[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #23333: New icons

[WordPress Trac]

#23333: New icons
----------------------------+------------------
 Reporter:  empireoflight   |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement     |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  3.6
Component:  Administration  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  ui-focus        |
----------------------------+------------------

Comment (by bftrick):

 Replying to [comment:41 matt]:
 > Scott, also the legacy look could be made into a plugin or theme so
 people who prefer it can continue with it. Any change we make to the
 admin, where people spend countless hours every day, will naturally have
 resistance.


 I agree. There will be resistance and creating a plugin or theme for users
 who want to stick to the old UI should be made possible.

 Replying to [comment:49 joen]:
 > Having worked quite a bit with icon fonts recently, these icons seem
 almost made for being such. I think that combining a more streamlined
 admin UI with an icon font is a very good answer to the question "why".
 Because an icon-font would bring the following benefits to further
 development of the UI:
 >
 > - No image files to maintain for icons
 > - Built-in retina
 > - Icons can be shown in the pixel size they were designed to as well as
 2x multiples thereof (for example the posts "pin" icon could be shown 1x
 in the sidebar, 2x at the top of the posts page)
 > - Icon colors can be changed with one line of CSS
 > - File size is through the floor.
 > - Making changes to the HTML or CSS becomes much easier since the icons
 are essentially "letters". For example, the blue color scheme wouldn't
 require a separate PNG sprite.
 >
 > I see only two downsides to using icon fonts:
 >
 > - Slightly bigger overhead in creating the font (I volunteer to help out
 here if need be)
 > - On Firefox, the -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; CSS property
 doesn't exist, which means Firefox and IE users will see a barely
 perceptible red and blue haze around the icons (the letters you're reading
 right now have the same red/blue haze -- more info here:
 http://noscope.com/2012/font-smoothing/)
 >
 > So I'm definitely in the camp of going flat and light-weight on the
 icons, provided they become part of a font. Trendy or not, in my
 experience, the strong silhuette and simplicity of flat icons can almost
 become a visual identity unto itself.

 I think the only downside that you left out is that any developer can
 figure out how to create an icon in photoshop (even if it looks bad). I
 have no idea how to create an icon font so if I want to create an icon for
 my plugin what do I do?

 I love the idea of an icon font but I don't think we should have to know
 how to create an icon font to use an icon for our plugin.

 Replying to [comment:53 jtsternberg]:
 > After reading this entire thread, I'm pretty torn, with excellent points
 presented from both ends. I understand the desire to move forward, but I
 almost feel this consideration would go better with a complete rework of
 the Admin css/ui [http://www.noeltock.com/web-design/wordpress/rethinking-
 wp-admin/]. The whole idea of using icon fonts, flat icons, etc seems to
 be geared towards mobile usage and I know mobile is a huge priority, but
 until the admin css is reworked, replacing icons seems to be similar to
 putting lipstick on a pig, since the mobile experience is still painful at
 best.
 >
 > My two cents.

 Thats a good point (and an excellent article). In the long run rebuilding
 the admin theme with LESS is very beneficial but right now WP doesn't even
 ship with LESS. It will take a while before we get all of the pieces in
 place to build anything /w LESS. We could create a new admin theme in the
 near future and then convert it to LESS when that becomes an option.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23333#comment:54>
WordPress Trac <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress blogging software