They ain't too bad to be hated IMO

_________________

Ok here is an example of the icons with the black outline and drop shadow...

_________________
Join the Amigaworld.net Supporters Scheme and get your Supporter Tag

I like the new icon set, but a drop shadow would be fine.

Can't this feature be integrated in the icon.library?

_________________
A1SE: G3@600MHz, 2GB, 1GBit network card
A1XE: G4@933MHz, 2GB, refitted AC'97 codec
microA1: G3@800MHz, 1GB

- A1 Linux support -

"and the overuse of gradients on almost every icon. "

I completely agree. The new iconset has lost the depth sensation. They are like a flat icon without volume but with a gradient added.

I'm sorry Mason, but I'm sure that you could enhance them to be at the same level of the old glowicons.

"These ones are all too bright, don't have much definition and look rather flat without a nice shadow..."

right!

BTW, I also prefer the "?" sign in the preferences, we have used it since the first amigaOS versions and it would be nice to keep it.

oh, and the new icon set also lacks a darker outline of the same colour of the border. Look at the original glowicons included with wb3.9 and you will see what I'd like...

I hope it's fixed in the final 4.0 version.

oh and now I think that 256 colours would be enough. It would be nicer to have 32bit icons because we would have an alpha channel,etc but they look really well with a separate pallete.

@Mason:
Please, take my comments as a constructive critic, creating icons requires a lot of effort and talent, you are the right person to do this, it's only that the new iconset requires some small touches.

@Hyperion:
Thank you for the screenshots

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

Hi all involved.
I'm rather a SW designer, so GUI art is not my strenght.
I like each icon individually !
But putting them into that workbench caused to me:

- an eye-cut: each icon has a different "color mix", the amount of "mixes" hurts the eye
- a bit lack of contrast, clean edges (but only a bit)
- lack of consistent "theme",it looks like these icons are mixed from more sets
- the icons lacks a "smooth line" as in Lorraine-design designed icons
- icons needs to be presented in the "perspective", they are used ( same colors schemes as WB, etc ... )

I hope it didn't hurt

re

Treke

I think I would like to use Glow Revolution icons as default icon set.

http://www.eskala.co.yu/Amiga/Lorraine/Slike/Amiga/GlowRevolution/

I hope power icons comes to OS 4.0 quickly, I hope they are integrated to our icon library.

The only think I do not like with Glow Revolution is the Black Drawers. Instead of this drawers i think silver or blue metal drawers which should look like orginal Glow Icon's Drawers will be better.

New icon set RuLeZ .

Mason, I really loved the old 32-color glowicon set despite its limitations with the color range and lack of alpha blending, but these has that strange feel that I also noticed when the first A500 games were converted to AGA: Soft gradients and a strange smeared look with too little contrast and no edges.

The game designers learned, when the games were produced solely for the AGA machines (Alien Breed 2 was one of the first good AGA games to utilize 256 colors properly).

Having 256 colors should give you the ability to add information to the icons with subtle details and still retain the strong contrasts the old icon set had. As opposed to many other icon sets, I find glowicons to be very informative and use color in a way that transcends simple decoration. Other icon sets tend to be so influenced by theming that the shape is distorted in a cartoonish way and while they may look good, they are not as informative.

Anyone can immediately recognize the Payback CD as a CD-icon, but is the orange colored CD-ROM icon in the lower right corner a burnable CD-ROM, a very abstract form of a harddisk drive or a laserdisc?

With that said, I really like some of the new icons, such as the MouseBlanker, AutoPoint, the Workbench 4.0 icon. They look almost as crisp as the 32-color glowicons did.

The icon for Sound in Preferences however, looked much better in 32 colors, because the coloring and highlight were slightly exaggerated. Now the gradients are too subtle and the additional color information should have made it possible to produce a properly rounded speaker with anti aliasing.
Button.docky looks very strange compared to the rest. It doesn't look like a button at all, because it was meant to look like a coat-button, right? It resembles something that was cut out of paper and the color just makes it more abstract.

Let me suggest also keep the question mark in the MUI preferences in all the other icons as well. It's very hard to see that it's a slider (took me a minute to figure out), again because the gradients are too subtle on the sliderbutton and the blue circle background gradient is too strong, removing emphasis from the slider.

The printer icon for PRT and PAR are actually quite good, except for the lack of edges, which hurt against a white background. There shouldn't be an excuse to limit the range of background colors to darker backgrounds to see your icons properly. That was hardly a problem with the old glow icons.

The Font icon is very hard to distinguish, if you don't know what it represents. The original had stronger edges and better contrast in the gradients.

The use of detail is very good in the Pointer icon as well as GUI and Presets: The pixel precise and strong detail makes the icons very easy to distinguish. This is less apparent in the Input icon. It has detail, but too much emphasis on a gradient, which drowns the subtle details. The same counts for the AmigaInput icon.

