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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
The programme is going to have some sort of a look.
Whether it has colour and which ones, will probably be up to the programmers. They know best what will work with what they are trying to design.
So. As non-programmers, we are just trying to come up with ideas that might appeal.
As well as having a bit of enjoyment.
Participation is for individuals to decide.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Whether it has colour and which ones, will probably be up to the programmers. They know best what will work with what they are trying to design.
Absolutely the wrong answer, I would say (as a programmer).
The design Aesthetic is not a programmer skill. UX design is a design skill.
Programmers make things work, designers decide how they look.
I say that as a programmer that dabbles in design.
As a programmer I made some User Interfaces that I cringe at today.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
That's good then.
I'll continue to come up with colourful ideas until they say stop.
But, as a programmer, your design skills must have improved over the years? No?
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
But, as a programmer, your design skills must have improved over the years? No?
I would say so, but others might think differently!
The designers work best when they understand what is involved in skinning controls. I have been involved with skinning controls and it's often achieved by supplying bitmaps to replace the default control appearance. I have no experience of the technologies being used in this project.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I have some ideas on modifying the hexagon on/off buttons and I'll have a look at some more colour schemes when I have time. I've been using a program that Gary has mentioned several times on the forums called GenoPal to come up with harmonious colours for my UI designs.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I realise that I am coming very late to this discussion and that I am rarely here and my posts on this particular part of the forum are even rarer, in fact they may be non existent. Anyway, my two pennies worth is that firstly design by committee almost never works out right, secondly looking with an almost 'outsider's eye the one which really jumps out and is more contemporary is the one by rik. I believe that anything which is used to create art should be as simple as possible and his flat design is not only on trend (which really does not matter that much in this context) but is easy on the eye, and is straight forward. A tool should be simple and I for one am not one for 3d styles for such things, who cares what michelangelo's chisel looked like oe leonardo's brush.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
From my investigation - the GUI should be designed by a graphic artist and I believe we can separate the code from the GUI enough that we can show several working prototypes. So, keep on discussing.
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6 Attachment(s)
Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Reading through the forum and viewing the UI designs, it appears to me that most of the designs (other then the Gear) seem to be based on a "tabbed" UI. While this is not wrong/bad, there are other alternatives that can be used to group the "settings".
I have created 4 UI mock-ups that show other ways that the settings can be grouped.
These mock-ups are not intended to be graphically wonderful (although I tried to make them so that nobody's eyes would bleed), but rather, just to show other ways of grouping, and to throw out a few more possibilities that you guys can run with if you wish.
I purposefully used white and light blue colors (the light blue seemed less harsh to my eyes) and Open Sans font (I think that is what is used on the Logo and what someone suggested as a good font) on all of the mock-ups so that they had a consistent look, but would hopefully keep the focus on the features of UI and/or grouping options, rather than the color/color scheme and icons/graphics.
The images, graphics, icons, and fonts are intended to be place-holders in the mock-up only.
The icons do follow the look and feel of the new "Windows 8" and mobile apps and are available free from Syncfusion in the "Metro Studio 2" icon utility.
(http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/metrostudio)
The "checkboxes" are just some icons I was using to work with changing the checkbox styles, and I didn't want to take the time to change them back to the default checkboxes, so please ignore the images that I used.
The "sliders" and "scrollbars" are just the standard controls and have not been stylized in any way - I just wanted to give an idea of types of options controls that were available.
I apologize to the person (mindseye, I believe) whose logo I butchered (I realize that it did not scale well), and also for cutting out the "X" and shrinking it to use as the "XaRT" icon in the mock-ups.
Keeping all of the above in mind, the mock-up images are:
1. Horizontal Expander (2 images) - shown Collapsed and with the "General" group expanded.
When a group is Expanded, any other expanded group is collapsed
2. Vertical Expander (2 images) - shown Collapsed and with the "General" group expanded.
When a group is Expanded, any currently expanded group is Collapsed
3. Using icons in a "toolbar" type fashion. When the user clicks on an icon, settings for the group related to the icon (General, Sizes, etc.) are shown.
In the image, the "General" settings are shown.
