Split view
So yesterday it was really productive. By my side I’ve been playing with new scrollbars for the style (wait next post). But I also wanted to make Dolphin default toolbar icons looks great. That took a lot of time, specially because every size needed a special version and that’s the result:
was way too similar to the OLD “column view” icon 
.So I changed the “split” icon radically with the intent to make more obvious what it does. That’s how it looks now: 
. The plus sign and the striped area should help to give the idea that by clicking the icon you’ll get an extra view on the file manager.While split mode is activated, the icon should change and show a minus sign 
instead. I’m sure this will make it more obvious that by clicking again you can remove the extra view. Maybe it would be nice if the label under the icon change from “split” to “join” as shown in the mockups below:
More insights and news from the meeting coming soon. Arrivederci!
was way too similar to the OLD “column view” icon .So I changed the “split” icon radically with the intent to make more obvious what it does. That’s how it looks now: . The plus sign and the striped area should help to give the idea that by clicking the icon you’ll get an extra view on the file manager.While split mode is activated, the icon should change and show a minus sign instead. I’m sure this will make it more obvious that by clicking again you can remove the extra view. Maybe it would be nice if the label under the icon change from “split” to “join” as shown in the mockups below:More insights and news from the meeting coming soon. Arrivederci!
Hi David!
Thanks a lot for this nice update! I’m currently updating Dolphin so that it looks like in your screenshot :-) I especially like the new fileview-split and fileview-join icons.
All the best,
Peter
Only one comment:
The new icons look great… In fact, the whole of Oxygen is breathtakingly beautiful. Keep up the great work.
Looks great - except for the last screenshot: we’re used to the button down indicating a feature is on, so putting ‘join’ under the icon in the last screenshot - while having the button down - says to me that joined (single pane) mode is currently active when in fact the split mode is active. I’m also not convinced it’s a good idea to have different (split/join) icons for the same reason.
The oxygen style is looking really good btw. I can see myself actually using the kde4 default iconset and style, something I’ve always changed on kde3
I like those icons much.
There’s however one thing that isn’t clear to me when you look at the icons : which view does disappear when you join ?
It’s not very intuitive that the active view will stay. The icon with minus on right even seems to indicate that the left pane stays …
Good job still !
Anarky
[...] @ 16:02 Posted by felipe in Dolphin, Ergonomia, News e altre Sciccherie, Oxygen, KDE4, Estetica. trackback David ha appena scritto di qualcuna delle novitàspuntate fuori dal meeting Oxygen di cuiaccennavo ieri. Devo dire che non sono niente male! Ecco come si presenta attualmente Dolphin: [...]
I like the plus sign for Split, it gives me an idea what it does. However I’m not sure if I like the combination changed icon/text pressed - it feels somehow strange to me.
I feel that:
- If the icon/text changes, it indicates a change of action if you press the icon. Example: Play/Pause.
- If the button is pressed, it means that the feature is activated. Example: Preview.
Combining these two doesn’t feel good to me.
Another thing: I like the new icons, But the “Columns” icon is the only one (of the three views) without the blue “dots” (folders). Maybe at least add some text?
I thoroughly agree with the above poster — when the text and icon on a button change, it sends a message to the user that the behavior has changed as well, and the user should therefore not expect pressing the button again to have the same behavior as when they first pressed it down. The user already possesses the expectation that un-pressing a pressed state button will reverse the application state modified by that button. Ignoring these types of user expectations presents a usability nightmare.
Fantastic looking icons though, of course.
Looking good , but please change the scrollbars!! They look cheap.
The Oxygen style and windec is beauty. I like it a lot.
The only concern for me is that it’s “thick”. I compiled both, style and windec for my kde4 trunk build and it’s “big”. Windec is thicker than my currently used Crystal-GL, the same with scrollbar. Also the dots next to splitter are taking quite a lot of space. Do you plan to make it possible to switch to “minimalistic” for people who want to save their screen space while keeping the beauty and stylish of Oxygen?
NOTE:
the scrollbar you see in the screenshot is the CURRENT one. Is not the new one I’ve been working. I’ll show/talk about that later.
I’d use ‘Remove’ instead of ‘Join’. It makes more sense to me. You’re removing a view, and not actually joining them.
The new icons are much clearer at small sizes, the new split/join icons work better. The Back/Forwards icons look smaller than all the others on the toolbar, I think this is because of the room allowed to fit the shadows underneath the arrows?
I’ll be interested in a new scrollbar, the current one is invisible against a white background unfortunately. The buttons, radios and checkboxes also suffered in use ( I last compiled Oxygen before the weekend, I haven’t tried the latest in-progress revision ) because of a lack of clearly defined borders.
I like the cleanliness of the theme, but I think it would benefit from more colour to liven things up a little, and also to differentiate the look from the MacOS X style.
Keep up the good work and have a great weekend :)
It’s just something with my monitor, or the (very nice btw) oxygen theme is seriously lacking contrast? It’s quite hard on the eyes to look at this shots. Light grey on somewhat lighter grey everywhere.
I agree with Simca! Try looking at these icons on different screens. Picking an example almost at random, say, an older laptop screen. The icons are difficult to distinguish. Please make them higher-contrast.
