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A History of Icons
John H. Doe writes "The GUIdebook has a great page illustrating the history of icons. Of course, they have the Lisa/Mac/OS X paths, but there's the Windows progressions, along with entries for NeXT, OS/2, BeOS, and yes, Linux. Would you call it progress?"
I used to have some beauties on my Amiga, and they could be any size I liked, up to the whole screen if that was your wish. IIRC they were easy to draw with something that came with the operating system.
I'd like to take some of my raytracings and make them icons. Any ideas where to start?
Darn my dyslexia. At first glance I thought it said "A History of Loons" and thought it was something biographical about slashdot.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
moof the dogcow!
In the last handful of years, icons have started making a transformation from functional to stylish. Specifically, look at the differences between Windows 2000->XP icons, and Jaguar->Panther icons. In both cases, the Calculator icon illustrates specifically what I mean. In Jaguar and W2k, it was completly clear what the icon was. In Panther, however, the buttons became grayer, and as a result, the overall icon is less clear. The XP icon is much worse - it is not even distinctly a calculator.
There are many more examples in the 2k->xp comparison. The address book, for instance. What was once clearly an Address book is now just an open book. The control panel, while not exactly clear in 2k, is now a Todo list! The desktop icon went from a desk with a letter in draft to a _vertical_ oriented surface.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Was this last sunday - maybe it is an annual holiday type thing. (Yes I know-- they aren't related but shouldn't they be?)
The dominant theme of this Sunday since 843 has been that of the victory of the icons. In that year the iconoclastic controversy, which had raged on and off since 726, was finally laid to rest, and icons and their veneration were restored on the first Sunday in Lent. Ever since, that Sunday been commemorated as the "triumph of Orthodoxy."
Orthodox teaching about icons was defined at the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787, which brought to an end the first phase of the attempt to suppress icons. That teaching was finally re-established in 843, and it is embodied in the texts sung on this Sunday.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Some interesting features of Amiga icons:
- Arbitrary size
- Could change image when clicked
- Possible arbitrary placement
This was making for some interesting applications. Like, the game Heimdall had screen high and half-screen wide icon of the character with a warhammer, when clicked the character was slamming the hammer down. I would add a tiny, 5x5px icon placing it over corner of Filemaster 2.2 icon just to launch Filemaster 2.0 in case it was needed (just like small "arrow down" in corner of "back" of Firefox)
There were tools converting pictures to icons. You could tile icons being parts of bigger image over some area, making a "clickable image". Clicking on directory ("drawer") icon was "opening the drawer", there were also many other cool "mini-anims" like hydraulic press "compressing" the package for a compressor program, a floppy multiplying itself for file copy etc.
Windows was a BIG step backwards from Amiga icon functionality. That step was never undone. Now all leading OSes have single-image, fixed-size icons.
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There are several toolbars full of tiny icons that don't really mean anything to you unless you've used the program before. Most Apple apps, however, have one or two toolbars of big, clear icons
So, it's a choice between:
A -- lots of functions, but you have to actually learn something before you can use them fluently
B -- a small number of functions, but with biiig pretty pictures
I'll pick A.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The Gimp lets you create .ico files just fine. I use the Windows version of The GIMP whenever I really need to build icons for Windows.
Fox can take the sky from you.
Now all leading OSes have single-image, fixed-size icons.
Well as far as fixed sized goes, yo've obviousy never used Gnome or KDE with SVG icons. And icons in the Dock of OS X can be animated, likewise the systray in windows.
Why not fork?
It's like a restaurant. You're stuck with the menu the restaurant has. Now, it's not that you can't necessarily get the kitchen to do a ham and cheese, but you have to do it in terms it understands (for example, you can order a burger that has ham and cheese, and order it without the beefburger, salad, etc), kind of like h[tt]p:, which runs on port 80. You can do it via the firewall, but it has to look like an HTTP request, which means running it on port 80. You can then say "Ohh, it's not really a burger, it's a ham and cheese sandwich" but as far as the kitchen's concerned, it's just one of their regular burgers. You might look at port 8090 as the ham - they're likely to have cheese burgers, but a ham, cheese, and beef burger? Not likely. So you can't have your ham and cheese because you haven't come up with a sandwich that really works within the framework you're given.
The only option is to leave the restaurant, and cook your own sandwich, but that's not always an option, especially if you actually work at the restaurant so can't leave until 5pm, but you're a waiter or you work at the bar or you greet people or wash up or something so you can't actually make the sandwich yourself (well, not in a unionized restaurant anyway. A union-free restaurant might allow it, but you don't want to upset the staff, and it's probably going against company policy.)
Port 8090 isn't supported by most corporate firewalls, so making all URLs point at it would just prevent Slashdot's working readers (the vast majority) from "eating their ham and cheese sandwich" - or, in other words, accessing the website. This would damage Slashdot long term as people would just stop reading it except for a few people at Universities and in Cybercafes, neither of which are appealing to Slashdot's advertisers.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Aesthetic progress, sure. Functional progress? Well, every icon represents a file. Why aren't the complete file operations available for that file available by clicking the icon? Why isn't it obvious by looking at a file icon which apps can process it? Why aren't different modes for reading and writing apparent from the app icons? Why aren't there very obvious differences between data, logic and presentation file icons? Why can't I draw pipes and redirects among the icons, making a graph like the one simulated in a commandline with "|" and "" characters? Not to mention no way to start an app in the background by its icon. And don't get me started on representing permissions, ownership, in-use status, or any other state metadata.
As icons have progressed, we've evolved some very stable patterns in using the files which they represent. But all that these icons communicate is that a file exists, in a given storage subdivision (folder), with some clues to its datatype. If half the time spent beautifying icons were spent making them work better, more interactive, more representational of the full state of the file and its context, we'd all be more productive.
--
make install -not war
So, it's a choice between:
A -- lots of functions, but you have to actually learn something before you can use them fluently
B -- a small number of functions, but with biiig pretty pictures
I think you missed a key point of the grandparent post - That on may OSX applications the "small number of functions with biiig pretty pictures" are the icons visible on the default toolbars and the ADDITIONAL functionality is available through the menu system and keyboard shortcuts.
I think it would be very difficult to argue that OSX versions of the big applications actually have LESS functionality than the MSW versions - they don't. The whole point of this thread is that Microsoft would rather give you a smaaaaaal pretty picture for every single function you can perform which basically clutters up your screen and masks the simple, most common functions. The common OSX approach is to have those biiiig pretty pictures for the functions you'll use 80% of the time and provide organized, readable menus for the other functionality
As a power user I still have to learn applications. I would much rather hunt for the function I need in a menu system which follows an organizational pattern anyone who's used a computer before should be familiar with then search through the tooltips of scores of archaic pictures for what I need.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
On the screen there were lots and lots of cryptic icons, whose meanings I couldn't begin to understand. If they had been English words, I might have had a chance.
Has RMS ever heard of "menus"?
Hmmm, I want to Save my File to disk. Clearly, the large, glowing disk icon is too vague to understand, and I'm far too busy to investigate what the File -> Save option does...
> Editors - why aren't you automatically append ".nyud.net:8090" to any url?
Some people have responded that's because of firewalls but that's a lame excuse: you can perfectly put a Coral link AND a standard link next to it for high-port-challenged persons. The problem is different. It's called the "I Must Be Doing Something Right Syndrome" (IMBDSRS), and it basically happens when you find yourself running a venture that happens to have a fair share of success. Its main symptom is that you no longer listen to people who ask for changes (even little ones) or enhancements because you look at your stats and, seeing that despite the complaints, people still come to your site in droves, you decide that it must be that you're doing it right.
On slashdot, the IMBDSRS has attained unheard-of proportions. People bitch and moan about so much things, you can hardly keep track of all shortcomings: the site uses invalid, broken HTML; the lameness filter and other antitroll devices just make posting difficult (I still cannot use perfectly standard characters like French guillemots or em dashes because they're filtered for some reason. Nor can I use handy HTML tags like <acronym>); the stories are more often than not dupes (sometimes of a story that was submitted very shortly ago); there is ZERO fact-checking, even on preposterous claims; it's also obvious no grammar and spelling checks are done, and I've seen numerous occurrences of a "story" being simply a paragraph lifted from the original article; people have been known to post advertisements as news (*cough* Roland Piquepaille *cough*); the editorial policy (if it exists) is very muddy, what is primarily peddled as a technology site sometimes drifts around topics that are certainly not "news for nerds" (the Politics section is probably the pinnacle of completely awkward and unrelated editorial content, not to mention non-US visitors couldn't care less); the moderation system is quite bad, and the nesting/reparenting thing frequently renders threads hard to follow (e.g., when there have been several posts beneath your threshold between to that are above it), and so on.
Actually, I could probably go on and on finding other problems, but basically this is useless. As I said above, the IMBDSRS blinds the editors, and they will think they're right no matter what people say. Note that many issues are really simple to solve (adding an additional Coral cache link to every link in a story could be done automatically at posting time, for instance), but I bet you won't see it happen anytime soon. *Sigh*, indeed...
Why doesn't the slashcode include something like this...
/ g;
$post =~ si/http:\/\/([^\/]+)\/?/http:\/\/$1.nyud.net:8090
My perl isn't so good..but wouldn't that be ever so trivial?
Howsabout instructions on getting around firewalls? Like was indicated earlier, most firewalls block port 8090.
This sig no verb.