GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 114920
Panel menu should use 32x32 icons
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Currently the panel uses 24x24 icons, but XD2 uses 32x32 icons and I think there is a definate usability benefit to using the larger icons. * It is easier to visually scan the menu * You never really want to do anything with the rest of the screen at the same time as using the applications menu so we might as well use the screen space. * It will force us to keep the menus clean and short.
We did have this at one point :-) See: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002-February/thread.html#00172 Could you start a discussion on d-d-l list about this ? I have no problem with making them bigger, but how do we decide on what size is the optimal size ?
Well we really only have the icons in the icon theme to choose from IMHO. Currently we use 24x24 don't we? or is it smaller? The options are: 12x12, 24x24, 32x32. 36x36, 48x48 (Nautilus icon size) I think 32x32 is the best... ps. to try this out add the following line to the gtkrc of the theme you are using: gtk-icon-sizes = "panel-menu=32,32"
I think we moved to 24x24 in Red Hat because all the .desktop files have icons that are 48x48. Scaling to 24 thus looks much better than scaling to other sizes. Probably not the most important factor, but some sort of factor.
We have plans on adding 32x32 icons to the icon theme, Ximain uses them, and we are merging quite a lot of their icons. And for other icons we can just add 32x32 where applicable. As for themes that don't have 32x32 icons, they'll work and should look good enough.
And build up a good 32x32 icon is more simple then a 24x24 one :-) Besides can we add a GConf key just like toolbar_deatachable? If I'm righ it should be a gtk(rc) option managed via gconf, So if 24x24 if bigger for your screen resolution you can change it and keep ot in all themes (and 32x32 -> 24x24 looks better IMHO :-))
The thread on desktop-devel mailing list related to this is here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-June/msg00349.html There wasn't much of a dicsussion but the general consensus was to change it to 32x32 but to have a gconf option to revert to what we currently use. Another issue brought up was whether or not we should have the icon size automatically change depending on the resolution, but I think that this would be confusing.
Created attachment 17898 [details] [review] Patch from xd2 to make the panel icons 32x32
Created attachment 17899 [details] Screenshot of menu in HEAD with this patch applied
There are almost 50 32x32 icons gone into gnome-icon-theme head, and more will be provided by the artists if we do make this change, which resolves the scaling issue. As can be seen in the screenshot some of the icons are 32x32 and some are fuzzy because they are being scaled down. If this is likely to be applied before 2.4 I would humbly request that it be done sooner rather than later so that the artists have a chance to add 32x32 versions of all the icons in the menus. I'm going away on wednesday so if you want me to follow this up any more I'm avaliable before then. If this change is made after that please e-mail gnome-themes-list to let the artists know.
I'm leaning towards going with 24x24 for 2.4 and seeing how its received. I'm just worried that 32x32 is excessive on small resolutions. I'm also loathe to add a GConf key for this just yet. 2003-07-11 Mark McLoughlin <mark@skynet.ie> * panel-stock-icons.h: change the default icon size to 24x24. See bug #114920.