Re: [Ayatana] Unity improvement for vision loss people

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 00:48, Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This seems more like a theme question then, rather than a UI one. A
custom theme is better suited to solving the issue in your particular
case.

Theming is an excellent approach towards gaining something from this topic, yes.

It's just that the consumer in me expects to find a theme to be available and only a few clicks away.. not that i'd have to create it myself.

Removing all but one color from an icon by default is a bad idea,
unless the icon is supposed to be that way. Even these exceptions
should be kept to a minimum. The issue that arises is that there are
two main characteristics people use when quickly identifying an icon:
color and shape. If we make all the icons one color, then this
distinction is lost, and we must rely on shape alone, which isn't idea
for many people. This is the exact inverse of a theme like faenza,
where all the icons are the same shape (you lose the differences in
shape, then you only have color left).

perhaps my wording was ambiguous or unclear, i mean to suggest the introduction of symbols instead of branding icons into the launcher.

does canonical want app developers to develop their UI or does Ayatana aim at developing it themselves?

I think Ayatana should come up with symbols for the Unity UI, including launcher SYMBOLS for default webbrowser, default email UI, default IM UI and default file management UI.

Ayatana aka Canonical also came up with symbols for workspace switcher, trash and Dash, so it is not far fetched to do the same for default apps such as firefox and thunderbird, empathy and totem, gnome-terminal, gnome-calculator, [skype,] gnome-terminal and USC.

symbolic icons, not desaturated corporate branding icons.

I will admit that monochrome icon sets have their artistic merits, but
functionally, they're a nightmare. Form is nice, but not at the sake
of function.

Besides, the only other major OS that uses Monochrome app icons is
Windows Phone 7, and it's not particularly popular with consumers.

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 16:12, frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx
<frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 23:57, Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> The indicators work well monochrome because they were designed from
>> the start to be Monochrome, and include only simple shapes and
>> outlines. Regular icons do not work this way.
>>
>> Perhaps an option to desaturate the launcher icons, or a Unity plugin
>> if we get a plugin framework. But using this as default is a huge step
>> backward in usability for most people, particularly those with vision
>> loss, as the icons will blend into the launcher.
>
>
> "No, I disagree!
>
> Some OS designers or theme designers may disagree with this basic premise.
> Or artists may not have time to produce symbolic variations of all the icons
> for which software developers desire them. Therefore, there should be a
> mechanism for developers to request a symbolic variation of an icon, such
> that it will gracefully fall back to the non-symbolic equivalent if —
> whether intentionally or unintentionally — no symbolic variation has been
> provided."
>
>
> (from http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/SymbolicIcons )

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Ian Santopietro

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