KDE Pinheiro

In the beginning there was a screen.

2012-10-08T16:30:00.002-07:00

This is where desktops, exist. and its a part of my "back to basics" series to take a look at our traditional desktop, up there 256x256, 128x128, and 64x64 icon versions of a more modern screen in the same style as the laptop, and just like the laptop works in bigger sizes...
So probably you will see it used in other situations than just the icon use...

Back to our basic desktop icon-s.

2012-09-30T15:30:00.001-07:00

This weekend I spent most of the time playing with one icon that will be really useful to present our desktop line of products... A laptop (ultrabook kinda)... I ended up overdoing it a little bit to the point were it only made sense to look at it in 2048x2048 pixels :) so hardly an icon, and that wasn't the point, the point was to make an illustration of a desirable product that could show our KDE main Desktop. The fact that We can use it as a device icon is just a fortunate coincidence ;).

Its still filed with multiple glitches (like the keys a bit "off", or overdone contrasts) but I think it will do its joob, as will the TFT screen I plan on doing next week.

Cheers and keep on having fun.

PS (the icon versions will show as usual modified and simplified version of this illustration so it remains easy to recognize and not a smear of pixels, you can already see that in the 128x128 version up there)

Back to our basic desktop.

2012-09-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

In the last weeks I been spending more than a fair bit of time working on what I consider the basic desktop, you know what we usually know as KDE that will be reincarnated soon in 4.10...

The focus so far as been mostly in decluttering most of the visual junk that had no functionality, In a way making our KDE more simple without making it more "dumb".

So far I'm happy with a new wallpaper still a W.I.P. (I for some reason hallways need to start with a new wallpaper canvas.)

Me and Marco Martin moved into clean air a "bit" and I'm really happy with the progress so far.

We are also trying to improve some fundamental aspect of oxygen windeco in correlation with how apps can use it, for example letting apps use some features of oxygen automaticly.
The test app for this as been decided to be Gwenview. And if all goes well we get this on kde 4.10.....

Sooooo, I start to look at the app this week end and I notice that the Background is a solid dull colour, and I thought.....hummm... "a texture would be much nicer" sooo I get to do one..... Problem (there is always one right?) textures need to be tested....So I had to make a little demo QML app to test a texture.... The result (texture not the QML) is what you can see above, plus a black opacity mask on top so that one can make it more or less dark depending on what you like best...

But once I created the little demo I could not resit and expand it into including possible replacement for the thumbnail view in Gwenview. (don't like it much)
The result can be seen in the video down here ;)...

I'm not sure Aurélien Gâteau will be interested in using any of this (I'm sure my code is way to messy to be used in any way and he probably as a much more efficient code under the current gwenview) , hopefully the noise texture will be ok to be used and that was the point. But its fun what one can do in QML over a few hours of trial and error code/design.

Any way and more importantly 4.10 is looking like our best KDE Desktop ever ;)

Back to basics

2012-09-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

What you see up there is a icon for a new KDE App Picmi, a kinda sudoku like game but more fun.. It's still a work in progress but I think its looking nice and retaining that level of fun that games like this have...

It was to me a bit of retro gaming style so I opted to bend traditional oxygen icon style a bit to fit what the game was all about.

And that served as a great excuse to talk about some of my personal plans for 4.10....
No mater what some people might say I don't think the Linux desktop is dead, I mean my KDE is working wonderfully here, fits my needs as a work desktop that I mostly interact with with a keyboard and a mouse.
So for 4.10 I plan to work on that basic experience people know as the KDE desktop, you know the plasma-desktop shell, the oxygen theme a new wallpaper and a few more things I find time to do.

That reminds me, do you have design skills?
Do you want to work on something brilliant?
Want to help define the desktop millions use?

Join us at #oxygen for fun and work.

Time for a pause

2012-07-24T18:03:00.001-07:00

Call pause icon.... I'm biased in relation to this set as I think its overly detailed with to many features... there are many many missing, but its a WIP.

The idea here is mostly to try to use context, so this icons will only work if they are some how grouped or shown in a given context in this case a telephonic context. (so in the call-pause icon I dispense the use of the phone speaker visual element and trust the context.)
Its a good example of some of the problems we end up with with generic icons sets were we need to repeat visual elements as we don't have control over the context, this end up creating overly cluttered with information icons, and worse they look stupid as they repeat the same information over and over again.

Problems with looking stupid is that in a way we are calling our users stupid repeating the same message over and over again.

