[Tango-artists] Re: Looking for new icon for FileRoller

[Mike Stern]

Yup, I agree that it's generally a bad idea to use any body parts for  
icons.  There are really a number of reasons but the one you mention  
is a key concern.  Glasses are OK.  I've seen them used for 'read'  
before which is a different but highly analogous concept.

The truth of the matter is that I'm not even sure that "view" is the  
right name / concept for this action.  I haven't tinkered with this  
application myself but after clicking 'view' I have no idea what I'm  
supposed to do.  From the label 'view' I would expect it to open the  
file or show me some meta information or something along those  
lines.  Also, why have that option in the tool bar when double  
clicking or hitting return does the same thing?  A bit overkill, no?  :D

cheers,
m.




On Jun 5, 2006, at 4:57 PM, Jakub Steiner wrote:

> On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 13:05 -0700, Mike Stern wrote:
>> Hi all, I just joined the list a little while back and have just
>> started to track the discussions here.  I'm not sure how much I'll be
>> participating but I want to make sure that the icon work we do at Sun
>> is staying aligned to Tango in some aspects.
>>
>>
>> WRT the File Roller action icons, I would suggest using the down and
>> up arrows in combination with the cardboard box for the actions 'add'
>> and 'extract' respectively.  The plus sign / box combo would seem to
>> suggest adding and archive, not adding something TO the archive.  The
>> arrows should definitely be up / down and not left / right and it's
>> more clear if the box is open.  New and Open should be the default
>> tango icons as suggested by others.  I think 'view' should be an eye
>> as opposed to a magnifying glass as the later also suggests the
>> actions 'find' and 'zoom'.  Neither of those are the same as view and
>> therefore to use a mag glass for all of them would dilute the
>> symbolism of that glyph.
>
> Howdy.
>
> While a magnifying glass is overused already as a metaphor, an eye is
> also inappropriate. While we didn't explicitely state this for the  
> tango
> project, the Gnome HIG mentions that body parts should be avoided. It
> can cause problems in some countries where such may be found  
> offensive.
>
> How about glasses?
>
> -- 
> Jakub Steiner <jimmac at ximian.com>
> Novell, Inc.
>
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