Open Bug 526210 Opened 15 years ago Updated 10 years ago

Fix long standing issues with the SeaMonkey Modern Theme

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: Themes, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: philip.chee, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

References

(Depends on 6 open bugs, Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Keywords: meta, modern)

Attachments

(2 files)

In http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=7890205#p7890205 a user has suggested updating the icon set in the modern theme with the "clear, sharp and improved" images in Kudens Past Modern theme.
Flags: wanted-seamonkey2.1?
Summary: Update the icon set for SeaMonkey Modern Theme → Update the icon set for the SeaMonkey Modern Theme
Flags: wanted-seamonkey2.1?
Small icons needed for addressbook in modern theme (bug 576403)
Depends on: 576403
I would prefer to leave modern's Icons as there are but the small icons for the address book are defiantly needed. As well as for mailnews. As I can tell the small icons for navigator are exactly the same as the large icons but without the drop shadow. This could be easily done with the already present imagery for the other components. The editing of the actual theme is still outside my abilities but I could try and work on removing the shadows and provide the re-sized small versions sans shadow at the same scale as the ones in navigator for someone else to actually make everything work.
Matt, that would surely be a helpful step!

IIRC, Manuel said he might have some pictures that might ease getting Modern up-to-date as well.
Yes, I'm nearly finished with a small icon set.

I think it would even be a nice idea to publish SM 2.1 with small icons as preset. If we go the "everything is a tab" way, then I think small icons will fit better in this concept and using this as preset as soon as possible makes it easier for people getting used to the smaller ones.

But this will get a separate bug...
Manuel so do you have this taken care of or should I do a few samples and see if they are up to snuff. I do not want to step on your toes!
It has been 4 months -- I am commandeering this bug. Check my attachment (proof of concept). I am working on fixing up modern with the hopes that I can get it to the state it SHOULD have been for SM2.0.

--- PLANS ---

* Remove backgrounds from Mailnews, *composer*, and address book toolbar buttons to finally get rid of misalignment issues when selecting different toolbar view modes.

* Create new or properly scale the toolbar icons down to size of navigator small toolbar icon size for a for mentioned components. 

* Recreate the same style of 3d drop shadow effect and maintain the pressed down state of toolbar icons. (this may change as I am not sure if I can faithfully recreate the shadow effect but I will give it my best shot)

* Fix navigator toolbar background when in small icons mode (currently it is a flat color instead of the gradient even though the grip thing and throbber gradients are maintained.

* Find and fix any other inconsistencies in modern.

I have taken the action to group all these plans for modern in this bug because part of my plans encompasses the original reason this bug was created and I see no reason to create a new one.
> * Remove backgrounds from Mailnews, *composer*, and address book toolbar
> buttons to finally get rid of misalignment issues when selecting different
> toolbar view modes.
This is great. Yeah we need to remove the icky hard coded backgrounds.

> * Create new or properly scale the toolbar icons down to size of navigator
> small toolbar icon size for a for mentioned components. 

Yeah and making them square (width==height) would be so good.

> * Fix navigator toolbar background when in small icons mode (currently it is a
> flat color instead of the gradient even though the grip thing and throbber
> gradients are maintained.
Makes sense.

> * Find and fix any other inconsistencies in modern.
> 
> I have taken the action to group all these plans for modern in this bug because
> part of my plans encompasses the original reason this bug was created and I see
> no reason to create a new one.
Thanks for taking this up!

p.s. my personal opinion, removing the funky vertical lines in all the buttons would be nice. And makes it easier to simplify the theme.
I am not sure if the vertical lines should be removed for the normal icon size unless you remove the horizontal line that separates the text. Of course the small icons wouldn't have them. as the fancy component image and line is not present in No text, text beside icons or small icons or any combination there in.

My intent is to make the theme more flexible to match the added flexibility SM2x added. Also the default toolbar settings are of course normal size icons + text and the way the theme behaves in that context should be as it did before. What I am doing is trying to account for all possible permutations of toolbar settings.

Since the original suite and by extension the theme never supported this functionality my interpretation of what happens in the context of small icons and such are going to be motivated by what as been already established in navigator (which was done properly I might add, kudos to who ever worked on that at the time).
Attached image Mailnews icons Proof of Concept —
As stated I will NOT be using the already cut out icons from the All American theme because I am not exactly happy with the quality.
Just as a note, if you're taking anything from a different third-party theme (like All-American), please make sure that material is licensed in a way that allows us to use it under the full MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license.
Sorry for the late answer.

In my opinion, as the modern theme is really hard work and many things are to do, I think we should do teamwork on this theme. I think I don't I'll find the time to do all the work, needed to make the modern theme to work as it should, on my own.

I think what we want are exactly the same icons, as we currently have? Or do we want to port over the new navigation buttons (back, forward, stop, reload), we have in the "default theme"? Keep in mind, that we also display them in mailnews!

Do we want to keep those "shadows"? Disadvantage is, that icons, installed by addons, usually don't fit.

As I'm nearly finished with a rework of the "big icons", I think it would be wasted time to create a complete new set, so I think my next task will be to get a "proof of concept" done.
I awoke the beast.

In all seriousness let be address the thought of using the default theme icons. I realize a lot of work was put in to turn classic into default. I respect that quite a bit as I respect all work done on SM. I personally dislike the default theme. 

If we did start with a brand new icon set it would have to be designed in a way that is respectful to the modern theme we currently have. Shadows are not a must, however if we remove them from one area we must remove them globally. This means navigator too.

I am very interested in seeing what you have come up with Mr. Reimer. As of today besides some tests I haven't yet committed to making, resizing, or editing the theme in any significant way. As right now I am in the planning stages of what needs to be addressed and what I can do about it.

As per teamwork yes, teamwork is very much welcomed. As my current situation provides me with the nessisary free time without the hinderence of an actual life this is why I am working on this. However help is always appreciated as I am not completely knowledgeable on the nitty gritty of theme production and editing (code wise).
Can't see any beast here...

If you have a close look at the "default theme" icons, you'll see, that they pretty much match the icons in modern theme. Maybe that's because I took them as template for the new icons ;-)

So what I would do is to take what I have (default theme icons) and just replace the color palette behind the icons. This means I'll have to finish my current work on the default theme icons, first.

If we change the icons in some way, later, those changes will also be backported into my icon set for the default theme, so both themes benefit from fixes.

Problem is that major reworks are needed in the CSS part. Just new icons don't fix the problem... As far as I remember the modern theme will not work with icon files, the way we know them. There es pretty much "background" around the modern icons and if this offset isn't added via CSS, the whole theme looks bad.
Hmm, I will take a closer look at default. I will also check out differences in modern and default's css code. Perhaps if we did go this direction we could steal some code from default for use in modern for the icon maps.

Like I said if do indeed go in this direction there is no reason I should put off my work I am doing on the modern icons proper. I predict that there will always be a demand for pure (or as pure as i can get) Modern.

Also I should note that some who do not like modern implied that completely replacing it would not be out of the question as long as there are two included themes.

On a personal note: If you created the icon set for default I feel the need to apologize for well not liking it. Perhaps modernifying (note not modernizing) it will give me a new found respect for it's style and design. I have been quick to judge before.
Blocks: 481862
Blocks: 507234
Ok.. Since I already effectivey highjacked this bug back in 2011, I am working on this once again.

Here is my itemized list of what I hope to accomplish with "modernizing" the modern theme.

I have decided to keep it as it should be considering the new (as of 2008) toolbar views and customization.

--- ISSUE: when in small icons mode on the navigation toolbar the background goes from a gradient to a solid color and the throbber box has a background

--- SOLUTION (done): Apply the background to the small icons mode and reenforce no background on the throbber box with an !important decoration.