Very impressive. The windec and the icons looks REALLY good. The idea to use ‘+’ and ‘-’ is excellent.
I’m happy that finally, you understood that the shadows under icons take too much place and makes icons less usable for toolbars. :)
I think your comparison between old and new icons makes this point obvious.
Do you plan to make another version of the back and forward icons too ? (without shadows please ;) )
Looks amazing.
For my eye, the grey on grey is restful, just contrasty and colorful enough.
I happen to like the scrollbars, but I’m sure I’ll like the replacements too.
I agree with the earlier posters that the back and forward icons do look rather small and that the changed icon/text is confusing.
Does the left pane in the second shot represent how inactive forms and text fields look?
I think if the arrows were bigger they wouldn’t look so good on buttons e.g. here: http://commit-digest.org/issues/2007-05-13/files/wizard2.png
The contrasts of the icons are just right. People who don’t like it should buy a better monitor or use another style.
Only the windec looks ugly and the gradiants have to be fixed.
the document folder icons somehow don’t fit with dolphin because they jump out of the window. I tried dolphin with other folder Icons and that problem did not occur. Please rethink these blue folder icons.
btw, i’m fixed the url navigator (aka “breadcrumb trail”) so that it doesn’t paint that solid grey background anymore which was breaking up the otherwise smooth gradients … =)
the new icons are gorgeous. as for the icons “jumping out” too much, that is kind of the point of content, no? it should take centre stage and be immediately visible/noticeable.
still no krusader/tc like f-key bar in the split view at the bottom… :(
Is it just me, or does the current widget style use much too much space?
Just look at the toolbar, there is at least 25-30px of whitespace between the “File” menu and the “Back” button in the toolbar. In addition with text-under-icons (which isn’t bad per se), half of the dolphin screenshot is just menu/toolbar/etc., not the things the user wants to see (files!).
“btw, i’m fixed the url navigator (aka “breadcrumb trailâ€?) so that it doesn’t paint that solid grey background anymore which was breaking up the otherwise smooth gradients … =)”
Cool, did you fix the statusbar at the bottom too? (”6 Items…”)
@Anarky
If you try Dolphin you’ll soon understand that by splitting you get one (and only one) extra view. When you remove you remove the extra one. In the split-join icons, the striped area represent the extra view. For that reason the and the - are overlaying the triped part.
@ Lans & Jeff Goldschrafe
Peter did exactly what you say. Since text and icon change the button doesn’t look pressed. Mine was just a mockup.
@Aaron J. Seigo
Good news, I’m a big fan of Dolphin, any improvement to it makes me happy :)
@ALL
I can’t really answer to all the comments about style and windeco, since the code can’t even be considered alpha, and is not even included in KDE 4 repository, we still playing with it. Also note that for some reason, on my Thinkpad, the window decoratioin show the buttons in wrong positions :)
I like the idea of a “-” button with its own label. I tried Dolphin and could not figure out how to get rid of the second view. “Join” might be a little confusing, though. “Remove” might be good. Maybe “unsplit”?
Anyway, thank you all for the good work!
To be honest, the work done on the style wasn’t all to the good, imho. I know it’s not ready, but the buttons where beautifully glassy, now pretty pale. And the yellow outline - aaargh… Ow, and the tab highlighting is broken, but I guess that’ll be fixed.
@Martin Stubenschrott:
“Is it just me, or does the current widget style use much too much space?”
personally, i think having a widget style with lots of whitespace is a great thing. as monitor resolutions continue to rise and we want to give people nice targets to be able to hit, i think it’s the right way to go.
there are other styles already there that are more tightly packed if that’s you’re thing or you are on a small form factor device…
@emporer: “did you fix the statusbar at the bottom too?”
no; that has to happen in the style so i’m leaving that up to the oxy style authors.
Hi David!
Firstly i woud like the colors to be more contrasted, it wod be good , also you coud use some more space for the file presentation , because the window decoration is takig to much space on the desktop.
You coud also change the scrool bar because this version is not to interesting for the eye, and why so much gray ? maybe you coud use some more colors , to make it brighter.
Oh and one more thing about the icons … they are ok but i woud like to see some more of them to make an constructive opinion. Those icons are kind of numb , now they dont express enough make, experminet with them , use some colors , make them more friendly for the eye so the user wants to look at them and not just click on them.
But overall its a job well done, keep up the good work and experiment more with the colors ;)
@Tomasz
Most of your comments do not apply anymore. The style is under development and it’s already changed from that. The goal of this post was not to discuss the style snapshot since it’s nothing not even close to finished. Next time I’ll be more careful, and if need to take a screenshot of Dolphin will load another style.
About icons, we think alot on the icons. They have to be both nice but not useful. The icons above on the scrollbar are just good, this is meant to be a default icon theme, not the one to install and change after two weeks.
@superstoned
I noticed something disturbing in the new buttons too, but I realized that the current svn version of the buttons slightly differ from the mockup on Riccardo’s blog (e.g. the top shadow seems larger).
These details are relevant for the overall “feel” of the buttons, and even for their entire metaphor of “objects that can be pushed”.
So we can only wait for now :-)
Yeah the icons look good. Now, hopefully you CAN get rid of that toolbar AND the menubar completely?! (In ALL kde apps, no exceptions?)
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