347602 - New Home button needs more color

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

When you open a new Firefox profile you see only the default set on the toolbar (five icons). 
Three icons are inactive (Back, Forward, and also the Stop button grays out very soon). The only two with color are the blue Reload button and the Home icon. 
Now the Home icon has only a blue door and the rest looks a bit pale. In fact it has so little color that it nearly looks inactive too.
I think it could use a cheerful orange roof and also the door could use some fresh paint.

Bug 347541 is about the contrast and maybe also about the extensive use of blueish pastel colors but this bug is about color change of one icon.

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

I would say that this applies to most of the icons. They looked like they been washed in 90 degrees and lost its color

Comment 2

[Mehmet D. AKIN]

I vote for this too :) New icon is too colorless, old one with orange roof was maybe a little bold but was making contrast to Green and blue icons on its left.  

We should at least add some color to this new home, it looks so pale. 

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

It's not really possible to add much color in the front view. That's why the 3D view was a good idea. Maybe it's not logical compared to the other icons, but does it really look out of place? To me it doesn't, it's rather appealing by adding some dynamics.

As an alternative to the old icon:
http://www.conquerhosting.com/images/home.gif

Comment 4

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

The original proposal for the home icon was 3D; with front lawn, etc.. 'it had much more character than the facade of a home that landed. 

some color to distinguish it from the background would be nice.
a blue door?  
Tiny nit: position the door knob slightly below midpoint from top to bottom

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Tango also has a nice Home icon, though not 3D:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/static/cvs/tango-icon-theme/32x32/actions/go-home.png

(In reply to comment #4)
> The original proposal for the home icon was 3D; with front lawn, etc.. 'it had
> much more character than the facade of a home that landed.

Any chance to make that public?

Comment 6

[Wayne Woods]

With only the blue reload button and the blue-and-white house, my honest first thought when I saw the new theme was there had been a mistake and everything had accidentally been rendered with a negative effect.

I really think it'd be both nice and practical if each of the sets of default buttons carried a different basic colour. Fwd/Back buttons are green, reload is blue, and stop is red. So placing another basic colour on the house would probably work better.

Comment 7

[Jay Goldman]

Attachment: Pinstripe: more colourful home

We liked Wayne's idea to use a different colour on each of the primary buttons, so this Home icon uses orange for the door. Note: the rest of the window is provided for context and shows some other elements in an incomplete state - ignore the man behind the curtain and repeat after me: "there's no place like home"...

Winstripe mockup to follow...

Comment 8

[Jay Goldman]

Attachment: Winstripe: more colourful home

Comment 9

[Jay Goldman]

New Toolbar.png uploaded to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345466, marked this as dependent. 

Comment 10

[José Jeria]

Sorry for spamming and my ignoranc, but the mockup presented on http://wiki.mozilla.org/FX2_Visual_Update/Default_Theme_Update has these nice colorful icons. What happend to them?

Comment 11

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Comment on attachment 233477 [details]
Pinstripe: more colourful home 

Landed this already in the main bug.

Comment 12

[Dave Townsend [:mossop] (PTO until Aug 21st)]

*** Bug 348727 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Rob Marshall [tH]]

The new home icon doesn't fix this bug as described in comment 0. The new icon has a *different* colour for the door, but there's no more colour in it than before.

Comment 14

[shirish]

It would be nice to have more color. I wish I could see tht 3D home with lawn view. Please make it public here. Thnx in advance.

Comment 15

[shirish]

One more thing instead of orangish door I like the bluish door. Although would like the window or/and a lawn to go alongwith it :)

Comment 16

[Peter Kasting]

One way to give the Home button more color would be to color the roof red or orange instead of white.  This would put color on the top of the button and make it appear less inactive.  I note that the icons in comment 3 and comment 5 both do this.

This bug is still a pretty common complaint in B2 feedback, so I'd say the current Home icon isn't quite there yet.

Comment 17

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

tbh, I think the real issue here is that the home button is *too many* colours. It's a combination of greys and browns; all other images are shades of a single colour. Making the home button nothing but grey outlines (like the other icons) and browns would probably be the solution. 

Comment 18

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #17)
> tbh, I think the real issue here is that the home button is *too many* colours.

... maybe an issue, but probably not the only the only one. In the beta2 feedback, I read again and again that the home icon has too much detail. You have this very sharp 1px-wide roof, the door has like two outlines ... if feels noisy.

Comment 19

[Wayne Woods]

I think Mike's right. If the house is reworked in exactly the same style and colour-balance as the other main icons (but with a colour that is unique to that icon), I think it'll look OK regardless of whether it's brown or yellow or orange or whatever. And the combination of using the same outline style as the other icons, and using a single colour should make it look far less detailed or busy.

Comment 20

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

The problem is I see two styles in the toolbar buttons. Back-Forward-Stop-Reload have a symbolic style. The other images are more or less realistic miniatures of existing objects, some of them however with a little symbol in it. The grayish colors and lack of contrast of those objects indicate that the objects are far away. Some pictures are so vague and misty, that I can't even say what objects they are meant to depict. History for instance: symbolically it would have been enough to display a clockface, but I see also something in the background that I don't understand. 

Comment 21

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

beltzner and I think the new icon is about right.  We could make it flatter, but we're not really leaning that way.  Marking FIXED for now, since this is certainly shippable now.

Comment 22

[Ian Moody [:Kwan] (UTC+0)]

Attachment: Mockup of home icon idea

The feedback for the new red-ish one, while better, still seems to be negative.  One problem for the new home button seems to be finding space for colour.  While the door was used at one point in my opinion the icon needs more top-weight.  Why not rotate the roof (see attached mockup) to give more space for colour, and then orange could be kept for the roof as well (though obviously the shade or whatever would be changed to better match the current theme).

Comment 23

[Wayne Woods]

I think the single-colour, "faded" style of the new house fits the rest of the icon set perfectly :). While the type of brown gives me a mild urge to give it a bit of a scrub, I think it's still definitely evolved in the right direction.