4. Page Navigation style that uses a "Previous" and "Next" type of navigation to move between groups.
In the image, the "General" settings are shown.
On this one I also added a "Quick Edit" with the icons at the bottom so that a person could easily get to the settings they want to change.
I am graphically challenged, so maybe from a graphics point of view this is not correct, but my thought is that the first item to nail down is the type of UI that is desired (tabbed, expander, icons, previous/next, etc.).
Then while the primary UI is being worked on, the focus can move on to control styles (checkboxes, sliders, scrollbars, etc.), then icons and images, and then finally decide on the colors/color schemes.
I realize that the colors of the logo, icons and other graphics are closely related, but I believe that if we start on the primary UI design first, I can get started on it, and the other items can be worked on while the primary UI is being built and that these items can be incorporated when they are decided upon.
If there is some reason you believe this order of operations will not work, please let me know.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Barbara,
If the UI is designed with localization enabled, is there someone who can provide the translations for the settings and their descriptions?
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Paul,
There are definite drawbacks to using bitmap images as controls, the biggest being that when the application is resized, the bitmap may become "fuzzy" and hard to read. I am looking into how to do skinning in WPF right now, but since most of what I am seeing in this thread revolves more around color schemes than the look of the controls, I think that allowing the user to change color schemes would be more beneficial.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind....
1. Is there a particular font that is best suited for use on screen from a graphics perspective? I know that Calibri and Cambria are supposed to be good for documents, but what fonts/sizes would be best from a graphics perspective (I sure hope this is not one of those questions that everyone has a different idea of what is best and there is no consensus)?
2. What screen resolution and dpi settings do most graphics folks use? Is it the standard 96dpi at 1920x1080 or something different?
3. For a tool like this, do you want something small and compact that uses the least amount of screen real-estate or something larger, or does it matter?
Thanks,
Eric
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2 Attachment(s)
Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Here are a couple of mockups using slight variations of the excellent artwork and concepts from several of the posts here.
Frank's (very nice) cube logo could also be easily integrated with this design.
Attachment 96639
Attachment 96640
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
About those designs.
The user is given the option to turn an option ON or OFF, but is presented with a tick to indicate the default value.
I think the default value should also be presented in exactly the same terms - ON or OFF, not a mix.
It seems to me that there is a conflict with using ON and OFF and having a logo that displays an X as a tick ( ie you want to use ON and OFF to represent choices, yet want the logo representation to show another form of choice).
Another observation. Recently I worked on quite a large project adding an alternative language to an iPad application. The original intention had been to load new language strings for localisation. The app was very sensitive aesthetically to layout and in the end I had to manually edit all of the text with the alternative.
I can confirm that when compared to English, italian may be beautiful to hear, but it requires (generally) more text to say the same message as in English, so it was a pain to have to re-layout the text and sometimes re-size it.
In an app with multiple language support, the layout may be difficult to preserve between languages and ON and OFF may not be quite so small, etc..
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EricB
There are definite drawbacks to using bitmap images as controls, the biggest being that when the application is resized, the bitmap may become "fuzzy" and hard to read.
Eric
Hi Eric and welcome to the discussion.
I for one am against compromising a good UI design just because the programmers have opted for a default library of common controls to avoid using bitmaps.
The bitmap parts of the UI don't have to scale, they can remain at the size they were written to, or (and I'm professing ignorance here) many icons for desktop applications have multiple resolution images bound into one *.ico file. And what Windows usually does with this is if you have a 48 x 48 space defined, the appropriate icon within the wrapper is called. and 32 x 32, and 256 x 256 and so on.
So perhaps the controls need to be written to bitmap at various sizes.
I believe we need creative solutions to avoid interface ugliness. True Confession: I'm a designer and I work most comfortable with a program that has a pleasant, and occasionally inspiring interface. I stopped using Painter for about two revs because Corel Corporation destroyed the lovely, and intuitive UI the original three programmer/artists had created.
A lot of the chat on the "Dear Xara" thread and others are about how we either love or detest the "Dark UI".
Fit and finish is an important topic and I'm happy that we have this area to discuss the pros and cons of the fit and finish.
By Best,
Gary
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
In an app with multiple language support, the layout may be difficult to preserve between languages and ON and OFF may not be quite so small, etc..