One should ask the question on what is important to show in an icon. If you did a pencil drawing of the mouse, you'd draw the shape, the buttons, the wire and the mouse wheel. That's the important parts. It looks like you started out with the gradient and then drew the buttons on top of that. That would never have worked in a pencil drawing, and it shows in pixel drawings as well. Same principle as in a childrens coloring book: First shape, then color.

I hope this is useful.

Anyway, with all this said, I really like the icons you drew for AWeb. They are high quality work, and I want you to keep submitting new work to us, when you have something, because I personally think it's the best set of icons available for that browser, and I'd love to see a 256 color set also.

If anything vector based should be made for OS4.1/4.2/whatever, I'd love to see the original 32-color set copied directly to SVG.

Regards,
Henrik Mikael Kristensen
AWeb Development Team

FWIW I will cast my vote here - I just dont like them and generally agree with the "constructive criticism" that is appearing here.

Whilst I can appreciate its a good time to make change and correct or unify certain icons or looks I just find these icons a bit "basic".

I am just wondering if they have been created with "Classic" users in mind - if you drop the colours down to 16 or even 8 they still look okay...

Previous screenshots have been pretty cool - the leopard skin HD icon springs to mind...

Quote:

but these has that strange feel that I also noticed when the first A500 games were converted to AGA: Soft gradients and a strange smeared look with too little contrast and no edges.

Thats so spookily correct!
I recall thinking exactly the same! (Then and now!)

Thanks for all this comments - the positive and the negative ones!
They will hopefully help to make the next release more perfect.
Your suggestions are allways appreciated!

This is the icon set for the pre-release CD and nothing more!

If you have a look a the older OS 3.9 preview screenshots you will notice that the design of the icons has changed in many points - the same with OS 4.

Just wait for the next release...

Kind Regards,
Martin "Mason" Merz

_________________
Martin "Mason" Merz
www.masonicons.de

I think those new icons look good, much better than OS3.9 icons. And i have nothing against bright colours or gradients :) I like colourful icons more than boring grey etc icons. I think that some of the PNG- icon sets use bright colours and gradients even more than these new OS4 icons.

@DaveyD:

That outline is too strong. It should be a darker tone of the border colour.

@Mason:

Take for example the "packet" of the "graphics" and "graphic demos" drawers, the line and crossline of the top of the box/packet should be darker, and there should be more contrast.

The worldmap should be a real worldmap for example. The actual one doesn't have volume.

As you can see in the prefs drawer the blue circle has a tone too similar to the drawer colour.

You know, my first impression is about a flat icon but with too much gradients. Your previous os3.x glowicons were excelent, I'm sure your next version of this os4 icons set will be great

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

I do like the drop shadow effect. It does give a better presentation of the look-n-feel aspect.

_________________

Unfortunately I don`t like new icons set. Honestly, OS3.9 icon set looked better [to my taste], New icons have no glow, no shadow, no outline... completelly strange work!?

Sorry Mason but I believe you can do much better icons.

_________________
nykk | deetronic.rs | youtube.com/djnykk | gfx.river | mamavolibebu.com

@ Mason

Removing the drop shadow was a good idea, shadows makes the icons dependant on bright backgrounds since they don't fit into dark backgrounds at all. However, we still need a clear contrast between the background and the icon. DaveyD's idea with a black outline is one way of doing it, but instead we get like jagged and unnatural looking edges.

Here's an idea you could try; instead of a black outline, how about reducing the color brightness by 50% on the farthest out pixels around the icons? That would make the icons blend in better with dark backgrounds and create a better contrast with brighter backgrounds at the same time, right? Unless you haven't done so already already, try it and let me know how it turns out, ok?

_________________
Sammy Nordström, A.K.A. "Samface"

MINDRELEASE.net - The Non-Commercial Network of Digital Arts.

Samworks D & C - Professional Web Development (in Swedish)

A truly awesome and fantastic-looking icon-set for OS4!
A wonderful surprise! Can't wait to see that on my A1G3XE!

Like Kay said, it won't be long now. I will set up my Debian Linux-system with the latest updates. Kernel 2.4.22, KDE 3.2 to mention something..

I'm am very impressed with the look of OS4. It keeps the true spirit of the AmigaOS and brings it into the state-of-the-art style of today..

Poster: DaveyD Date: 17-Feb-2004 9:48:49

>Ok here is an example of the icons with the black outline and drop shadow...

It is what I think, in this way each icon is more defined.....mhh, but a the shadow around isn't very nice...

ShInKurO

@ Mason
Good work! Let us updated with screenshots

_________________
ikir

Very nice, very nice indeed.

Modern, classy, doesn't put me in mind of a cheap boiled sweet (XP gives me toothache).

Now let all the moaners do better. If you don't like the icons, make new ones! Tis the Amiga Way of Life, after all