I would vote in favor of removing the icons for the following reasons: 1) Because we have more tools than available icons, their meaning becomes ambiguous and make them less effective.
2) New icons are required for newly created tools, meaning we would need to use an existing icon, or design a new icon with a consistent look and feel. 3) If we keep the icons, we'd probably want to update them for hi-dpi screens. 4) While I agree they add character to the site, I think "less is more" in this case. Removing the icons would draw the eye to the content rather than the toolbar -- resulting in a higher signal-to-noise. One way of giving a feel of consistency and visual appeal is the use of color. Here is a modern example of color being used to group elements https://elements.polymer-project.org Any thoughts about that? On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 4:29 PM, Dave Brondsema <[email protected]> wrote: > tl;dr Should we remove the tool icons from the project nav bar? > > I've been working with Heith on > https://forge-allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7920/ (and 7919) for a > quick > easy way to edit tools via the toolbar. How the tools icons show up > during edit > mode is one aspect of that. It might be easier to just remove them. > > I don't have a real strong opinion on keeping or removing the icons. I > think > they do provide some value, but are inconsistent, dated, and limited (e.g. > no > icon for Activity so we just use the "gears" icon). If we remove them, > Allura > would look a little bit more modern. But then you start to realize how > much > boring gray we have covering the whole page. If we did remove them, I'd > suggest > a small delimiter between them not unlike the SourceForge theme of Allura > (example: https://sourceforge.net/p/coils/news/) > > We also show tool icons on the Tool Admin page (which we'll probably remove > after the toolbar admin mode is done) and the Add Project page. > > Thoughts, pros, cons? > > -- > Dave Brondsema : [email protected] > http://www.brondsema.net : personal > http://www.splike.com : programming > <>< >
