davigno

Oxygen folders have changed already 3 times since I first started the project back to 2005. That’s because “folders” are really important, and together with “file sheet” and basic actions, they really define the look and feel of the desktop.

First Oxygen folders (the 2 on top of the screenshot below) were really far from what I now consider functional design. They were already very nice icons but the perspective was making them look odd already at 64×64 size. They also lacked some realism in lighting and details.
For these reasons I liked to try with a frontal view, and you got the folder design that has been “official” since yesterday. The new frontal view had less curves, allowing SVG to resize smoothly even at really small resolutions. But the icon was a place holder. Every year, when I look back to the stuff I’ve done, I discover I now can do much better. The folder icon was looking heavy, and was also a really heavy SVG, almost 200 KB. Looking at the vector file I discovered many imprecisions and small errors that I could had avoided. So, instead of fixing it, I thought it was better to completely re-do the design. And now, with much less vectors and nodes, 2 gradients and using gaussian blur for shadow, I got what I really wanted, a light and fresh folder design. I’m sure many users were already fans of the old design, but believe me, try the new folders (it’s already on SVN) for a month and I bet you’ll love them too ;). I hope there won’t be any big changes in the future, but as usual, minor variations may happen.