Folder icon name and location
Dolphin, next KDE 4 file manager, looks for folder icon at “mimetypes/inode-directory.png”. Follow current icon identikit:
- Name: inode-directory.png
- Address: oxygen/…/mymetypes/
- Profession: folder icon
So my question is: Shouldn’t the regular folder icon be located under “places” directory as well and be called just “folder.png”?
Looking at freedesktop icon naming specification seems like I’m correct (see Table 11. Standard Place Icons names). Then, the new identikit for the regular folder icon would be:- Name: folder.png
- Address: oxygen/…/places/
And of course most of all the special directories are already on svn too.
- home directory
- packages directory
- binaries/software directory
some proposals for still missing special directories:
tmp directory
backup directory
documents directory
lib directory
maildir
config directory
sources directory
The icons look good. However, couldn’t the “special directories” be handled as overlays? That is, treated a bit like “emblems”.
This way, I can still use a folder with a different color, and the system overlays it with the correct icon. I’d probably use something different for locked folders…
One could have a locked text folder. Or not? If a folder is locked, it will not be possible to find what it contains. But there are also read-only or write-only folders…
How about folder icons for shares such as samba and nfs?
Nik is right : ‘tmp’, ‘backup’ and ‘documents’ would be helpful
I’d add ‘game’ and ’school’
Missing directories / folders:
“Games” directory (joystick for the icon)
“Downloads” directory (maybe an arrow pointing down for the icon?)
missing folders ? you asked for it - you have it :
- “not important” directory - /tmp, backups etc fall here. kmail can use it for spam folder etc. to hint user traversing in search of something he will not find anything usefull here
- “system” directory, basicly as “do not touch” mark ie. for system directories as /dev or /proc , tools data directories like .cvs or .svn, Windowish “volume information” dirs and similiar to warn user about stuff that may broke if tampered with.
- system root deserves icon - in places like fileselector’s shortcuts panel, where root can stand beside other directories, root directory can use way to identify itself as source of all blessing :-)
speaking of this, one could also use many of this for network resources - mountpoints of remote filesystems, konsole remote sessions, imap dirs in kmail, shortcuts in zilion places … right now i can see just “folder with globe”, “networked globe” and “networked computer” of any use in describing networked stuff.
I agree with Nik above. A documents directory would be nice
Apart from that: The icons really rock. Thank you for the work you have put into them
The more i see of oxygen, the more i love it
Here are some more proposals… Nik already posted most of the icons i need :)
- a download/incoming icon
- a generic stuff folder icon
- a folder for virtual machines (vmware, qemu etc)
- an icon for private/personal stuff
These Niks ones are the icons i always do for myself because no iconset has them…
based on my home tree structure the only other special folder I can think of is a “downloads or misc folder” (kind of the folder where all the unorganized stuff goes).
I really like the “images folder” and the “videos folder”, but I think it would be nice to have a better “audio folder”, maybe with a shape more similar to images and videos. In my mind I have a cluster of multimedia stuff where all three (images, videos and audio) go.
I guess subcategories might be a bit too much though:
- audio folder
- album folder
- artist folder
- song or sound folder
- video folder
- film folder
- series folder
- music clips folder
- personal folder
Well, after all this… thank you very very much for your work, I think your design skills and taste are fantastic. By the way, I do like very much your new folder design, much more smooth than the past designs, for an icon that you learn once but you fill your screen with.
Keep it up, please!!!
Oxygen Icons looks great thanks for good work.
also i like to see ..
Different Icon for Series
Shared
Temp
E-Books
Documents
I was just wondering if the “special” directories would have to be blue, or if we’ll be able to choose a folder color theme, and all the special folders will follow that theme? I love the brown folders, but it would look silly to have a screen full of brown folders with the blue special folders sprinkled in.
BTW - the icons look great.
Thanks.
Additional folder ideas:
- Archive (for backed-up files, etc.)
- Source (separate from Development; I have a Source directory that holds the source code for programs that I’ve downloaded; not necessarily for development, usually just to compile)
- Shared (for p2p and whatnot)
- Common (common directory for all users; sort of like pub)
an icon with a heart (favorites ?)
@Fela
the star (bookmarks) is mean to be the favorite symbol.
Yeah a nice icon for a config-directory and config files would be something like this:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Dip-sw.jpg
Shouldn’t the locked folder be solved with an overlay? I mean, any of the other types might be locked, right?
Looking very nice, even if KDE 4 were to be just new icons then I’d still be greatly looking forward to it :D
The special folders I need, in order of importance:
- Downloads / Archives
- Books / Help Documentations
- Work Projects
- Various Files / Unsorted Stuff
- Office Documents
- Shares (FTP)
- Favorite / Love
- Temporary
- Programming (KDevelop projects folder)
- Games
It is to be noted that you will never see the same hierarchy on every computers. Instead of creating all possible folder icons, Dolphin/Konqueror should allow to add an overlay to the folder icon. This will offer the big choice of icons for people to customize their folders. For instance, on a Windows family computer (one session used by all family members), a non-geek friend put the “Shutdown” icon for a folder to tell other members of the family to not delete this important folder nor open it to not mess things arround. It was not looking-like a folder anymore (hey, it was the Shutdown Computer icon) thus decreasing usability.
IMHO, Desktop and Home icons should such special folders.
A home folder is a folder too, it should look like this.
Of course, this need two variants of the home icon (home folder and web browser home page) and of the desktop icon (desktop folder and show desktop panel-button).
I also find myself using a “public” icon folder (which is distinct from a “shared” folder, e.g. via SMB) for websites and the like. Also, a “library”/”reference” folder would be nice:
- “public” — Folder with a world emblem on it (sort of like your “sites” folder, but with just the globe, not the whole page)
- “shared” — Think of Windows’ shared-folder icon
- “reference” — Folder with a book (either closed or open).
I think a couple people have mentioned it already, but I’d also like to throw my vote in for “downloads” — maybe use the KGet icon as an example.
Why not use emblems (a la Nautilus) instead of special directory icons??
Emblems is a neat idea I also had. I might suggest it to the Dolphin developer.
Just to say I really like the icons and look foward to using them on KDE 4. That’s a very good work, thanks for your efforts !
By the way I hope the folders in the different colors will all be available in the release, it’s so much easier to spot colors rather than text.
FYI the term directories is considered more technical than folders but I’ll assume you haven’t used the term anywhere in a graphical user interface.
Those flavors of folders remind me very much of the coloured/labelled folders Mac OS used to offer (and probably still does, but I haven’t used it recently) and with the popularity of tagging these days it might be interesting to explore the concept.
(Also “flavor” (sic) is one of those unfortunate words the British and Americans cannot agree on so if you can easily describe it another way I’d encourage you to do so. I wont even ask about Cyan/Turquoise/Aqua.)
Great to see Dolphin continue to make progress.
It would be great if icons could be dynamically coloured. Something like a setting in the color scheme which apllies on some parts of the icon (backgrounds, main color…). Is that possible?
Really great work!
I would like to add the recommendation for an “encryption” folder (e.g. mounted container file by truecrypt)