is configurable --
and should be more so, and I look forward to patches to make it more so.
The style of the buttons is changable via CSS. The title text for panel
buttons is configurable via Javascript. All of these things are within
the capacity of any application designer to change.

If you're complaining about the defaults, change them. If many people
change them in the same way -- something I've never seen happen in this
project -- then perhaps they should become the new default. However,
since every changes things in different directions, because they are
*design decisions* based in part around *personal preferences*, I'd
rather the library not attempt to make everyone happy by striking a 
happy medium, and instead invest in making these things easier to
change. 


> I'd add these to Trac, but due to some proxy weirdness I can't
> stay logged in at all...

If you send patches to the list, and a zipfile of new icons, then I'll
upload to trac on your behalf.

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta