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  Oxygen Icons Website Launched
Graphics and Art Posted by David Vignoni on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @15:50
from the breath-of-fresh-air dept.
David Vignoni, Kenneth Wimer and Nuno Pinheiro, 3 of KDE's finest artists, are very proud to present the Oxygen website, explaining what Oxygen is and the direction it is going in. Oxygen is the new icon theme being created for KDE4. Everything started in March 2005 when a bunch of KDE contributors met in Berlin to form the Appeal Project with the goal to promote KDE related projects and to push the open source desktop to another level. Oxygen aims to bring a modern, cool and very usable and consistent icon theme, in SVG format. In addition to high quality design, Oxygen also promotes technological innovation and increased usability by proposing new file interaction methods, animated effects and the intelligent use of SVGs.


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Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.
Wow, professional
by Erik Hill on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @16:38
I've taken a look and think these are a good balance of elegance, usability and beauty. In other words, as soon as it's done, this will be the one I use.

Erik
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Wow
by JB on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @16:54
Those are the most beautiful icons I've ever seen.
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Absolutely Beautiful
by Jack Curry on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @17:17
Those icons rock. The colors are excellent, and the imagery is sophisticated and professional, but still fun. I can't wait until KDE 4!
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Nice icon theme, but...
by ltmon on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @17:33
I was really hoping to get more details about the other cool things about Oxygen that they have hinted at in the past.

For example, dynamic lighting effects on all icons causing a consistent "light source" to be present on the desktop. Also how are animated icons going to be used?

That said I really do like the consistent, thought-out and methodical approach taken, rather than the normal "Here's a whole lot of pretty pictures" icon design.

L.
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WOW
by ac on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @19:26
What else could I say... I'm impressed. Now I understand why KDE didn't want to use the crappy Tango icons ;)
128x128 is also a good choice for the default icon view. I'm not really sure that the one-color-only mimetype icons are a good idea (they look boring right now) but we'll see.
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Icon design
by UsabilityDude on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @21:13
PLEASE keep the icons facing at the SAME direction! It is VERY important for consistency and unified look. For example, check the speaker here:
http://www.oxygen-icons.org/wp-content/themes/oxy/images/preview/9.png
It should not be looking up.
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Crystal Icons
by Silviu Marin-Caea on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @22:08
The Crystal Icons are not bad at all, either. On the contrary. Remember those before Crystal? They looked kind of brown (Gnomish) :-) Crystal is a great appearance for KDE.

Everaldo remains one of KDE's finest artists, too.
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Yeah... these icons rock!
by Thomas on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @22:29
Great work!
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Icon design software
by Nilesh Bansal on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @22:44
I am sure that KDE 4 will rock. And more so with the new fresh icon theme.

What kind of tools/software is used for designing this kind of stuff. I doubt if GIMP can do that all this. Are there any good linux based softwares?
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Quite nice ...
by St. Kevin on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @23:27
... and less blue, which I consider a grand thing.
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Licence question
by Eleknader on Tuesday 15/Nov/2005, @23:48
I'm not sure I understand the licence of Oxygen icons right. It's non-commercial so are commercial (closed source) software vendors able to distribute these icons without opening the source of the programs?

I was wondering this just because it would be great to see some closed source offerings complementing the great KDE user experience.

Also, will these icons be cross-desktop like Tango icons?

Eleknader
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US flag
by AC on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @00:26
... and please use a different icon for internationalisation (locale.png) than Everaldo. I think the US flag is no longer a symbol for that.
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what happened with Everaldo?
by Anton Velev on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @03:06
Hey guys, what happened with Everaldo and Crystal icons? Aren't his icons not good enough anymore for you or he does not commit anymore?

His icons were nice, and most importantly the license was a very permittive one without attaching any strings and royalities (not sure if it was BSD or LGPL). Ever since I have seen many apps using this icons, and even sites (especially control panels).

Here is posted the license polocy of Oxygen icons:
http://www.oxygen-icons.org/?page_id=4

Is Oxygen icon set planned to be released under license in the same spirit as Crystal was?
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wow
by fish on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @03:15
this will very likely be the first time ever that i will use the standard icon theme! thumbs up! ;)
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Hmm.
by Illissius on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @06:08
Not bad at all, but I'm not seeing the 'oh wow!' that everyone else is. The folder icons look great, but the rest are a bit, well, plain. Maybe they're too flat? Don't know, and perhaps a screenshot with them would show them off better, but for now I like Nuvola, and probably Crystal better, though.
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Fantastic!
by Mark Mahle on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @06:09
Excellent Job David & Team!
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Please move to analog measures!
by Friedrich on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @06:34
Hi,

my hopes for the future of OSS are refreshed once again seeing this piece of work :)

One bigger nitpick:
With computers we already use analog measures for fonts, audio, time, etc. Please do so for icons, too. By using SVG instead of rastered pixmaps we can finally follow the route of free scaleable fonts (PS, TT) which is the way to go*. Please, please, take this into account. This would really rock.** ***

*There is even close to no difference between chinese characters and symbols from a certain POV ;)
**And widgets should follow the very same route. Let's control the window border size in mm, not pixel numbers.
***Once this is done there should be support for the perceived sizes. Looking at your pda, your monitor and a beamer projection results in different physical "display" sizes. But your perception might be the same as your distance to the display is different, too.

Thanks
Friedrich
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Looks good!
by Joergen Ramskov on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @07:55
Keep up the great work!

Thanks!
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Continuing Nuvola?
by AC on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @10:09
While these icons in the previews are attractive. I wonder what will happen to Nuvola? Will David continue to maintain them or will they be superceded by the Oxygen icons? The folder and mimetype icons in the Oxygen preview doesn't look as sharp as Nuvola ones. Maybe a blending of the two?
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Oh My God
by Segedunum on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @10:28
They are the best icons I've ever seen. The perfect mix of colour, eye candy and easiness on the eyes. They're certainly not boring, but they're usable.
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Interoperability
by ra1n on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @11:02
Great work! as always
Only one thing, I saw people call the tango project crappy (joking I suppose) don't hear them, the tango project it's a good thing, and must be supported, just like oxygen it's needed in order to have complete themes for both DEs there, instead of duplicate icon themes in order to have a coherent desktop.
We could have finally (at the moment) two great Icon themes, that work out of the box in both envrionments
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Everaldo's icons
by Daniel Semblano on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @12:15
I still prefer everaldo's icons ( http://www.everaldo.com/ )... oxygens don't bring nothing new ... well, i'ts my opinion anyway :)
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No more floppy disks!
by Scott on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @12:44
I saw a picture of a 3.5" floppy disk grouped with their "action" icons. A set of action icons designed in 2005 shouldn't use a picture of a floppy disk to indicate "save". That makes as much sense as using a picture of a reel to reel tape or a punch card. There's a whole generation of computer users coming up who've never seen a floppy disk. We need a new metaphor for 'save'. I'm too old to come up with a good one though. We really should ask kids under 15 to 'draw a picture of what it means to save a file.'
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I don't know
by mOrPhie on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @12:51
Maybe I should see the whole picture, but I'm not convinced yet. In my opinion the icons bring less new than expected. Don't get me wrong, I thing those nice icons, but they're not as innovative as I hoped for. :)
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Thanks
by David Vignoni on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @16:14
Since I'm only replying to people who say that Tango/Crystal/Whatever is better, I would like also to thanks all the people for the nice messages and interest, this was not really expected.
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Um ...
by Greg McClure on Thursday 17/Nov/2005, @07:09
Eh.

They're okay. I mean, they're nice. I don't understand some of the raging boners that some guys here have for these icons, e.g., "they're the most beautiful visual expressions of icon-oriented symbology ever have I laid my eyes upon, O Beautiful Icons, Blessed Art Thou ...", etc.

I think that's a good example of how KDE has a devoted fan base that, at times, can be one toe over the Line of Rational Thought, but hey, I get it, when you're passionate, you're passionate.

Overall, the icons are all right. Good job.
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Nice Work!
by James Richard Tyrer on Thursday 17/Nov/2005, @11:30
These look very nice.

So, the first question is: are the actual icons available somewhere?

The Oxygen theme appears to look more contemporary without the usability issues which I have complained about in the Crystal styles. So, they have done a good engineering job as well as good artwork. Since they look so good, perhaps they should be installed as HiColor which would solve various issues including the FD standard compliance.

I do wonder about the MIME type icon though. I think that the folded upper right corner is standard across many desktops and would be preferred. also, the shadows on the MIME type icons seem wrong for the standard light source over the viewers left shoulder.

I also wonder if some of them, while the look very nice in the large size, have too much detail and are too photo realistic to render well in 16x16 and 22x22.

22x22 suggests another issue: can we manage to switch to 24x24 (or just add it) in KDE-4? Other desktops use 24x24 and it creates real problems when optimizing an icon from the 128x128 px SVG.
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Great work!
by Torsten Rahn on Friday 18/Nov/2005, @03:27
This is very impressive work you guys have done with Oxygen. Hats off to Everaldos Crystal and Clear-E as well as it brought KDE's look and feel for KDE 3 to new levels and was certainly the most successful icon theme in the open source world since it started.

But KDE 4 needs to have a new look and feel which still has its roots in Crystal and is innovative enough to bring in fresh new air and breaks with some of Crystals "trends". I think that Oxygen delivers this exactly.
Of course there are still lots of rough edges and as someone who has seen the Oxygen presentation at Malaga I can assure that this is just a sneak preview with many more details for technical and usability improvements yet to come.
Remember that we are still at a very early stage.

For all the people who worry about openness and license I can assure you the best as well: To initiate a project you always need a small team of people who have a vision and who try to build the base and direction. It was like that for Crystal (which originated in Conectiva's offices). And it was like that for Tango (which was kept secret by NDL's for almost a year inside Novell until it was published). So be patient and give your constructive input to our three artist heros. Oxygen will be opened more and more rapidly just as it worked with all previous iconthemes.
Concerning license and trademarks KDE e.V. will take care that Oxygen will be licensed under a license which is in the spirit of previous iconsets used by default in KDE.

Cheers,

Torsten Rahn
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Great work, - comment on actions and colours
by Anonymous Coward on Friday 25/Nov/2005, @22:53
Please, be kind with the actions. I hate having a rainbow up there. Please consider redesigning the icon if the only method of identification is the colour. I believe I read somewhere that someone claimed each icon should be identifiable as a greyscale. Please keep in mind the amount of colours you use in the actions.

Thanks!
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