Agree. This is a concern and something to be considered...
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I really like your second one. especially the tabs and the idea of pictures in the help. I can see what Paul means about on/off vs a tick. As for internationalization, having the text following the on/off box etc. gives you more flexibility, and I think the WPF gives us scalability..
All you designers seems to lean towards dark colours. Is this the vogue? I suppose skinning can solve that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
StevenWWinters
Here are a couple of mockups using slight variations of the excellent artwork and concepts from several of the posts here.
Frank's (very nice) cube logo could also be easily integrated with this design.
Attachment 96639
Attachment 96640
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I don't understand, what the check mark in the default column means.
1. Does it mean that the toggle or the value that is currently set to the left is set at the default, shipping value?
2. Or that there is a default setting but we are not saying what it is?
3. Or that we want to return the setting to the default?
4. And if I want to change the default value do I need to somehow need to unlock or uncheck the default check mark in the default column?
I'm assuming it means the first and that it will auto adjust (become unchecked) if I change the value, but I think this has to be made clear.
Also is there a way to return a value to the default instead of trying to figure out or remember that it was 14?
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
@Steve,
There are two things I'd like to mention from an art and a usability thing, three, actually:
The example you posted is indeed dark. In fact, it's too dark. And changing colors to present a different theme is a matter of a few degrees. Example? Xara DP's "Dark UI" would be much more legible is they lightened the dark grey only 5%.
Also, I really wish we'd "give it up" with visual allusions to a brush tool; the double-entende of the checkmark integrating into the "x" is now gone with that brush drawing sprouting out of the upper right "leg". Xara is a drawing program, it will always primarily be a drawing program without some major recoding, so if we use an art implement at all, it'd be a pen or a pencil, no?
The sliders and buttons are over-rendered in the example above. You don't need gradients on a toggle that's supposed to look like metal for people to get the idea that it's a toggle switch. It over-complicates the art, it's a visual distraction, we've all been working toward K.I.S.S. for weeks now!
You make an overall UI look hodge-podge when one element is rendered perfectly down to a screen pixel while other areas are flat.
I like the UI, Steve, in its general presentation and organization, but when web nerds talk about "fit and finish", they're talking about getting stuff right down to the last pixel, and there are still some medium to small embellishments I disagree with as an artist.
And I really appreciate all the feedback, creative ideas, and spirit of sharing as we progress, so if there's any negativity in this post, please attribute it to a lousy breakfast or not winning the lottery or something, okay?
My Best,
Gary
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Barbara B
I don't understand, what the check mark in the default column means.
Good question. The answer is #1. It is simply an indicator that the setting displayed is the default for a fresh install of Xara. No check mark means that the registry setting has been modified from the default. There may be other or better ways to communicate this, so as always, suggestions are welcome.
The four buttons in the upper right would provide these functions:
Single check mark: Set the selected setting to default.
Four check marks: Set all settings to default.
Single undo arrow: Undo the changes to the selected setting.
Four undo arrows: Undo all changes for the active session.
Whether these will get implemented is yet to be decided. They are merely options that made sense to me.
Also, note that the circle with arrow at the bottom (2nd mockup) is meant to be a button that will expand to display the registry path for the selected setting, for those interested in such things. See 1st mockup to see the registry path being displayed.
Other comments:
It doesn't follow for me that the check mark logo requires that at checkbox be used for yes/no or on/off type settings. The logo is simply meant to relate that the program allows setting changes, of which there are several types, not just those that can be represented by a check mark. A checkbox could be used, but it isn't essential. Also, I think that there needs to be a distinction between how an on/off setting is toggled and the default values are reset.
Regarding color: As has been commented already, color preferences tend to be very subjective. Not sure what to do about that other than to have as many ideas put forth as people are willing to contribute. These two mockups are built around the grey of the logo used and variations of the Asus router colors I posted earlier. If anyone wants to play with different color combinations using the same layout, I can post the .xar file. There are several named colors that could be easily adjusted. The buttons are live copies which allow for quick changes as well.