--- ISSUE: Mailnews has no small icons and the icons have backgrounds that become misaligned in various toolbar modes and locations

--- SOLUTION: Remove the backgrounds of mailnews icons and every other icon and make small icon versions for future proofing of other components

--- ISSUE: Over use of image based backgrounds causing extra code to make the backgrounds conform to varying sizes of toolbars

--- SOLUTION: Replace gradients background images with css gradients (This will be trivial as the gradients are simple with only a start and end color, so no bulking down the suite with unnecessarily complex ones)

--- ISSUE: Modern Theme image assets are in gif format with either backgrounds or single color transparency

--- SOLUTION: Convert all remaining images to PNG format with alpha transparency and remove backgrounds where possible

--- ISSUE: Modern Theme has other issues not listed here

--- SOLUTION: Do a complete audit of Modern Theme and fix those issues

This will help to bring Mozilla Modern up to snuff with the rest of the suite and provide a new foundation for an upgrade I plan to do with a bright light grey variant. 

Possibly a contender to replace Mozilla Modern or supplement Mozilla Modern in future releases.
> --- ISSUE: when in small icons mode on the navigation toolbar the background goes from
> a gradient to a solid color and the throbber box has a background
>
> --- SOLUTION (done): Apply the background to the small icons mode and reenforce no
> background on the throbber box with an !important decoration.
I suggest spinning off one bug for each item so that it's easier to review and track.

And thanks for working on this.
Assignee: nobody → email
As discussed over IRC morphing the summary somewhat and turning this into a meta bug.
Keywords: meta
Summary: Update the icon set for the SeaMonkey Modern Theme → Fix long standing issues with the SeaMonkey Modern Theme
Depends on: 882178
Depends on: 371499
Depends on: 883546
No longer blocks: 481862
Depends on: 481862
Depends on: 883722
Depends on: 883724
Depends on: 883726
Depends on: 883728
The alignment issues in MailNews and other components that require modifications to the icons, namely the removal of the backgrounds for the icons are largely due to the throbber making the toolbars taller and thus the buttons are re-centered on the toolbar when things the text labels are turned off.

We have some decisions to be made regarding how we want to handle 883722 883724 and 883728.

Namely do we want to remove the backgrounds + any of the other parts such as the vertical lines and top lines on hover and pressed modes of the icons.

This will solve the alignment and flexibility issues completely but it will be removing what I would deem an important quality of the modern theme. However, it should be noted that navigator is an exception to this case as it never had these visual effects. So we can choose to try and work to stay true to the Modern Theme str8 up or go for more consistency.

It should also be noted most people I doubt will notice the lack of these elements. Especially if they did not spend much time in the other components.

I frankly could use some opinions on this.
Flags: needinfo?
Flags: needinfo?
(sorry, adding myself to the CC list cleared your needinfo? flag.)
Flags: needinfo?
K.. I am making a decision for 883722 883724 and 883728. When the toolbar has text labels are off or small icons (yet to be created) the line on mailnews addressbook and on composer (when it gets customization) there will be eventually three iconmaps for them.

State One (btn1.png):
Large Icons and Text, has the background with the horizontal line and will have the vertical lines and pressed button state on hover and pressed but otherwise transparent background.

State Two (btn1-no-text.png):
The far left component image disappears and background turns to just gradient so no horizontal line. Thus btn1-no-text.png will have JUST the icons. Will handle text labels on side.

State Three (btn1-small.png):
Same as 2 but small icons no matter if text or not. Will handle text labels on side.

This way the default will look as it always has but the other states are extrapolated from the fact that depending on toolbar mode some elements are not there anyway so match that. We get the best of all worlds!

