888561 - Monochrome/Platform-Consistent folderpane

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Thunderbird is currently using colored icons in the folderpane. Unfortunately these icons are not platform consistent and seem odd on OS X.

This bug should investigate and, if required, update the icons. Ccing Blake (UX), Richard (Theme), and Andreasn (Theme) for input as I start adding more details...

Concept/Issue sheet coming shortly.

Comment 1

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Attachment: Concept/Issue

This shows pretty well the state of other applications, our current problem, and a potential fix using a patch I have ready. Coming up...

Comment 2

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Attachment: WIP

Here's the patch after a few hours of work to get a basic idea of the potential. Some icons are still a little rough (Inbox, RSS, Trash), but this is a good start.

(No retina support yet)

Paenglab and Andreasn, thoughts?

Comment 3

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Attachment: Concept/Issue

Had an inconsistent folder pane layout in the other one. This gives a consistent feel.

Comment 4

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: @2x folderPane icons

This looks promisingly and could be done like this. I think if you could also create inverted/white icons for the selected status like in Finder it would be again more consistent. In threadPane we are already using this white icons.

In server.png I saw you haven't touched the NNTP icons. Also in folder-pane.png the icon for saved search isn't touched. I hope you plan to change them as well. And folder-pane.png has now a RSS icon more in it.

I've attached a zip file with @2x PNGs and SVGs I've played with for bug 853516 which have slimmer borders. Maybe you can use them for your work.

Comment 5

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Comment on attachment 769307 [details] [diff] [review]
WIP

f- only because of the missing/not changed icons in your patch. Otherwise it would be a f+

Comment 6

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I'd argue that this is the wrong thing to do, even if it does look more consistent. In Thunderbird, we've used color for icons when the relative positions of said icons change (so toolbar icons are grayscale, but tab icons and folder/thread pane icons are in color). This makes it easier to skim through a long list of entries and find the thing you're looking for, while also not distracting you with needless color for static widgets.

Comment 7

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

(In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) (back Jul 1) from comment #6)
> I'd argue that this is the wrong thing to do, even if it does look more
> consistent. In Thunderbird, we've used color for icons when the relative
> positions of said icons change (so toolbar icons are grayscale, but tab
> icons and folder/thread pane icons are in color). This makes it easier to
> skim through a long list of entries and find the thing you're looking for,
> while also not distracting you with needless color for static widgets.

I do understand this, however I would have to disagree in this specific case. For a long list of items (perhaps even the toolbar), being able to find a certain thing quickly is important. However, the folder pane consists of very little anyone actually needs to find. The priority is pretty much as follows:

Inbox -> ~80% of the time. (The inbox is always easy to find since it's the top-most element in the hierarchy)

Sub-Folder -> 10% of the time. (Sub-folders are accessed quite a bit, however we made these always look the same anyway. We didn't color-code separate folder icons, so you really can't tell those apart)

Drafts -> 6% of the time

Sent -> 2%

Trash -> 2%

Of course, this could differ depending on the person, but the point is that Inbox and Sub-Folders will be used most often, and we don't really make those stand out significantly either, so making these look consistent with other apps seems more important in this case.

Note: Now remember, I do Design/Frontend for TB, but my main focus is actually OS X platform-integration and widget/cocoa. Because of this I may be biased towards platform-consistency, so the real choice is up to the Theme owners; Richard and Andreasn.

Thanks for your input!
Josiah Bruner

Comment 8

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Attachment: WIP 2

Check pointing progress... This re-colors all icons. Retina is up next.

Comment 9

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

So after thinking about this for awhile I've decided we probably shouldn't do this. Although platform-consistent, the colored icons may be very helpful for some people.

In addition, since we look a graphic designer, creating such icons proved challenging.