Also, I've noticed huge differences as I've viewed the same image on different monitors. On one monitor it can look fine while on another it appears much darker with poorer contrast. Not sure what the answer is there but those better versed in proper color combinations probably do.
Another challenge of the attempting a graphically rich design, is that screen real estate can quickly become an issue. Hence the scroll bar in these two mockups. In the same vein, the concern about localization is valid.
Hope this helps...
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
As to EricB's question:
Quote:
1. Is there a particular font that is best suited for use on screen from a graphics perspective? I know that Calibri and Cambria are supposed to be good for documents, but what fonts/sizes would be best from a graphics perspective (I sure hope this is not one of those questions that everyone has a different idea of what is best and there is no consensus)?
Calibri and Cambria are Windows fonts from at least Win7 and on. But they do belong to MS.
As an open source project, I suggest that we use an open source font.
Here are a few that look good to me. All are free on Google Fonts and work with Xara. I think we want to pick a font with a lot of styles so we can coordinate the interface with the apps download site and other collateral. Right now Open Sans would be my pick because it is a large family with a condensed variants which can come in handy.
Lato 10 styles (no narrow or condensed version)Łukasz Dziedzic
SIL Open Font License, 1.1
Source Sans Pro 12 Styles (no condensed)
Paul D. Hunt
SIL Open Font License, 1.1
Source® Sans Pro, Adobe's first open source typeface family, was designed by Paul D. Hunt. It is a sans serif typeface intended to work well in user interfaces.
Open Sans 10 styles
Open Sans
Steve Matteson
Apache License, version 2.0Open Sans is a humanist sans serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson, Type Director of Ascender Corp. This version contains the complete 897 character set, which includes the standard ISO Latin 1, Latin CE, Greek and Cyrillic character sets. Open Sans was designed with an upright stress, open forms and a neutral, yet friendly appearance. It was optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces, and has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms.
Open Sans Condensed 3 styles
Open Sans Condensed
Steve Matteson
Apache License, version 2.0Open Sans is a humanist sans serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson, Type Director of Ascender Corp. This version contains the complete 897 character set, which includes the standard ISO Latin 1, Latin CE, Greek and Cyrillic character sets. Open Sans was designed with an upright stress, open forms and a neutral, yet friendly appearance. It was optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces, and has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gare
... if there's any negativity in this post...
Gare,
Looks like our posts crossed. I haven't sensed any negativity. In fact there are a number of things in the mockups that I'm not happy with, but it's a case of "I know what like when I see it, but that doesn't mean I can create it". As I've said, I'm not a graphic artist. But I do have a sense of what is functional and practical in terms of UI interface. These mockups are merely to help refine what Grace and Eric will have to implement in code, that's all. If they assist with that, I'm happy...
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
That's why the coders and the artsy people should work together, as we are now.
:)
-g
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Gary,
I'm not suggesting using standard ugly stock grey controls, I am also wanting an attractive UI. My comment was thinking about using bitmap images for large parts of the UI. For example using an image to represent a checkbox is agood idea, but using an image of "knob" for a slider can cause issues such as the image getting fuzzy or distorted when the user either enlarges or shrinks the window. A couple of additional concerrns are: an image must be created for each "state" of the actio - using the knob example, an image of the knob with the "pointer" in all available positions must be created (if you ever look carefully at the system tray icon for Task Manager, you will realize that there are only 3 images used to display processer utilization); 2) if the app is localized, and the graphic includes test, then you have to have with the text in each language that is supported.
What I am trying to express is that we can & should use graphic images when & where they truly add value, but we also need to keep in mind the drawbacks, and not use bitmp images in place of controls where they don't add value or are going to cause unnecessary issues.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
using an image of "knob" for a slider can cause issues such as the image getting fuzzy or distorted when the user either enlarges or shrinks the window.using an image of "knob" for a slider can cause issues such as the image getting fuzzy or distorted when the user either enlarges or shrinks the window.
User interfaces don't scale proportionately, so making a window bigger doesn't make the controls bigger, so there's no issue regarding making images fuzzy or distorted.
I think it's clear that getting consensus is going to be interesting. We all know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee!
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
[B]We all know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee!
