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?"

Comments

Rolling your own

[ackthpt]

I haven't been big on designing my own Windows icons because, before I gave up looking, all icon editors cost $$. Inexplicably the one format Paint doesn't support is *.ico

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.

Re:Rolling your own

[value_added]

Consistent with XP? That would mean an odd mixture of sometimes 16, sometimes 32 colours, sometimes more, and sizes in ranging (depending on the icon) from 16x16 to 48x48, each size being made available in either 16 or 32 colours or more, or all three, but not always, and depending on which .dll that particular icon is being served from, as opposed to other .dlls which contain an identical (but not always) icon.

There was a Slashdot article posted some time ago where Steve Jobs was quoted as saying (way back when, and I paraphrase) that Bill Gates never understood the concept of design.

Despite the overhaul made for the XP interface, much of the same crap found on NT, 2K, etc. can be found on XP, and the inconsistencies aren't limited to icon choices.

As for the icon editor recommendation, unless it's capable of replacing the icons buried in innumerable .dlls, I don't believe it could compare favourably against any number of alternatives (Microangelo, etc.) which, thankfully, make Windows at least bearable.

But that's just an opinion. I have otheres, of course.

my favorite icon

[JeanBaptiste]

moof the dogcow!

It's as if icons peaked 2-4 years ago

[Alternate Interior]

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.

Re:Amiga Icons

[SharpFang]

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.