Hi there,
The Tango project has become the one true style guide for free software theming. A few heavy weight apps such as gnome, inkscape, gimp and openoffice.org are or will be using tango style icons. The project's developers are of high profile and the quality of the icons is without doubt the best. I followed a few Tango_Fridays¹ in irc #tango and was much impressed. As you can see in Tango_Fridays¹, more and more upstream apps will be adopting their icons.
Today I visited the EchoDevelopment² after a few months, my feeling was not good. But my biggest concerns is that although Echo is using tango naming specs, its style (perspective, color palette etc) is different. This will put Fedora in a situation as Bluecurve does - inconsistency across the desktop. Inconsistency will definitely compromise usability.
So what's the way out? Changing Echo to fit into the universe of tango style icons? Put Echo on hold and use tango for Fedora 7? Please comment.
Thank you!
Footnotes: ¹ http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Fridays ² http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/EchoDevelopment?highlight=%28echo%29
Leo skrev:
Hi there,
The Tango project has become the one true style guide for free software theming. A few heavy weight apps such as gnome, inkscape, gimp and openoffice.org are or will be using tango style icons. The project's developers are of high profile and the quality of the icons is without doubt the best. I followed a few Tango_Fridays¹ in irc #tango and was much impressed. As you can see in Tango_Fridays¹, more and more upstream apps will be adopting their icons.
Today I visited the EchoDevelopment² after a few months, my feeling was not good. But my biggest concerns is that although Echo is using tango naming specs, its style (perspective, color palette etc) is different. This will put Fedora in a situation as Bluecurve does - inconsistency across the desktop. Inconsistency will definitely compromise usability.
So what's the way out? Changing Echo to fit into the universe of tango style icons? Put Echo on hold and use tango for Fedora 7? Please comment.
Thank you!
Footnotes: ¹ http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Fridays ² http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/EchoDevelopment?highlight=%28echo%29
I've tried convincing the art team of Tangos superior design, consistency, usability, accessibility and progress for a while now, it hasn't really brought me any good fortune, infact I think the term used was "trolling". One problem we are sure to encounter though is that Tango has wide upstream acceptance, The gimp, Jokosher and many other fine existing and upcoming big FLOSS projects uses and relies on Tango. As many of these, the biggest two being the GIMP and OpenOffice, aren't readily themeable via standard means, it will mean a lot of work for the art team to get the same coverage not to mention cooperation with the packagers (not an issue after the core/extras merge I wonder?) and if they don't manage that it means inconsistency for the users which is all together not desirable.
Tango is available from Extras so you can install it, you will however not get as positive an experience as you could have since in some ways the rest of the Echo theme clashs stylistically with Tango and given that it's mighty hard to change the entire artwork set end to end the result is less pleasing that it could be desired.
That being said, the correct place to debate such issues is probably the fedora-art list.
- David Nielsen
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 19:41 +0100, David Nielsen wrote:
Tango is available from Extras so you can install it, you will however not get as positive an experience as you could have since in some ways the rest of the Echo theme clashs stylistically with Tango and given that it's mighty hard to change the entire artwork set end to end the result is less pleasing that it could be desired.
The main point of the icon-naming side of the tango push is to make it a more feasible task to do a complete set of icons, by reducing the overall number of icons.
Matthias Clasen skrev:
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 19:41 +0100, David Nielsen wrote:
Tango is available from Extras so you can install it, you will however not get as positive an experience as you could have since in some ways the rest of the Echo theme clashs stylistically with Tango and given that it's mighty hard to change the entire artwork set end to end the result is less pleasing that it could be desired.
The main point of the icon-naming side of the tango push is to make it a more feasible task to do a complete set of icons, by reducing the overall number of icons
Great, now when does Firefox, Thunderbird, The GIMP, Gaim and OpenOffice.org plan to support this scheme? Before they do (and I have no doubt that they will eventually but it might take years) this is still a perfectly valid concern, especially since all but one of those apps are in our default desktop.
I fully support the naming effort but it's not there yet so we need to be careful, we should also leverage the great work that has already been done by some of the FLOSS communitys finest artists, not to mention the large team they have already built to work on the Tango project.
- David
David Nielsen wrote:
The main point of the icon-naming side of the tango push is to make it a more feasible task to do a complete set of icons, by reducing the overall number of icons
Great, now when does Firefox, Thunderbird, The GIMP, Gaim and OpenOffice.org plan to support this scheme? Before they do (and I have no doubt that they will eventually but it might take years) this is still a perfectly valid concern, especially since all but one of those apps are in our default desktop.
It is a valid concern, yes but forcing one theme style is not the way to move ahead. It is very important that themes should be easily replaceable all across the desktop environment and applications. If not, thats a bug and should not used as a argument to adopt one theme.
I fully support the naming effort but it's not there yet so we need to be careful, we should also leverage the great work that has already been done by some of the FLOSS communitys finest artists, not to mention the large team they have already built to work on the Tango project.
If the Fedora art team wants to move ahead and adopt a different style, they should be encouraged and allowed to do that.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
David Nielsen wrote:
Before they do (and I have
no doubt that they will eventually but it might take years) this is still a perfectly valid concern, especially since all but one of those apps are in our default desktop.
It is a valid concern, yes but forcing one theme style is not the way to move ahead. It is very important that themes should be easily replaceable all across the desktop environment and applications. If not, thats a bug and should not used as a argument to adopt one theme.
+1
I fully support the naming effort but it's not there yet so we need to be careful, we should also leverage the great work that has already been done by some of the FLOSS communitys finest artists, not to mention the large team they have already built to work on the Tango project.
If the Fedora art team wants to move ahead and adopt a different style, they should be encouraged and allowed to do that.
This was a big point brought up at the GNOME Boston Summit a few weeks ago, and Andy Fitzsimon brought a really interesting idea to the table:
http://live.gnome.org/AwesomeArtShit
('SVG Crack' section)
Take a look at the monitor variations on the right. Same SVG, graphics generated by applying different CSS to the SVG.
Basically we could use the Tango SVGs as an 'upstream' and using stylesheets apply different transformations to the Tango SVGs to create whichever look we like. In cases where we want to change the icon entirely (e.g. for the Trash icon) we can override it in the icon theme.
Andy I'm sure can explain more of the technical details behind this. But I feel this is a better use of time and resources - developing a look via stylesheet applied to upstream icons - rather than starting from scratch. We'll still be able to have a distinct visual identity for Fedora, we'll still be able to override particular icons from upstream if we feel the need, but! We'll *also* be able to join in the upstream Tango effort and add our resources to the already pretty large pool of talent in the Tango team and help upstream as well as get we would like done as well. The Fedora art folks can join the wider FOSS art community and learn from and interact with many of the seasoned pros there.
Unfortunately, this would mean some manual grunt work in arranging the already-existing Tango icons, some minor modifications to Inkscape to make it easier to make these mods (I think probably the equivalent would be adding classes to html elements to apply a stylesheet.)
Overall though I think it's an awesome idea, it solves a lot of problems, it's do-able, and it's very innovative and cool! There is a lot of power in SVG we haven't taken advantage of yet and this would be a great way for Fedora to lead the way!
~m
Rahul Sundaram skrev:
David Nielsen wrote:
The main point of the icon-naming side of the tango push is to make it a more feasible task to do a complete set of icons, by reducing the overall number of icons
Great, now when does Firefox, Thunderbird, The GIMP, Gaim and OpenOffice.org plan to support this scheme? Before they do (and I have no doubt that they will eventually but it might take years) this is still a perfectly valid concern, especially since all but one of those apps are in our default desktop.
It is a valid concern, yes but forcing one theme style is not the way to move ahead. It is very important that themes should be easily replaceable all across the desktop environment and applications. If not, thats a bug and should not used as a argument to adopt one theme.
Having a default is forcing a setting on the users, Echo is no less forcing a style on our users than Tango is. The question is do we want to force a good setting or a bad setting on our users. Tango has a vibrant developer community, is widely adopted, is vetted for usability, accessibility and style. Echo sadly has issues, some of which I pointed out months ago which are still not addressed. I would feel more comfortable with a real debate as to which default we are going to have for the forseeable future instead of handwaving about standards which have yet to be universally adopted (after which the art team will have a much easier job and the users a better experience whatever the art team decides to do). I know it's hard to express an opinion on a subject like this without stepping on some toes, that is not the intend, but Echo is simply not a good nor a logical choice currently. The only unifying option we have is Tango. Given that it is so hard currently to change the entire look of the distro (not just icons might you) do we want the default to be as good as it can be?
I would be much more comfortable with a widely adopted default now, given that Fedora moves quickly, once the standards we require are adopted and Echo matures, it can be dropped in place - for the time being however that is simply not possible, all idealism aside.
This is ultimately about the user experience, I fear that at it's present level and that of the forseeable future Echo will not be able to provide the best possible experince, the art team is perfectly welcome to prove me wrong and have a consistent, vetted theme ready based on Echo ready for FC7. I doubt they can make that deadline especially given that they would have to cover applications which current are not under the naming standards, even big ones like OpenOffice.
This all aside the fact that Tango is a damn fine piece of work, it has great usability testing, it's accessibility friendly, wide adoption and a development pace that is out of this world. I know at least this about Echo, in the months I've followed it's development, it still has many issues like widely inconsistent emblem use (try looking at the indication for new just for a quick example) - I have tried pointing this out but nothing has happened and sadly I am not skilled enough to fix it myself only to spot it.
I fully support the naming effort but it's not there yet so we need to be careful, we should also leverage the great work that has already been done by some of the FLOSS communitys finest artists, not to mention the large team they have already built to work on the Tango project.
If the Fedora art team wants to move ahead and adopt a different style, they should be encouraged and allowed to do that.
Nowhere did I tell the art team what they could do with their sparetime, however I plea Fedora as a whole to pick the best possible defaults for any given release, realistically Echo isn't it yet.. some day it might be.
My proposal is this, we create the missing bits of artwork in Tango (anaconda, rhgb, backgrounds, etc.) and use that for FC7. Echo being a work in progress is available both via the wiki and as an Extras package so it is sure to get real world testing, if need be we can ask users to test it out and maybe install it as a non-default theme so people can switch over easily. Once we get to a point where we have the required coverage, we make the switch, preferrably after consulting the users but if desired the art team can make that decision alone since it is now trivially easy to switch to whatever the users like. I promise on beloved aunts grave when it is dead simple to change the overall look of Fedora, then I'll shut up forever on this subject since I will then have a choice, right now I don't so I want the default to be as good as it gets - not just for me but for the good of our users.
Can Echo reach full coverage for FC7, realistically? If it can't, can it at least compare to what we can do with Tango today (There are Tango icon packs out there for Gaim, OpenOffice is work in progress and tests are available afaik). Also how do we encourage the various upstreams to make it easier do awesomeartshit (I imagine people like Mozilla might not be happy if we change their artwork in the name of consistency so we might need to convince them somehow).
- David
David Nielsen wrote:
This all aside the fact that Tango is a damn fine piece of work, it has great usability testing,
Where are there details about Tango's usability testing?
I do not remember reading about this anywhere on their site. I'm genuinely curious because I was completely unaware usability testing had been performed on the icons.
~m
On Tuesday, 28 Nov 2006, Máirín Duffy wrote:
David Nielsen wrote:
This all aside the fact that Tango is a damn fine piece of work, it has great usability testing,
Where are there details about Tango's usability testing?
I do not remember reading about this anywhere on their site. I'm genuinely curious because I was completely unaware usability testing had been performed on the icons.
~m
As a matter of fact there is no usability test done by the tango project. I got an answer from Andreas Nilsson in #tango:
,---- | not really, but they are made in such a way to make them visible | against all kinds of colors and we try to make the icons in such a way | that they are easy to distinguish from each other `----
Cheers,
Máirín Duffy skrev:
David Nielsen wrote:
This all aside the fact that Tango is a damn fine piece of work, it has great usability testing,
Where are there details about Tango's usability testing?
I do not remember reading about this anywhere on their site. I'm genuinely curious because I was completely unaware usability testing had been performed on the icons.
