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fossfreedom / coverart-browser

Browse your cover-art albums in Rhythmbox v2.96 - 3.0+
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Cosmetic improvements #300

Closed jrbastien closed 10 years ago

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

These are more notes to myself for when I will have some free time to work on icons and mockups but some of them could also require your help. Feel free to comment.

  1. The coverart icon in the left tool bar is too dark compared to the other icons
  2. The overlay play button (in the upper left corner of the cover) could be improved to look more professional.
  3. After all this time, I notice a speaker on the left of the track list. What is it doing there?
  4. The new icon to switch from the former track list view to the new one is usually used for configuration options. How do we call these 2 lists? That might help finding a more appropriate icon.
  5. The new bigger cover view could probably be nicer if it was included in the same pane as the track list. Perhaps the scrollbar could be put to the right of it. I will need to work on some GIMP mockups.
fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

4) - Called "Compact Track View" and "Full Track View" in the README file. 2) - would welcome this - you'll also note when playing the icon changes to a "queue" icon - currently I've got this to be a play plus a "+" icon. Would welcome any icons - as you know - I'm no artist in this area! 3) same in the Music Library view - it is used to denote if a particular track is playing or is paused.

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. I have another question: what is the turntable button (whatsplaying.png) used for?

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

The whatsplaying icon is issue #296

I've currently hidden this since its not fully implemented. I'm going to resolve this over the next week or so.

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

Here some rough proposals for item 4:

Option 1: These would actually be 2 icons and would need a toggle function.

entryview - option 1

Option 2: A single button:

entryview - option 2

If you are interested in any of those let me know and I will work on refining them.

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

I personally like option 2 - it fits the toggle nature of that button. liking your ideas already. cheers.

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

Is it possible the entry view button gets squared? I'm trying to give it a more rectangular look but it seems to be stretched vertically.

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

its a standard algorithm - it takes the dimensions of a stock icon and resizes it - thus, the initial image should be squared - let's say 128 x 128 - within that space the bitmap can be rectangular. Then it gets resized down to the stock icon dimension - e.g. 24 x 24, 32 x 32, 64 x 64, 128 x 128 depending how you have setup your desktop environment.

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

OK, my eyes must have tricked me. Here is the icon for number 4. This is very subtil but I think it matches well the shape of stars at the bottom of the pane. It has also the same line size and color.

entryview fuzzy_icon

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

looks excellent. I've uploaded the 24x24 icon above. Please can I have the 128x128 pixel version ?

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

Do you have a specific usage for the 128x128 version? Each size needs rework because of pixel snapping. All pixels that are not aligned to the grid will produce a blurry look. 128 is 5.33 times 24 pixels. It will need some adjustment to be sharp.

In the 24x24 version I have given you I managed to only have the arrow heads a little bit fuzzy.

pixelsnapping

Yes, I did not know this when I did my first icons...

What I was thinking though was to give you all the original arts in SVG format. We should release them in the plugin folder so if anyone wants to adjust them or create new ones from they could.

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

no - no usage for the 128x128 - I was just aware that your other icons were much larger than 24x24 and thought a consistent approach would be better.

I bow to your judgement as to the pixel issue - I presume I would see that if I was using the accessibility zoom desktop feature - that capability for users with poorer vision.

The SVG idea is a good one - we can create an "original" or suitably named folder under ./img

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

I just uploaded the same icon underneath the one I gave you in my previous comment where I slightly move the shape in the 24x24 grid. I think you can see the problem without a magnifier!

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

yep - even without my glasses - that is fuzzy :)

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

I have a small issue with observation 1. Under Numix the icons on the left side bar are lighter than under ambiance. I have searched all the user/share/icons/theme_name and I could not figute out where they are taken from.

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

where have you downloaded the numix theme from? the PPA here? https://launchpad.net/~numix/+archive/ppa

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:numix/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install numix-gtk-theme

If you want to try their icon themes:

sudo apt-get install numix-icon-theme numix-icon-theme-circle

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

Here are some button for observation 2:

play_buttons_mockup

I have changed the effect to a fade-in effect. I'm not sure if they are better than the previous ones on busy covers. But we could perhaps just do that same effect the previous design. Let me know what you think. They are available here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8gehi90f21psvqz/AAAIBW9OxI0t1IG2oLjwvZgTa

fossfreedom commented 10 years ago

very professional. I love these! I'll grab and add these as soon as I land the final changes for issue #296

jrbastien commented 10 years ago

In fact, I just tried something else. At that size, sometime less is better:

play_buttons_mockup2

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fr70t95qu5bwohw/AACEuapxuhTEUOObC6Cota9ca