[Adium-devl] EMD icon examination

[Evan Schoenberg]

The lower-right, small badge looks better than the larger one,  
definitely.

On one hand, I can understand wanting the menu bar icon to be  
distinctly Adium.

On the other, the black outline of a duck doesn't add any information  
to the display.  There's no reason for us to say that another app is  
using a similar idea and therefore we shouldn't -- if we're doing our  
'job' right, they shouldn't be launching such heathen things  
anyways.  Why not write the authors of whatever other app we're  
discussing (Proteus uses a gem similar to our default gem set, and  
iChat uses a chat bubble similar to the display when the Chat Bubbles  
status icon pack is in use) and inform them that their icon doesn't  
really communicate the application in a distinctly branded way and so  
should be changed?  I refuse to grant seniority to iChat :)

I'm willing to play with the smaller version of the badge for a week  
or two and see how it feels both to me and to other users of svn.   
Given that there are decent arguments on both side of the fence, the  
best test is using it.  Things I'm looking at and would encourage  
others to keep in mind, too:  Does it feel cluttered, either with the  
default icon set or with most of the alternate sets available as  
xtras?  Does it look good regardless of the color of the status icon  
[contrast with darker colors is potentially an issue, though if we're  
rocking core image in there already we could add a white glow or  
something to improve constrast :P]?  Is it visible for status  
indication at usual screen resolutions?

Cheers,
Evan

On Jan 5, 2006, at 3:32 AM, Mac-arena the Bored Zo wrote:

> stubborn as I am, I've stuck by the idea of badging the status icon  
> onto the Duck. I'm fairly sure that there's at least one app that  
> uses an Aqua bubble in the status bar (Evan pointed out Proteus,  
> but I'm not sure that that was the one I was thinking of). for us  
> to use essentially the same thing, without any differentiation, as  
> our default menu icon would be confusing, IMO.
>
> so I'm still working on the badge idea, now with a twist: the  
> badge, if larger than one quadrant of the Duck, is scaled to that  
> size.
>
> unsized (iBubbles, Gems, Chat Bubbles):
> <emd-unsized-ibubbles.png>
> <emd-unsized-gems.png>
> <emd-unsized-chatbubbles.png>
>
> lower-right quadrant:
> <emd-lrquadrant-ibubbles.png>
> <emd-lrquadrant-gems.png>
> <emd-lrquadrant-chatbubbles.png>
>
> I also had played with putting the icon in the center, but this  
> only looked any good with Gems:
> <new-emd-centeredgems.png>
>
> of course, that was before I started resizing it. I expect that the  
> lower-right corner would still look better, though.
> _____________________________________________
> \ Mac-arena the Bored Zo / boredzo at gmail.com
> PGP public key ID: 7AB26BAD (since 2006-01-01)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Adium-devl mailing list
> Adium-devl at adiumx.com
> http://adiumx.com/mailman/listinfo/adium-devl_adiumx.com

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/attachments/20060106/52496a74/attachment.sig>