Again this will affect Bugs 883722 883724 and 883728 and their future created small icon equivalence.
Flags: needinfo?
Maybe btn1-no-text should be called btn1-no-lines.. Ratty.. opinion?
Keywords: modern
Hi folks.  I've started work rebuilding Modern icons from scratch.  By changing line weights and colors, these can also be used in Default.  Already have large Editor toolbarbuttons finished.  These are just the icons, no button surrounds, and no shadow.  Ideally the shadow would be added as a background image, and the button surrounds would be done in CSS.  I am willing to work up the CSS for this.  I've chatted a little with Philip about this but wanted to go ahead and subscribe here as well.
I've had a chance to read through some of the discussions here and in the dependency bugs.  If you don't know me, I've authored a dozen Firefox themes including several "dark" themes with custom button surrounds so what I'm proposing here is very doable and should reduce some of the work compared to other proposals here.  I'm not trying to step on any toes or ruffle any feathers, just a proposal:

1. First off, I'm rebuilding Modern icons as close as I can to the original Netscape 6.0 theme in a vector format (but not SVG).  I'm really digging into the details and trying to capture some of what was lost even in the original designs when they were downsampled originally 15 years ago.  Because I'm working in a vector format I can size them up and down, change line weights, change colors, and reuse pieces of one icon in another.  So I'm hoping to avoid some of the problems caused by just cutting out the original icons.  We can preserve things like drop shadows which you see on icons with "paper".  In places where the original icons seemed too large or too small, we can up or downsize them to work better.  For instance the scissors on the "cut" icon for Composer go way outside of the area of most other icons, whereas the "link" icon is a tad small.  It also means having the ability to create real "small icons" mode icons which should have a heavier line weight than you get in just resizing the large icons.  These icons will not have the toolbar backgrounds or the round background shadow, but I can provide normal, hover, active, and disabled states.  

2. I think we should have the Modern toolbarbutton icons use the layout templates from the Default theme files, for both large and small icons mode.  This will give us consistency across the themes and a place to start with small icons layout. It's probably also not a bad idea to change the names to match up with Default as well, especially since we are moving from GIF to PNG anyway.

3. We should also copy over the CSS image-regions for each toolbarbutton icon from Default.  Again, cross-theme consistency.  It also means someone can start work on this using the icons from the Default before we even have the final Modern icons finished.  It also dramatically reduces the work load on adding small icons support.

4. The round "shadow" should be a background image on the toolbarbutton>images.  This will allow extensions icons to pick up this style.  We could do this work in global since it is used everywhere except for the main navigation buttons.  Most likely a different shadow image is needed for large and small icons... or just leave it off of small?  I'm guessing this is the lowest priority work.

5. The "etch" and border around the hover and active states of the buttons can all be done in CSS.  I'm confident that we can reproduce the original look without much fuss.  Using CSS to do this also means it will be very easy to accommodate large and small icons, as well as icons + text mode.  A CSS solution would also be flexible to weird things like the alignment issues mentioned above with the throbber button, sync button and odd-sized extension icons.  The best solution is usually to use gradients of 100% white and 100% black and no hardcoded hues.  Again, if we use the Default layout and CSS image-regions this work can begin using the Default theme files.
Hi Patrick, I think I confused you. Sorry about that. I meant to point you to the newsgroup/mailing list (mozilla.dev.apps.seamonkey). This is the place where we discuss issues like this.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/community#groups

    Newsgroup: mozilla.support.seamonkey
    Mailing List: support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org subscribe/unsubscribe
    Google Groups: view topics

Three ways to access this forum. If you are using Thunderbird/SeaMonkey, you can subscribe to the newsgroup or mailing list. If you don't want these you could use google.groups. The latter is something of a last resort.

I'll try to remember to forward your comments to that forum. Again apologies for not making this clear.

Phil
Flags: needinfo?(pjdkrunkt)
(In reply to Philip Chee from comment #25)
>     Newsgroup: mozilla.support.seamonkey
>     Mailing List: support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org subscribe/unsubscribe

That's not mozilla.dev.apps.seamonkey (dev-apps-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org) though. ;-)

For those not subscribing to the newsgroups, the current discussion thread can be followed at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.apps.seamonkey/prgBbbuAss8
Greetings Patrick. If you want to take over the modern theme bugs from me you are more than welcome to. I offer no judgement. I just wish I could have accomplished more in regard to it. Be sure to stick close to Ratty as he will help guide you!

Peace,

Matt A. Tobin
<Self important title />
Binary Outcast
Assignee: email → nobody
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