~m
I believe Tango has been part of the Better Desktop testing, if I am mistaken then at the very least their comprehensive style guide has mentions of basic considerations to make for usable icon design so at least their style shows some consideration being given to the objective even if indirectly. I apologize for my use of the word "great", it has undergone, at least, indirect usability testing and it's designers and guideline authors, at least a few of them, are aware of usability concerns (Ryan Collier and Anna Dirks are both usability people by trait).
- David
David Nielsen wrote:
Máirín Duffy skrev:
David Nielsen wrote:
This all aside the fact that Tango is a damn fine piece of work, it has great usability testing,
Where are there details about Tango's usability testing?
I do not remember reading about this anywhere on their site. I'm genuinely curious because I was completely unaware usability testing had been performed on the icons.
I believe Tango has been part of the Better Desktop testing, if I am mistaken then
http://www.betterdesktop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Data
Yeh, no icon-specific tests there that I can identify.
at the very least their comprehensive style guide has
mentions of basic considerations to make for usable icon design so at least their style shows some consideration being given to the objective even if indirectly.
I wouldn't say their guidelines are any more conducive to 'usable' icons than any other icon style guidelines. There are design elements in the guidelines that help achieve better usability - the best one is the solid outline around the icon. Of course, Tango actually has guidelines while Echo does not - which is a good point.
I apologize for my use of the word "great", it has
undergone, at least, indirect usability testing and it's designers and guideline authors, at least a few of them, are aware of usability concerns (Ryan Collier and Anna Dirks are both usability people by trait).
I studied usability practices in graduate school and perform usability testing professionally. I've also contributed to Echo in the past. This does not mean Echo is usable.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with a *lot* of your points. But I think you're muddying the issue with the 'usability' point. There are pretty big differences between interaction design, visual design, usability, and accessibility. The boundaries of these disciplines do bleed over sometimes and are discussed quite frequently [1]. But, the basics of it are:
1) DESIGN is up-front, before implementation. 2) USABILITY is at the end, after *something* has been implemented (whether it's a mock or an initial iteration). Usability is kind of like QA for design.
Echo aside, it seems clear that Tango has 1 but not 2, so 'usability' doesn't seem a valid selling point. 'Consistency' which helps usability, maybe.
~m
[1] http://lists.interactiondesigners.com/pipermail/discuss-interactiondesigners...
David Nielsen wrote:
Having a default is forcing a setting on the users, Echo is no less forcing a style on our users than Tango is. The question is do we want to force a good setting or a bad setting on our users.
For themes, there is no one specific good or bad choice. The argument you are making is that some upstream projects are adopting a particular style and changing the style in those applications are hard currently so we should adopt that particular style. In every application, it should be made possible to change it to any particular style that the user prefers. Defaults are not forcing a change, The inability to change it would be.
Can Echo reach full coverage for FC7, realistically?
We dont know yet. It might be possible. Sooner if you contribute. If there are problems, we need bug reports. We dont need to cover everything. Just the common ones would be good enough for a first iteration.
Also how do we encourage the various upstreams to
make it easier do awesomeartshit
This is the direction we need to think more. If tango or any other theme is provided in Fedora as alternatives, we should fix whatever implementation deficiencies that make it harder to choose the style that the users prefer. For example, making RHGB more themeable or switching to a better implementation.
Rahul
On Tuesday, 28 Nov 2006, David Nielsen wrote:
I've tried convincing the art team of Tangos superior design, consistency, usability, accessibility and progress for a while now, it hasn't really brought me any good fortune, infact I think the term used was "trolling". One problem we are sure to encounter though is that Tango has wide upstream acceptance, The gimp, Jokosher and many other fine existing and upcoming big FLOSS projects uses and relies on Tango. As many of these, the biggest two being the GIMP and OpenOffice, aren't readily themeable via standard means, it will mean a lot of work for the art team to get the same coverage not to mention cooperation with the packagers (not an issue after the core/extras merge I wonder?) and if they don't manage that it means inconsistency for the users which is all together not desirable.
I remembered I read those posts. Your views judging from now are correct. We should put consistency, usability, accessibility first and whether to have a unique look second.
[...]
That being said, the correct place to debate such issues is probably the fedora-art list.
I think Icon theming firstly concerns usability. The most noticeable change for a distribution.
- David Nielsen
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 17:39 +0000, Leo wrote:
Hi there,
The Tango project has become the one true style guide for free software theming.
That is a bold statement.
A few heavy weight apps such as gnome, inkscape, gimp and openoffice.org are or will be using tango style icons. The project's developers are of high profile and the quality of the icons is without doubt the best.
I can argue that the quality is not the best but it is all a matter of tastes and this is a divisive argument that no one can win. The real problem I have with Tango is it ties the hands of the artists to this one style and then the proponents go around saying "shame on you for doing something different, this is the style the whole community has chosen" which is in fact not the case. KDE for instance has their Oxygen style which IMHO allows a bit more artistic license.
I followed a few Tango_Fridays¹ in irc #tango and was much impressed. As you can see in Tango_Fridays¹, more and more upstream apps will be adopting their icons.
This is a better argument for going with Tango but not completely compelling.
Today I visited the EchoDevelopment² after a few months, my feeling was not good. But my biggest concerns is that although Echo is using tango naming specs, its style (perspective, color palette etc) is different. This will put Fedora in a situation as Bluecurve does - inconsistency across the desktop. Inconsistency will definitely compromise usability.
Echo isn't done yet. I think it is too early to tell. This argument is like saying hey, lets not try anything new and just accept whatever people throw us. If in the end Tango turns out the way to go I'm not ruling it out but I like the direction Echo has taken and perhaps there will be ways to meld the two.
So what's the way out? Changing Echo to fit into the universe of tango style icons? Put Echo on hold and use tango for Fedora 7? Please comment.
Standards for standards sake is not the way to go. I think we move forward and see where things fall. If there is a team who wants to experiment with making Echo fit with Tango that is cool. If there is a team that wants to experiment with theming Tango to feel for Fedoraish that is cool too. Personally I think we should have had competing styles from the get go. Free markets and all.
Hi all,
From various replies, I notice people are focusing on the fact that
Echo is not finished and we should wait and see. There is possibility that miracle can happen and we all want Fedora to have a popular yet unique look. However, could you try to estimate how much time we need to get it ready for Fedora 7 based on the number of people working on it? I quite doubt Echo can make it within Fedora 7 time frame. As pointed out by David, inconsistency are one of the major issues.
Usability experts, could you point out what needs to improve in Echo? Look at the current set of icons, try to use it on your desktop¹. My experience seems to tell me, they are not as easy on the eyes as Bluecurve or Tango. Designing icons without palette and guidelines would work well when there is only one contributor. We should set at least some very basic guidelines if we expect all contributed icons to roughly have the same level of quality and fit well together.
Tango being a freedesktop project detached from any distributions will be adopted by all upstream developers sooner or later not to mention there are already quite a few software websites using tango icons. Designing Echo without a mind to make it compatible with Tango, we are risking ourselves to have an inconsistent look the day Echo is out. And it would requires so much more work on designing icons for big apps such as OOo etc if we do care to deliver a consistent desktop look.
If people could look objectively at the current status of Echo, and make a doable plan for Fedora 7, I think that would be best.
Footnotes: ¹ yum --enablerepo=development install echo-icon-theme
Leo wrote:
Hi all,
From various replies, I notice people are focusing on the fact that
Echo is not finished and we should wait and see. There is possibility that miracle can happen and we all want Fedora to have a popular yet unique look. However, could you try to estimate how much time we need to get it ready for Fedora 7 based on the number of people working on it? I quite doubt Echo can make it within Fedora 7 time frame. As pointed out by David, inconsistency are one of the major issues.
A complete icon set would take time. Its a lot of work. Thats already well known.
Tango being a freedesktop project detached from any distributions will be adopted by all upstream developers sooner or later not to mention there are already quite a few software websites using tango icons.
Freedesktop is a hosting space not very different from sf.net except for its desktop orientation. It is not a guarantee of upstream adaptobility. KDE most probably is not going to adopt it for example. There has been discussions about whether tango as a theme would fit into freedesktop at all though there is general agreement that a standard naming convention is a very good thing.
Rahul
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Leo -
Matthias Clasen -
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Rahul Sundaram