Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Icons: let's do it

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4: Re: Icons: let's do it (response to 1)
Posted by Michael Cordova on
I've been working during last months on making custom themes, based on theme-zen, mostly adding client logos on header and footer and institutional colors by css.

I think the most interesting feature of my work is a "transparent color CSS version". Let me explain that: about 5 different png's fading from white to transparent that allows any color as background (set in css). The same image files could be used to get any new color theme (skin), just by setting a new background color.

I want to work with icons to improve usability. For instance, I'd like to use a "grayed" or disabled version of some common icons. Sometimes is better to show the same layout, but not allowing clics, than only showing one enabled icon. And I'd like to use the rollover event. (Emma, don't worry, I have always accessibility issues in my mind).

I wonder how could be the right way to have theme-able icons (or better said, skin-able icons) i.ex. same icons (not necessarily same files) with different backgrounds, depending on the css being used (for instance, to match colors in .LRN communities and so on).

I'd like to have big web2.0 icons, for some cases. But that's another story...

AFAIK about Tango and Oxygen, they are desktop icons, nice for a desktop, but incomplete for web applications. Maybe it's ok for a lot of places in OpenACS, but I still miss a few basic icons.

We could also use the YUI icons (ajax-helper) in order to have a more consistent look&feel just in case some ajax is added (through this framework, of course).

I agree with Robert about ...re-use whatever is already available in the open source world, I think it's important to establish a design guidelines (reusing a existing one is ok for me).

About the theme-manager is something I was waiting for a long time :) since I started using .LRN. I'm glad to hear about that. If I'm not wrong, it should replace all theme-* packages into a theme-manager one (or acs-themes or maybe acs-theme-manager). What about acs-templating, new-portal, acs-subsite? Those packages have "shared" icons, and a mixture of different functionalities to create the result web page.

Chatting with Dave on IRC about icons, we agreed:

what we REALLY need is a style guide
like Apple or Gnome
we need to have some rules
guidelines
when are where to use them
along with the theme rules on where the files go, naming conventions for files etc.
so two things 1) UI rules 2) Code rules

And he put a link: http://web.archive.org/web/20040625215618/http://ccm.redhat.com/user-centered/ but it doesn't work.

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8: Re: Icons: let's do it (response to 4)
Posted by Emmanuelle Raffenne on
The theme manager won't replace all theme-* packages, at least it's not the initial idea. It will provide a central mechanism to register themes and to choose and apply a theme at subsite and user level (and class/club level in .lrn).

As of packages that have "shared" icons, the idea is that common icons should be defined in a theme and not per package. That doesn't mean that package can't have their specific ones.

Theme manager project has just started so specifics are not defined yet and many questions have no answer yet.

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9: Re: Icons: let's do it (response to 8)
Posted by Michael Cordova on
Really nice idea the theme manager. I guess it will take us long to get it finished although it will be time worth.

Meanwhile, I'd like to talk about icons in order to:

  • improve the user experience asap with some icons. What we learn now will be worth when theme-manager was working, I mean, real icons and also techniques to implement them, for instance, css sprites.
  • talk about icons and write a guideline
  • clean current packages from unused icons (files) and/or old paths (in code)
  • define a desired design style