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microsoft / PowerToys

Windows system utilities to maximize productivity
MIT License
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Modernizing the PowerToys icon #1118

Closed niels9001 closed 4 years ago

niels9001 commented 4 years ago

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

The current PowerToys icon feels dated. With the legacy and connection with Windows 95 this makes sense, but I believe modernizing it might be better to make it feel more native to Windows 10. In 2020, we'll see lots of inbox application icons modernized (more on Microsoft Design's push to re-design hundreds of OS icons here).

Another issue with the current icon is the fact that it feels outdated and doesn't scale very well to smaller sizes (for e.g. the systemtray)

Proposed technical implementation details

The proposal is to redesign the current PowerToys icon, so it feels part of the Windows 10 family of experiences (e.g. Terminal, other inbox apps)

riverar commented 4 years ago

Why does the PowerToys icon need to show state? Is there a feature in the works or planned that requires this feature? I'm also having a hard time understanding what the icon even represents. Is it supposed to be an old TV with a test pattern? What are all the buttons for? I don't want a gradient in my system tray, that's distracting.

htcfreek commented 4 years ago

@crutkas Will we have some PT icons with red and yellow colour or warning and stop sign? We could use such icons in the toast notifications. For example when the update failed or when the 'elevated running' notification is shown.

docs.microsoft.com > adaptive-interactive-toasts > app-logo-override

crutkas commented 4 years ago

Why does the PowerToys icon need to show state? Is there a feature in the works or planned that requires this feature? I'm also having a hard time understanding what the icon even represents. Is it supposed to be an old TV with a test pattern? What are all the buttons for? I don't want a gradient in my system tray, that's distracting.

Waiting on a mono line that we then can do status on. Example: detected an elevated app or An app that causes conflict.

riverar commented 4 years ago

@crutkas Not sure what that first part means. Second part seems like a bug (elevated apps). And not sure notifying the user about known bad apps is useful through an icon color change (or at all).

Is there a design spec for this?

htcfreek commented 4 years ago

Is there a design spec for this?

I don't think that we have a design spec.

But I have written down my thoughts of how we can handle this here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/1958#issuecomment-613334280

riverar commented 4 years ago

Thanks @htcfreek

[Opinion]

I think conflicting apps can be detected at install time or simply listed in the README. (It's my understanding power users are the audience here.) Building out all this infrastructure for a handful of buggy apps seems extremely wasteful to me. (FancyZones elevated window issues seem temporary and fixable.)

enricogior commented 4 years ago

The new icon is now available in 0.18 https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases