[754] in Athena User Interface
Menu icons
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Mon Apr 9 11:30:48 2001
Message-Id: <200104091530.LAA74597@m4-035-8.mit.edu>
To: aui@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 11:30:39 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
Hi all,
I got tired of the unsatisfactory appearance of the menu tree icons,
and so started in on tidying them up. If you make
/usr/athena/share/gnome/athena/menus a symlink to /mit/aui/menu/tree/,
you can preview the work in progress. Note that this file is part of
the athena-gnome-core install, and you should probably put it back the
way you found it when you're done previewing, namely, pointing to
/afs/athena.mit.edu/system/config/panel/menus-8.4 (in the current
bleeding release). Also note that you will need to attach the aui
locker because I'm using shorthand paths for convenience (which will
be changed later once I sort out exactly which icons would need to be
stored where).
Anyway, I thought I'd solicit comments on the scheme by reporting that
I'm using the following concepts to guide me:
- Icons should (if possible) carry information about an item's type
or purpose, rather than just be a pretty picture that just happens
to come with the program
- All items that represent submenus (except Help) are given the
"folder" icon so users can tell them apart.
- Key Help items are given the "question mark" icon.
- All entries that represent documentation about software are given a
"book" icon.
- All entries that open a web page (other than documentation and
help) are labelled with a "paper" icon (trying to represent web
"page")
- All entries that involve configuring the system are given a
"toolbox" icon
The Audio menu is actually all finished (except that there are
probably better icons that could replace one-for-one those that I
found just sitting around) and it illustrates the general concept.
The Help menu is also partly done...I found some particularly useful
icons there, like the talk-balloon "?" for OLC, and the "!" for
emergency help. Anyway, I'll send mail again when I've exhausted my
creativity...please do suggest alternative schemes if you don't like
how this one is looking (preferably before I finish implementing it).
Oh ya, I also fixed some typos where I forgot to put in the command
call in addition to the specified URL (and thus nothing would happen
when you selected these items).
-B.
===============================================================
Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
MIT STS/Course 6 (EECS) - MIT Athena User Interface Project
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