GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 698700
Problem with 'bitonal' symbolic icons in the shell status area
Last modified: 2014-03-11 15:20:01 UTC
Bill Nottingham observed in a ddl discussion, recently: > > Seems like an obvious bug with the volume icon - did you file a report? To echo Federico, I think it's a problem with any of the icons that use the two-tone scheme, or a problem with the tone itself rather than the icon. The 'inactive/background' dark gray used in the status indicators essentially fades into the black background when used on any angle-sensitive screen (like many laptops) - move the screen just a few degrees off the proper viewing angle and even though the rest of the display is perfectly usable, that part of the status indicators is essentially invisible.
As far as I can tell, this affects the following icons: - user-offline-symbolic, user-idle-symbolic, user-status-pending-symbolic - audio-volume-low/muted - network-wireless-signal-ok/weak/none - network-cellular-signal-weak/none - network-wired-acquiring-symbolic, network-wired-disconnected-symbolic - bluetooth-disabled-symbolic I think that there are your complementary fixes here: 1. Make the transparent area of the symbolic icons a bit more opaque 2. Reduce the amount of semi-transparency used in some of the icons (eg. the speaker cone could remain bright in audio-volume-low/muted) 3. Reconsider the use of transparency in some of the icons (ie. does it really help in user-offline-symbolic, user-idle-symbolic, user-status-pending-symbolic ?) 4. Reduce the use of inactive status items in the top bar (eg. bug 694208 for bluetooth)
I also see it in the battery-*-charging-symbolic, although that and the wifi strength inidcator don't really affect usability.
(In reply to comment #2) > I also see it in the battery-*-charging-symbolic, although that and the wifi > strength inidcator don't really affect usability. I see the use of semi-transparency in battery-missing-symbolic and battery-full-charged-symbolic - is that what you mean?
Perhaps we're getting confused about exact terms to use (myself being a non-designer) - I'm referring to the battery charging icon where the lightning bolt is in the darker color.
(In reply to comment #4) > Perhaps we're getting confused about exact terms to use (myself being a > non-designer) - I'm referring to the battery charging icon where the lightning > bolt is in the darker color. Right, that's battery-full-charged-symbolic. Thanks for the clarification.
Created attachment 242355 [details] [review] improve legibility of certain 'disabled' state icons - increase the opacity from .35 to .5 to increase the legibility - some icons still remain more transparent as the contrast between active/inactive parts is more important than the silhouete of the whole icon
The opacity change (assuming it was global) does not significantly alter the appearance of icons such as the muted speaker icon, in brief testing here.
The mute icon has been special cased and the speaker is fully opaque.
Created attachment 242393 [details] before and after screenshots Before is on top, after is beneath. Seems like an improvement to me. I'm not entirely sure what the story is with the volume icon, but it sounds like Jakub has it in hand. :)
Created attachment 242448 [details] before & after screenshots, as viewed on-angle & off-angle Perhaps I'm not being clear in how it's seen on my laptop - whether the image is opaque or not, the color is too close to the background color such that if it's viewed slightly off-angle, it disappears. Here's Allan's before/after screenshot, as seen by a camera both on-angle and off-angle on my laptop screen.
Created attachment 242451 [details] [review] export audio muted - missed the key icon for export to address
Created attachment 242452 [details] [review] make bluetooth-disabled more opaque
Making the opacity 0.5 instead of 0.3 is a nice improvement in my laptop. I don't know if my mom will be able to see it, but I can try it on her :) For people who *can* read the normal-sized font, but *can't* distinguish things much smaller than that, would it be possible to make the little "X" that is shown for disabled icons (muted volume, bluetooth off) bigger? Right now it's something like half the ex-height of the font; it could probably be the full ex-height and still look nice and unobtrusive. I think with *that* my mom would be able to see that the volume is muted; right now I think the little X is too small for her, even though she can read the top bar's text and lighter icons just fine.
Enlarging the X keeping it symmetric would eat away too much of the actual icon features, I'm afraid. Fee free to reopen if you don't consider the opacity fix as a workable solution.