This type of analysis is something I have been doing a lot lately, I believe that the way we tell the story of our app is fundamental to establish a relation with the user. In a way I think we should think our UI's as a conversation with a user, were first we present yourself, what we do and how good we are at it. And them move on in to inviting for interaction, and providing pleasant experiences for series of actions.

So and for this case wen looking at row of icons I try to see the overall message and how it will be interpreted by the user...

The litle guys are icons 2

2012-07-16T12:26:00.003-07:00

So to complete my Bug 252729 killing the little guys

Cheers... A new one tomorrow.

One icon a day keeps the doctor away

2012-07-14T08:43:00.003-07:00

Or was it an apple?

Hummm think apples are bad for you, so it must be icons ;)

Any way since this days I been trying to kill of old bugs, I thought Bug 269484 was long overdue sooo...

Will try to keep up the current pace of blog post see if we can motivate more people into joining oxygen project, and to show what we been doing...

yesterday today tomorrow

2012-07-12T16:50:00.002-07:00

Realy quick post, lets see if I can keep this up ;)

Yesterday I killed a bug that was complaining that oxygen had no smartphone icon....

Today i start to kill the one that says that we don't have tablets.....

Tomorrow I will try to finish this one :)

Back from Akademy

2012-07-11T17:11:00.003-07:00

Really quick post just to say that I'm back from Akademy were I meet old friends and made new ones, (as usual), had lots of fun, made my presentation, helped in a training, and still managed to do some work :)

So I'm back home and not as stressed with real day to day work as i was in the pass few months, And this gets me some time for bug killing in Oxygen icons.... today's victim..... A smart phone.....

So in the center I feature Necessitas Qt's port for Android Operating System:) ....

Dot 8

2012-01-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

Or 4.8, is Out......

The reason I say dot 8 is that oxygen started with the 4.x series, so now with dot 8 its alive for 4.5 years, its not a juvenile anymore.

Looking back I must say that I'm incredibly happy with what we did over the years, I think its without a question a fantastic proof that OSS people can coordinate efforts in to creating huge pieces of coherent design made by many, for more.

And doing that with the single motivation of sharing the LOVE poured in to that work.

OXYGEN is a true work of LOVE.

From the early days 6 years ago, when me Ken and David started with that ambitious crazy project of redoing all of the KDE icon set, (yeah we thought that was ambitious), when we were going to be sported to do that job by a popular Distro. To the moment the plug was removed from the project. Passing trough the days I thought the future was black (literally i made all the icons black :) ). And the days we thought we could do a widget theme as well, and inviting Thomas L. to help, To the moment we Saw Oxygen explode into everything you see in KDE this days. There was a common element.... The LOVE, the love for a project, the love for a community, the immense fun it was to push the boundaries of what our users expect and appreciate in KDE from a design perspective.

I love working with people Like Hugo, (must mention him for the superb amazing work he as done), were we can almost hallways complete each others sentences.

Must mention our Ruphy (ricardo) that was for a good part, oxygen soul.

Also can't forget Casper, that literally saved us when all seemed lost.

And Marco Martin, for being the amazing person he his.

Ooooo and Martin Gräßlin and the kwin team he represents, you guys rocked the way we talk together.

And the other many many many many people that shared the love of/for Oxygen over the last years.

I know I'm being terribly unjust to not mention you, but you have my LOVE.

And Finally, the most important person of them all YOU, the user of Oxygen, the countless You's that moaned at a icon or a folder I did, that congratulated Hugo on his work, or that still use David's icons, You that LOVE/HATE Oxygen, to you my utmost, thank you.

Today.

Oxygen still as a long way to go. KDE 5.0 is still a distant mirage and oxygen still needs a lot of work, I will keep making what I know best, Icons, I still have over 1000 to do, we now have this missing piece of the Oxygen experience being worked by Vernon, the Oxygen Font.

And we have new people joining in every day like Eshat that is doing all of the 4,8 specific branding Kudos for that.

And by the time the last 4,X comes out Oxygen will be I hope mostly finished... and also I hope dead...:)

And Tomorrow.

Please do not see it as a bad thing, its a good thing, its just part of evolution. And the reason I'm saying this is to start to stern the designers out there to Join oxygen NOW!!! to be part of its future, I can say its has been the most fun personal enrichment experience, of my life. I don't know what will be the future, nor do i think I should as YOU must have a word in it, But I'm super exited about it.

Do you want it to be the good child of oxygen? using many of Oxygen's lines and elements, or the rebel kid that denies is father??? Its is up to you to be part of that amazing journey now!

