[319] in Athena User Interface
Graphic design meeting 1pm Monday, Zone
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Fri Jul 21 17:56:25 2000
Message-Id: <200007212156.RAA68094@whack-a-mole.mit.edu>
To: aui@MIT.EDU
cc: plitwack@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 17:56:10 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
So the director of the Publishing Services Bureau and two graphic
designers are coming to the Zone at 1pm on Monday. We will demo the
AUI interface to them, and then discuss our hit list.
It turns out that PSB is just finishing a big project "redefining
MIT's visual identity," and are very excited about bringing that new
look and feel to Athena. 8)
Even better, if they decide to do the job in-house (and the in-house
people seem very interested) there will be no need to bill I/S.
Below is what I have to give to them so far, including some questions
I don't have answers to. If you care what instructions the designers
are given, or have artistic visions you'd like to share, I would
invite you to come to the meeting.
-B.
---
Notes on color usage:
- For taskbar icons and backgrounds, we'd like to seriously limit the
number of colors used, so that they look good on 8-bit displays,
and so that other color-intensive applications look better. We'd
like to stick with the standard Gnome 16, plus a small number of
custom colors we'd need (like say the official MIT colors).
- Many existing icons are OK, but just need to have the number of
colors they use reduced. We can do this ourselves in xv if
necessary.
- What are the standard 16 colors in Gnome, anyway?
Expanded list:
* "Mens et Manus" background in MIT colors
* Cool Athena-specific splashscreen (*just* the splashscreen, *not*
the associated mini-logos the Helix Code version of the startup
uses). The current splashscreen is a 320x375 PNG; I don't think
the exact size is important, but someone should check.
* Icons which might be on the taskbar. The standard icon size is
48x48 pixels, and uses the PNG format. It appears they also use
the alpha channel for shading; not sure what to do about that.
- Logout: Awful; needs to be replaced, even if only by a nice sign
saying "LOG OUT."
- Gnome-terminal: Could be more obvious. Maybe something with the
athena% prompt clearly visible.
- Gnome footprint: Ok, needs fewer colors
- Netscape: Ok, needs fewer colors
- Help: Ok, needs fewer colors
- Emacs: Ok, needs fewer colors
- Lock screen: Ok, needs fewer colors
- File folder: Ok, uncertain about colors
- Mail reader: Voted off the panel until we have Evolution.
- Athena Owl: Not expected, but if it were, there's the triangle
over the eye problem.
* Smaller versions of any new icons created for the above list, to be
used in the menu system
Things we don't need right now:
* Icons for gKerbometer may be found at
http://web.mit.edu/is/help/mink/leash32.html, so we don't need
those.
* We might want additional small icons for the menus, but we need to
flesh out the menu tree first.
* We might want a custom Sawfish (window manager) theme done up, but
development on it needs to settle out first.
===============================================================
Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
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