GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 758311
[Adwaita:dark] Emblem "New mails" on folder icon hard to see
Last modified: 2016-03-09 04:05:21 UTC
Created attachment 315858 [details] a screenshot of evolution with Adwaita:dark Steps to reproduce: 1. set your Gtk+ 3 theme to Adwaita:dark (e.g. using gnome-tweak-tool, dconf or dconf-editor). Keep using the adwaita icon theme. 2. open evolution, refresh your emails 3. look at your email folders. Can you spot the difference between a folder with and a folder without new messages? I find it hard to see. The "emblem-new" icon over a "folder" icon doesn't have enough contrast compared to the background. Affected software versions: gtk3-3.18.4-1.fc23.x86_64 evolution-3.18.2-1.fc23.x86_64 adwaita-icon-theme-3.18.0-1.fc23.noarch Comment: I don't know whether this issue should be fixed in Gtk+ (Adwaita) or evolution. Feel free to reassign since you probably know better.
Thanks for a bug report. The emblem-new is taken from the theme, evolution doesn't provide its own, thus I move this to the adwaita-icon-theme.
I don't think scaling an icon to 4 pixels and expecting it to be legible without considering the background is going to work. I would indicate new mails in a folder either by emboldening the label or prefixing the folder with a blue dot, which is a pattern we use for updated content for tabs or view switchers (GtkStackSwitcher). If you want to make the emblem work at that size, perhaps using a -symbolic overlay with black foreground color might work as well.
(In reply to Jakub Steiner from comment #2) > I don't think scaling an icon to 4 pixels and expecting it to be legible > without considering the background is going to work. I see it more than 4 pixels in size, check the screen shot. The problem is that the dark background and mostly light folder icons makes it hard to eyes to distinguish between the lighter star icon on top of the folder icon. > I would indicate new mails in a folder either by emboldening the label Yes, it's done there, but the folder name is in bold if it or any of its subfolders already contains any unread messages. > or prefixing the folder with a blue dot, which is a pattern we use for > updated content for tabs or view switchers (GtkStackSwitcher). It feels like a workaround. The reason why I believe it should be fixed in the icon theme is that it's not only the evolution issue, also Nautilus is affected. I can setup an emblem on any folder (the older nautilus used to have that option too, but it's gone, nonetheless it respects the setting), and with the dark theme and Adwaita icon theme the yellow star on top of a light brown folder icon is almost invisible. If it's a WontFix for you, then the right thing might be for the users to change their icon theme to some where the star emblem will be visible on the icons they use for the folder in both light and the dark variants of the theme.
The concept of emblems has been dropped in Files for quite a while. The way tango style icons dealt with legibility of varying background shades was the bouble stroke. Dark on the outside and light on the inside. You can't really have those on a star at 5px. The right think is to use the same pattern as we use elsewhere. The blue dot.
Created attachment 316149 [details] [review] sync legacy emblem with gtk+
Attachment 316149 [details] pushed as f818f89 - sync legacy emblem with gtk+
Thanks. I'm wondering, might it make sense to also update icons like mail-unread, document-new, folder-new, ... which have the "emblem-new" included already?
You're mixing different things in. document-new and folder-new are action icons for creating new object. The dot signifies an updated state of a view/object. mail-unread should be updated though.
Created attachment 316222 [details] [review] mail-unread: sync updated metaphor with gtk
It seems that mail-unread has grown an unwanted, gray box in this update.
Fixed in https://git.gnome.org/browse/adwaita-icon-theme/commit/?id=245a7d79dbf1992e4d37b0e742d766f559554bc1