The challenges Oxygen faced 6 years ago are vastly different from the scenario we have for KDE in the coming years... From a Desktop design paradigm we now have to face several scenarios, several gadgets we need to excel at, wile keeping the same design language, new design paradigms languages we need to keep up with, new generation of users with different expectations and desires.
Plasma helps allot by providing flexible desktop shells that adapt to several different user interaction paradigms, with QML components, porting desktop apps into more different from factors will become less problematic (but they do require massive redesign in most cases). Having a Font will help us a lot manage the increasing range of display DPI's, on the market.

But all of this needs to be fulfilled by a new project.. Oxygen is/was great, join in to be part of the Next great thing OSS does in design.....

Please tell-me if I'm wrong in my assumptions, is this a good bad idea?

The California Gold Rush....

2011-11-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

"brought a flood of treasure seekers...in 1848 " To San Francisco.... in 2011 people are still flooding to the valley in search of .... treasures.... or, well something like that :).

(end of silly introductory text)

I'm not going to try to go against the wave, so I will be attending the Qt Developer Days San Francisco were we will be giving a training on Designing UIs with Qt Quick I like to call this training Qml for designers as it is IMO the main focus of this training. This will be the second time I'm doing this training in just one day, First time was in devdays Munich just a few weeks ago.., and the feed back was good.

Given that I expect that just like in Munich most of the attendees are Developers, and that the full training is over 4 days, we will try to focus a bit on the social/management aspects of dealing with designers that try to do code, we will also do some examples of design techniques that can be used in QML to provide the users with better experiences...

So if you are in the bay area, and have an interest in design and Qt Quick, stop by DevDays2011 to attend our One day training...

Also for the full length of DevDays I will be doing a UX/UI clinic. So if you have an application that you feel could do a bit of UI review, if you have a new project and you are not sure how to start the UI/UX, If you just want to talk about new/old UI design paradigms, You area sure to meet me During DevDays2011 San Francisco... if you want to set up an appointment already send and email to ui-doctor@kdab.com We will see you there...

P.S. Designers do code 2 :D and I published my first application to the OVI store, it is for the most part the same app we used in the Desktop Summit to show the remaining time to the presenters, with a few adaptations/integration with harmattan components. (latest version is 0.2.0 not 0.01, should be up soon)

Must find some time to create a version of this for Plasma.

Stop me please!

2011-11-16T07:11:00.000-08:00

In a couple of weeks, I will need to deliver yet another default wallpaper for KDE's 4.8-49 desktop editions.

So my brain wile starting to go in to “crazy” mode to try to find that specif edge, design pattern, blue, that will make me happy and hopefully our users happy as well... decided to have a look at what we have done over that 4.x series and, I saw a pattern alright.

The most common element in all of them is.... some guy named Nuno...

This must stop NOW!!.... Please help-me....but how??

So I had this idea.... what if some one else can create something better???

We are starting a contest to be ended 4 of December to create a new default wallpaper for 4.8-4.9.

The rules.....

Send it to nuno@oxygen-icons.org subject wallpaper2011 (please use this)
The license for the chosen ones will be LGPL In case they are not selected, they will remain sole property of its creator (I will not publish them).
Minimum size is 1920x1200Bonus points for creating other screen ratios.
Photos are accepted.
Must have a defining element that can be used in kde branding (very important)
Jury, composed by me, Lydia Pintscher, and Ingo Malchow.

Prize..... Having your work used by millions (or close to that :) ). Not having yet another Nuno's wallpaper in your desktop.

Results will be visible in next KDE release, winners will be informed as soon as we know :)

We will chose up to 3 wallpapers only one will be default.

Some side notes..... KDE core branding values, revolve around Elegance, Freedom, and ease of use, we would love to see that in the default wallpaper.

Have fun :)

1996!

2011-10-14T13:36:00.001-07:00

Lets keep it short and to the point!

If we managed to to do all of this in 15 imagine what we can in 15 more?

Back from the Future!

2011-08-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

So I'm back from the desktop summit, were like usual I had good fun meeting up with all my old and new friends.
Had the chance to give a talk about QML, and how I think it can be a major "game changer" for the way we work together and how Designers can be part of the processes and not some one you ask for "this is my app its great, now make it pretty".
Also noted that QML olds lots of dangers, and its not trivial at all to create final polished integrated applications, aka takes more than a decent designer to make it work, ( I repeat coders are designers 2).

Apparently (I have been told) I talk to much and should show more demos :) next year I promise I will tray not to talk ;), (evil idea in the making)

Any way the videos of the talks should be up soon so :)

Also participated in a couple of Bof's about some new exiting stuff Björn Blazazs is hading to his great platform and another called UI clinic were me Björn and Aurelian served as general practitioners to several patients (apps) was really allot of fun for me, I focused on zanshin and scroge and I hope my aspirin tablets caused more good than bad ;), any way I hope we can do it again for future meetings and do it for more hours.

