[Tango-artists] grayscale notification area icons.

[Jakub Steiner]

On Thu, 2006-08-03 at 23:17 +1200, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> On Jul 24, 2006, at 10:36 PM, Frej Soya Rasmussen wrote:
> >
> > I was wondering if the notification area icons would be nicer if they
> > were limited to grayscale (ala os x).
> 
> Agreed -- I think it should be a general principle that the less you  
> need to pay attention to an icon while it's open, the duller it should  
> be. So for example, panel icons should be almost all grayscale, because  
> they're visible almost all the time. Similarly, video player icons  
> should be black or dark grey, because most of the time when they're  
> visible you're wanting to look at something near them (the video)  
> rather than be distracted by the icons themselves.

Howdy!

Can you elaborate on this a bit? Do you propose defining a special
context for applets that would not follow the current guidelines? What
about notification area icons? What about the startup menu (menubar/SLAB
sort of thing)? What about the window list applet?

It's not that I don't like the idea, it is visually pleasing. Yet it
somehow feels like an artificially constructed exception. On the mac
it's greyscale most likely because there is no panel, it's a hacked
menubar. I'm not completely sold on the "it's visible all the time, it
should not be vivid". I'd rather not have application stuck
non-notification icons in the systray rather than making the few applets
I like to use harder to locate.

I'm not completely opposed, I just would like to have a bit more
background before adding exceptions and making the guidelines more
complex.

As for the totem screenshot, that's more of a coincidence than by
design, Steven :)

-- 
Jakub Steiner <jimmac at novell.com>
Novell, Inc.