Action Icons.

what about them?? they are just one more icon!

Humm not really, in fact the different kind of icons have different kinds of usage, and almost all icon themes treat them has "one more icon".
In fact this is a common mistake that i did myself several times.

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For starters action icons are normally rendered with a very different background than most icons, wen they are made, normally in a vector program the background is white in action icons normally it is .... well your favorite window color, that poses one problem the preemption of the limits of the icon can be misinterpreted by the user, thus the usage of solid outline helps in this aspect.

In second place they are small :(, yea has an kind of artist it the worst part, you do a very detailed and perfect drawing, men it looks sweet, but then you render it to an 16x16 pixel map, and that it, 16x16 little squares of solid color, and we did al that funny details that were so important went?
Lost! So if you are doing action icons it is stupid to go in to big details, this is being said by a stupid guy :).
There is an other procedure to the problem doing completely different icons for each size, i really don't like it, in the end it becomes confusing that a menu action icon is not the same has the one in the bar, being they the same.
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Third action icons refer to action, it is a "do something kind icon" so you have to do something that implies some kind of movement.

Comments

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Anonymous said…
That is all the more reason to support the transition to vector based (SVG) Icon's for standard UI locations. You have have the best of both worlds. With the up and coming QT inclusion of more SVG support I really think it would be best if designers focused on releasing the icon sets in SVG.
Anonymous said…
And thats what we are going to do in oxygen, never the less this kind of problem are even biguer in plain svg, so we are thinking of way to (animate the icon, so that it fits beter in all rendering sizes) nevr the less an 16x16 icoel will always be an 16x16 icon on screen at least.
Anonymous said…
yeah but with ever increasing screen resolutions ... 16x16 is becoming more and more like a pixel.
Anonymous said…
That is true, but i think that for kde 4.0 1280x1024 will still be the most comon desktop defenition, and in that siszes 16x16 is still the best size for menu icons.
i hope screens get biguer so we can drop 16x16 for good, and i meen for real good sizes. like 32, (one can dream).

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