Hmmm. I'd heard that an elephant was a horse designed by a committee. Given the current state of the US government, the elephant was probably designed by a sub-committee.
@ Eric—Ah, there's the hitch in your last post:
we can & should use graphic images when & where they truly add value
I can't help but be a little leery of what is a subjective observation!
Question for all: what are we "selling†"?
My answer: A utility that helps Xara users work in a more intimate, personalized style, but is basically an existing product, XaReg, now that Steve and John have updated it.
The two things about this product that can make the time spent worthwhile, are:
1. That it's open source, so it can be examined and updated eternally, and
2. It's handsome-looking.
I'm serious. You gotta capitalize on what you have that's unique, and a lot of Xara artists might not care at all about Unique Feature #1.
I do not want Steve, Grace, and other people's investment in this to result in 5 copies being downloaded!
My Best,
Gary
† Substitute the words "offering", "serving up", or "donating" if the idea of "selling" something sounds overly commercial.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
@Gary,
You are correct, that is a subjective observation. I apologize for not wording that better (things have been kind of stressful around here this week dealing with the fire and possible evacuation).
Let me try again, and maybe I can explain my thoughts better... I think we definitely want to take advantage of the creativity and artistic abilities that are available to us (and it would be foolish not to), but we also need to keep in mind things like localization, performance, and how the app looks and behaves on systems with different versions of the operating system, displays, etc. While some UI elements can easily be replaced by a graphical image (such as a radio button or checkbox), others are not so easily replaced.
I think that everyone involved needs to know what the both the cost and benefit of anything that is going to have a potential for issues in the future so that it they can determine if the benefit outweighs the cost. For example, if replacing a control with an image is going to take a great deal of code to implement, would cause the UI code to be difficult to maintain or upgrade, or would cause issues with localization, then the community needs to decide if using an image rather than a control is truly something that should be done.
At the same time, as developers, we need the artistic community to use their knowledge and experience to drive the look and feel of the UI. This should truly be a team effort to ensure that the result is not only functional but also easy to use and artistically pleasing. I don't think that there is ever going to by one single design or color scheme that meets everyone's taste, but I would hope that we can get a design that a majority of users could agree on. I have a couple of things relating to the color scheme that I am looking into right now that might help in this area since the color scheme seems to be one of the bigger issues.
Eric
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2 Attachment(s)
Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Just a bit of playing with Gary's idea.
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I like the embellishments, Rik. I'll bet the general consensus is that it's very handsome looking and might even reproduce at small sizes.
My question would be: is the appearance of the checkmark getting too diminished as the "X" element" becomes m ore dominant?
-g
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Barbara B
As to EricB's question:
Calibri and Cambria are Windows fonts from at least Win7 and on. But they do belong to MS.
As an open source project, I suggest that we use an open source font.
I really think we want to stay with one of the fonts that come with Windows rather than installing additional fonts on the users system. My question was more one of which font is more readable on screen (as opposed to paper) and which font is generally more graphically pleasing.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I am not an artist or graphics person, but I have a suggestion regarding the logo image... try creating it with a transparent background.
That way, no matter what the background color of the form, the graphic will "blend" (maybe the wrong word) with the application rather than appearing to be stuck on to it.
I like Rik's icons, but if they were part of a logo image, how would they appear on a red gradient background (or blue or gray, etc.)? Or, if we took the logo from Steve's UI and stuck it on a form without a black/dark grey UI, how would it blend with the form? The same thing goes if the space in the "a" or "r" in XaRT is white, how will it look on a form with a background that is not white?
This hit me the other day when I saw an app that had a really nice logo and a good UI, but they did not "blend" together, and it appeared like the logo was stuck onto the UI at the last minute. It actually made me think of a printed mockup where someone taped a printed version of the logo where there was a placeholder for it.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
@Eric—
If Grace and Steve decide to keep the icon file out in the open (as it were, not coded into the exe as a resource), then a transparent background could be one of several sizes and variations of the approved con design.
In Windows, an *.ico file can have different images, as GIF files can. All it takes is an editor, and icon editors are a dime a dozen.
