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

[WordPress Trac]

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

 * cc: johnjamesjacoby (added)


Comment:

 These icons have a legacy that dates back to December 11, 2008 when 2.7
 was released. I know that flat icons are the current trend, but we spent
 at least several man-hours making the existing icons beautiful with HiDPI
 details... Seems a waste of effort and resources, and they introduce
 several issues.

 I'm attaching a current menu with BuddyPress and bbPress installed. It
 looks... ugly now.

 Technically, flat icons exist because of a lack of flexibility from using
 a custom webfont. Not that I'd like them more, personally, but is there
 evidence to support flattening these icons improves the end-user
 experience or accessibility?

 When the ethos is to "use core as the best example" of what to do, and
 core makes sweeping UI changes that are not backwards compatible with
 years of developers doing the right thing, it's frustrating to the core
 audience of contributors to core. I know you all know this, but it's worth
 reminding about here, how a seemingly small change has impacts that echo
 through the community in a negative way.

 In my imagination, it's not just developers.. The average user has gotten
 familiar with the existing icons, to the glow color of the current mouse-
 over state, to them wondering why a few icons look the same, and a large
 percentage of them changed.

 By switching to flat icons, we also /severely/ limit the range of
 available icons for plugins to use to distinguish themselves in a classy,
 core-matchy way. In turn, we disregard every icon that was carefully
 crafted to match core since 2008. Silhouettes work fine for the limited
 range of core functionality, but tens of thousands of plugins are going to
 run out of shapes very quickly.

 I.E. Imagine if OS X dock icons could only be 1 color...

 The icons, alone, are pretty. Ben does great work. The direction we're
 going on WordPress.com is nice, too. I like the icons there, because they
 fit an overall brand decision for WordPress.com. For the larger audience
 of self hosted WordPress installations, if it's not obvious by now, I
 think flattening these icons is a bad idea.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23333#comment:33>
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