359112 - Microsummaries need visual identity/icon

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Microsummaries, enhancement)

Description

[Tim De Pauw]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061024 BonEcho/2.0 (pigfoot)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061024 BonEcho/2.0 (pigfoot)

I've just created a small web app that offers microsummaries and failed to come up with a suitable icon for them. I'd say the popularity of RSS (and Atom) feeds substantially benefited from the launch of the feed icon, which is now recognized cross-platform. Hence, I think that there should be some discussion about microsummaries' visual identity, which could drive other browser manufacturers toward implementing them.

There doesn't seem to be a bug for this yet (although bug 348944, for one, would benefit from it), and feel free to disagree with me here, or remind me that I'm not a dev and shouldn't interfere to this extent. Just putting it out there. :-)

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

I agree.  A visual identity for microsummaries would be valuable.  cc:ing my favorite folks whose last names' first syllables end in z and do visual identity stuff.

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Myk and I talked about this briefly a couple of days ago. My initial thought was that we should look for something like (but not) the ellipses, an indicator that this is an important excerpt but maybe not the whole story. 

I'll try to put some thought into this over the next week or so. My (working) use case is the icon that shows up in the address field when a page offers a live title, similar in placement and function to the feed icon that shows up when a page offers a web feed. 

Comment 3

[Tim De Pauw]

Attachment: Icon mockup

I was thinking of ellipsis as well, so I combined it with the waves from the feed icon ... Looks a bit chaotic though, but it might inspire someone.

Comment 4

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

> I was thinking of ellipsis as well, so I combined it with the waves from the
> feed icon ... Looks a bit chaotic though, but it might inspire someone.

These waves remind me of parentheses (()), which are also used to summarize information and thus potentially good symbols for this functionality.  But I worry about conflating microsummaries with feeds by reusing the same symbolism for both.

Comment 5

[Tim De Pauw]

(In reply to comment #4)
> These waves remind me of parentheses (()), which are also used to summarize
> information and thus potentially good symbols for this functionality.  But I
> worry about conflating microsummaries with feeds by reusing the same symbolism
> for both.

Good point. My web app calls both of them "feeds," because I hacked in microsummaries afterwards, so that's probably why my brain tends to associate the two. Still, in a way, they *are* feeds. Plus, the waves emphasize the "Live" aspect of both Live Bookmarks and Live Titles, no?

Comment 6

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

Attachment: Icon proposal, Style 1, blue

Comment 7

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

Attachment: Icon proposal, Style 1, orange

Comment 8

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

Attachment: Icon proposal, Style 2, blue

Comment 9

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

Attachment: Icon proposal, Style 2, orange

Two styles, two colors, still thinking. :)

Comment 10

[Tim De Pauw]

Attachment: Abstract ellipsis icon

Keeping the dots from ellipsis, but taking an abstract direction. Also going with original feed icon design, but in blue.

Comment 11

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Someone has noted in my blog post that the greek micro character (which looks like a "u") might be a good symbol. 

Comment 12

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I wonder if we want it to tie to the bookmarks icons somehow since our current implementation is with bookmark labels. Maybe we could have a general purpose icon and then somehow overlay that on a bookmarks icon.

Comment 13

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to comment #12)
> I wonder if we want it to tie to the bookmarks icons somehow since our current
> implementation is with bookmark labels. Maybe we could have a general purpose
> icon and then somehow overlay that on a bookmarks icon.

Interestingly, someone in my blog post commented that it might make sense for the favicon to indicate that a microsummary is available.  I.e. we would overlay an icon onto the favicon (or a dropdown arrow to indicate choices).

Comment 14

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Attachment: Faaborg's proposal 1

Comment 15

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Attachment: Faaborg's proposal 2

Comment 16

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>I.e. we would
>overlay an icon onto the favicon

Yeah, kind of like shortcuts in windows.  One great thing about this approach is that in the bookmarks sidebar it is clear which titles are live.

Comment 17

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Attachment: Faaborg's proposal 3 - favicon mod

Here is a mockup of the favicon modification

Comment 18

[Tim De Pauw]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Someone has noted in my blog post that the greek micro character (which looks
> like a "u") might be a good symbol. 

(Heh, I didn't know about your blog or the extension, I'm slow.)

A µ character does sum up the terseness quite nicely, but it is also the logo of µTorrent, a very popular BitTorrent client. It's sort of a long shot, but they may think Mozilla stole their idea, which is going to look especially bad if Firefox ever gets a BitTorrent client. Though, from an ethical point of view, no one owns the letter mu.

I do like the overlay idea, but it's going to be a real challenge to create an icon that can be identified at a size of 5x5 pixels. I don't suppose putting some sort of visual indication on the right of the menu item would be an option?

Comment 19

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

I've written a blog post about this topic here: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2006/12/05/the-visual-identity-and-user-interface-of-live-titles/

Cheers,
-Alex

Comment 20

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

sorry, wrong URL
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2006/12/04/the-visual-identity-and-user-interface-of-live-titles/

Comment 21

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

- BUGSPAM -
Wontfixing all Microsummaries bugs, since the feature has been removed from the core product and previous versions won't get further fixes for it.
If interested in supporting Microsummaries in your add-on, you're free to use our old microsummaries code and to search all previously open bugs by looking for [microsummaries-feature-removal] in the status whiteboard field.