[Qgis-developer] Cast your vote: Default icon theme for QGIS 2.0

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:27 PM, Larry Shaffer <larrys at dakotacarto.com> wrote:
> Hi Robert,
>
> I like the consistent look of your icon set. The results of Tim's poll
> clearly show many wish to switch to your set right away [0].
>
> Since QGIS is icon- and toolbar-heavy in overall look (in default
> configuration), whatever you can do to improve the definitive visual
> change from the old default icon set to a new one will greatly help.
> This way users will clearly 'see' why the switch was made.
>
> Just as a suggestion, what do you think about converting your icon set
> to 2.5D from their current 2D version? I have attached two quick
> mock-ups to illustrate, essentially adding just enough drop shadow to
> have the icons 'pop' a little more from the toolbar. Too much shadow
> effect and it starts to degrade the sharpness of some thinner aspects,
> meaning a single shadow calculation won't work across the set.
>

The shadows look quite nice for me. The larger issue I have is that
many of the icons are just hard to recognise when you see them lined
up side by side.

>
> Also, there has been discussion on condensing some icon groups down to
> one entry icon that has a popup menu (Qt's InstantPopup or
> MenuButtonPopup [1]). A few toolbar icons use this now, e.g. Feature
> Selection tool. Using that technique and condensing functionality into
> better dialogs (see Nathan's import dialog [2]) will go a long way
> towards thinning the current icon-heavy look.
>
> When considering condensing such items care has to be taken not to
> introduce extra clicks for tools that should be only one click away,
> e.g. Pan and Zoom tools. Though group entry icons are very similar to
> menubar menus at that point, they have the added advantages of being
> language-agnostic and visible when users switch to full screen mode,
> which usually hides the menubar.

My argument against these is that they defeat the purpose of icons
(making functionality available with single click). It takes two
clicks to invoke an action from a menu so in my mind the use case for
popup tool buttons should be restricted to where those tools need to
indicate a toggled state (like the map tools). A secondary
consideration is that when I give training courses the selection popup
toolbutton is something that novice users struggle with and it is not
very discoverable. Your points for it are interesting, though I
suspect that the number of people running qgis fullscreen is extremely
small.

Regards

Tim

>
> So, there may need to be some new icons made that represent tool
> groups, though some discussion on condensing tools has to happen
> first.
>
> [0] http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=4ffb5dfae4b08ad9dfac3f70
> [1] ToolButtonPopupMode: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.7/qtoolbutton.html
> [2] http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/Cast-your-vote-Default-icon-theme-for-QGIS-2-0-tp4987108p4987577.html
>
> Regards,
>
> Larry Shaffer
> Dakota Cartography
> Black Hills, South Dakota
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Robert Szczepanek <robert at szczepanek.pl> wrote:
>> My answer was too fast...
>>
>> On 26.07.2012 14:27, Robert Szczepanek wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Matthias and Tim,
>>> On 26.07.2012 14:10, Matthias Kuhn wrote:
>>>>
>>>> But I just noticed this inconsistency between the "Map Navigation"
>>>> toolbar and the print composer. The pan tool in the "Map Navigation"
>>>> consists of four arrows into all directions. In the print composer it is
>>>> one arrow with a square behind it.
>>>
>>>
>>> You are right. We should select just one of them. One arrow seems for me
>>> at this moment better choice. Expanation - below.
>>
>>
>> I was wrong and those are two different functions - pan (in navigator) vs.
>> move and pan in composer.
>> So 'one arrow with a square' in composer should be replaced with 'for
>> arrows' from map navigator.
>>
>> sorry for noise ...
>> Robert
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>
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>



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Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
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