Another thing to consider is how easily an icon with a transparent background can get lost of a Desktop of an artist who chooses color wallpaper. It's something to contend with: you can't predict who is going to use this utility and where on their system. I have a utility or two that are a PITA to find because the graphic is really small set against a clear background.
Best of all worlds might be to let the user decide what to display and this can be done with multiple icons inside one file.
My Best,
Gary
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Gary,
I agree with you on this for the icon, but I was talking about the logo that would be displayed on the form. If you look at the sample Steve submitted you'll see the logo in the upper left-hand corner (the one with the brush that needs to not have a brush) of the form blends in with the rest of the form, but if the form were blue, then it would not blend in.
The application icon is generally set within the executable when the application is compiled (that is how Windows (and other apps) can determine the icon by just examining the executable) rather than including it as a separate file. One of the reasons for this is "branding". You want users to know what the application is by seeing the icon. If you have multiple icons for your application, you lose the ability for someone walking up to a computer to know that "program x" is there just by seeing the icon on the desktop or taskbar.
The user can always change the icon that is displayed in Windows just by editing the properties of the "shortcut" that is created for executable.
Several sizes of the application icon can be included in the executable, but I am unsure of the exact steps to do this as I have never had this need, but I don't believe it is that difficult.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
I agree. If we want to allow a user to change colour, then the logo needs to match that scheme. I think we lock in the shape, but not the colour.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EricB
I am not an artist or graphics person, but I have a suggestion regarding the logo image... try creating it with a transparent background.
That way, no matter what the background color of the form, the graphic will "blend" (maybe the wrong word) with the application rather than appearing to be stuck on to it.
I like Rik's icons, but if they were part of a logo image, how would they appear on a red gradient background (or blue or gray, etc.)? Or, if we took the logo from Steve's UI and stuck it on a form without a black/dark grey UI, how would it blend with the form? The same thing goes if the space in the "a" or "r" in XaRT is white, how will it look on a form with a background that is not white?
This hit me the other day when I saw an app that had a really nice logo and a good UI, but they did not "blend" together, and it appeared like the logo was stuck onto the UI at the last minute. It actually made me think of a printed mockup where someone taped a printed version of the logo where there was a placeholder for it.
Eric
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
If we want to allow a user to change colour
Is this a requirement that a user would have in a utility they will use once in a blue moon?
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
Not really, but its fun to do . I think we want to showcase the fact the "we "are designers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
If we want to allow a user to change colour
Is this a requirement that a user would have in a utility they will use once in a blue moon?
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Re: Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks
In addition, some of us will use the utility a little more often than in a blue moon, and we may need to make it comfortable for our eyes. :)
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1 Attachment(s)
Re: Design a Logo for XaRT
Eric has implemented Steve's design of the presentation layer (See below). Note that we currently have 3 columns. The left column current value is the one that would be changeable. Startup value would show you what you started with - I am not sure that this column is needed. The last column shows the default values. As it stand right now there is nothing that shows you that you are allowed to change the current value but not the other two. So, we need suggestions. Other suggestions on the layout are welcome.
Note that we have the "general tab" implemented and I will be working on the other tabs. We do have it connected to the "back end".
Attachment 99024
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Re: Design a Logo for XaRT
I love the layout and the graphics.
I hate, hate, hate the super-intense shade of blue you have currently.
There's a zillion shades of blue you can use in the gradient. Why not something lighter, less saturated, which would make it more inviting to use and less of a headache/threat/challenge?
Not enough tonal contrast between the background and the logo.
Can I assume that delaring new colors is relatively trivial, and won't upset the layout, because I love the layout, very logical, easy to use.
My Best,
Gary
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Re: Design a Logo for XaRT
Yes, I agree, the blue is too dark and yes- changing colours is easy. I just hadn't bothered as I was working on getting the whole thing running.
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Re: Design a Logo for XaRT
Good, thanks Grace.
Please bear in mind that when you make a presentation, you need to cater to those of us who are ignorant about coding, and also what a "finished version" looks like.
When I worked as an art director at an ad agency, we were always careful to keep stuff we'd show to the cloejt rough and sketchy. Because when a print ad looked too polished, the client presumed it was the finished ad.
Of course, I'm brighter than that. *< 8 O ) <---clown smiley
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