Now I need a random picture of an icon to finish tis post..... hummmm.
Yeap one of the demos was of K3B (3B stands for burn baby burn) fast links screen done in QML

Desktop Sumit or paper planes

2011-08-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

In a couple of hours I will be entering a slightly modified version of the example up above in direction to Not so Sunny Berlin, Hoping I will meet some old friends and recent friends, and make quite a few more along the way.

I will be giving a talk about a very Hot topic also involving paper planes.. QtQuick and its language QML, how I feel about it and how i think its a great thing but also a terrible one, if in the wrong hands.

O BTW have you noticed that 4.7 is out of the door including some new folder icons ??? :) more interested to know if you hate them I'm interested in all the people that after a period of disliking them now think they are better than the old ones.

Icon fun....

2011-05-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

After mostly finishing the great folder redo in oxygen, and wile trying to achieve an effect in QML (trying to do a shutter like open/close animated effect), I ended up with a to fancy svg to let it rot on my hard drive, so, and if you have the shutter part done you can do the remaining bits, and that gives you.....
A icon, tadaaaaa! instant Fun :D.... or should I say instant DSLR fun :)...

Qt Quick and QML

2011-03-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

Been wanting to do this post for some time now, but mostly because I never did got decent recordings of the desktop I postponed it, until today....

First the video...

Ok so its fairly simple demos of what you can do with QML one kinda of a design cliché, but in this case they serve the propose...note# they run way faster/smoother than this its just that the screen capture program is not perfect..

the first one is really an example of how easy it is to create a OSX like thing... the core logic of the demo is around 80 lines of code :). wen I actually made it the first time, the way I implemented had each of the icons having its how independent and overlapping hit area just to see if it was possible, It is, but I don't recommend :).

The second is something I'm working on with Sergio to replace the diary view in Kontact.
Bottom line.... I love QML and By "love" I mean I LOOOOOVE it :D.

Its the freedom it gives-me to create completely new interface and interactions, (yes I have been doing stuff a bit more complex that those little silly demos), its going to the pixel level and fixing that millisecond animation till its just perfect, and then deciding the idea sucks and redoing it another completely different way, its working with it much like I work with design tolls by applying layers and filters, is all of that and the fact that its not hard to code with once you get in to declarative way of code.

BUT... (there is always a "but") with all this freedom great dangers come, To me this is designers tool not to be used by developers* you can make stunning UI's with it but its also easy to fail spectacularly.... The main obvious target for it is the touch interfaces, but that does not mean you cant use it on other places....

For a good time I even thought that the use of it in traditional desktop should be banned :) I don't think this now, and am tempted to say that you can use it any ware.......BUT ok this "BUT" is extremely important the way you can fail are huge and if you are gonna use it pleeease find a proven good designer to help you, heck if you manage to convince the designer to do it himself I will guarantee you that the designer will love it...

I think we can in the future provide some sort of well defined use cases, solutions and elements from QML land that you can apply safely in your app. I also hope that we can attract many more UI designers to OSS/KDE land with this tool. Time will tell.

*not saying developers cant do design I know many that do fantastic design. The problem is if you are not an experienced-maniac-pixel-perfection-zealot chances of failure are big.

Work as usual.

2011-03-03T16:37:00.001-08:00

Its safe to say that the 4.6 release was great. Overall the impression and feedback I received was that this is our "best release ever", I agree with that... Kudos to every one involved..

So I'm back to work and right about now I been sorting out stuff that I had on my HUGE to-do list in oxygen icons.... for example the Digikam face recognition feature for which the icons above belong to.

Other than the same old stuff that I do, I have been spending allot of time playing with Qt Quick qml, tool that I simply love by now, and that enables me to start doing stuff directly for apps... and doing the UI experience without a middle man...
Qml is simple great but is not to be used lightly its in essence a designers tool that gives you incredible control over the UI but with great power comes great responsibility, its incredibly easy to create absolute terribly bad UI with it, so if you plan on using qml for your app be sure to find a designer to help you. Try to motivate him to actually do the UI himself... I guarantee you he will love it.

Showing qml is not as easy as showing icons dough, and it usually requires a video... Will try to sort out a way to post videos here without losing quality.

Till then have fun and keep on rocking.

Elegance is the new word.

2011-01-26T08:12:00.000-08:00

A new version of our desktop experience is out :), as usual I'm extremely proud to be a part of it, I hope all of you enjoy it as much as we enjoy making it :)

Now its Party time :) I will be attending the KDE Release party in Porto, hope to see you there ;).

Finaly

2011-01-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

This post, is short but its about something that started out as something that should be very quick to do, (replacement of the paper in the mime-types), into a complete remake of all of the mime-types this time in all sizes.

Representing something like, +/-244 icons, over 3200 files, many hours of work, this is a work I'm proud to have done, but I hope I don't have to do any time soon.... Overall I'm very pleased with them. And tomorrow, I should start to fix some minor bugs in the set. And get back to action icons doing, applications, etc etc.

The new 4,6 desktop release from KDE is coming in very soon, and we are very happy with all the improvements we made into it.... I hope you all enjoy it as much as we enjoy making it....

I leave you the last icon I did for the set......

Its the news mime type in glorious 16x16 pixels very different from the 256x256

The magic that we do :)

2010-12-12T15:22:00.001-08:00

We do icon themes, we do Qt themes, plasma themes, sound themes, cursor themes, color themes, website themes, we do themes for KDE, so what themes might be missing for the KDE user?????
Hum.... what about, GTK themes..... yes I know you use GTK apps in KDE, I do...., so and because its Xmas time and all and, "santa" HUGO is so nice, we give you OXYGEN-GTK have fun :)

33 years old!

2010-12-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

Today I am turning 33.
Its one of those classical ages, were you have to think about what you have done so far and what you are going to do next.
So what did I do so far?..... nothing much except having a lot of fun, for example today I managed to get the 32x32 icons below 200, 198 to go :)
And this points me to what I'm going to do next, yes 198 icons :)

Hope I can keep having fun with KDE, and make it fun for you to use it as well, .....

Its the end of the world, and KDE!

2010-12-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

So KDE is coming to an end :).

I think they got it all wrong, what was finally finished was the 48x48 mimetypes not KDE.
So today I started to kill KDE a bit more :) 32x32 :) enjoy!

Only 227 icons to do in this size :)

We have work for you!

2010-11-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

So first things first, last post i mentioned something about 48x48 icons and a promise is a promise.....

Ok as I said in last post the improvements to small sizes should be less visible, still as you can see in the side image they are real....

Its all about Elegance (yesterday I could not remember the blasted word ,sorry Gamaral), elegance is accomplished in the details, we are still very far away from a truly elegant icon set but we are getting closer :).
As you can see its really small details that make the difference, but then again it is in those small details that may reside the differentiation of what we do and what every one else is doing...

There is one problem though, this is a lot of work, and by alot I want to say something like 2-8 hours each day for the past month or so and I'm still in the middle of it... Have I mentioned that there is about 1200 icons still to do ?

Had that to all of the other KDE works, and I have a problem....
I need help :)
I'm completely aware that learning to do icons, specially, doing good icons is a trade that takes some time to master, and if I want some help I must be willing to spend some time teaching new people on how to do it....

So with that in mind I would like to invite you (well not you, just the "you" that are eligible to enter the Google Code-in 2010 :) ) to accept the initial challenge I propose that is to do or update 3, just 3 icons in one week of work, I will mentor you, the only thing i request is that you have some basic skills with a vector drawing tool such as inkscape karbon or illustrator... if you successfully finish this task i will create new ones with increasing difficulty...

So have fun!

You can find out the open tasks at http://www.google-melange.com/gci/program/list_tasks/google/gci2010 and the dot story at the dot, :), any doubts about how this works ask Lydia, she has more details here.

Bye bye 64 hello 48.

2010-11-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

The size 64x64 took me more time that what I was originally expecting, not because they were particularly complex to make but simply because I was to busy with other more important KDE related things, with a new release of our desktop in its 4.6 incarnation coming out, we get extra amounts of work to do, plus given the relative success of the oxygen project all projects want to look good and request our assistance, so I end up juggling a lot of subprojects at the same time.

I'm not complaining or anything, its great, and very different from the way things used to be not so long ago, think this change is probably the greatest accomplishment of the oxygen project.

But getting back to the subject of this post, yes 240 icons later the size 64x64 is done and next (now) we will move on to size 48x48., so i think I'm still on time for 4.6.

They look much better than they did IMO but the improvement for the sizes 16x16 22x22 32x32 will be less pronounceable as the ones we had were made for size 32x32.... still its worth the effort.....

In 4.6 i hope we can improve the animation of scaling the icons is rendered in dolphin its just a nitpick but I think it can be better...

Because of my modus operandi now I need to leave a positive message...... so here it goes......

My next post should have icons in size 48x48, lots and lots of them.

incredible no? :)

Cheers, and remember, have fun!