Total Commander

[questions who would be the voters in an icon competition]

white wrote: I need to know this before I can vote.
If all forum members will be jury members I will vote against an icon competition.
If Christian Ghisler (author) will be the only jury member or if as many as possible Total Commander users will be jury members I might vote for an icon competition.

A better explanaition for that reason would be nice...

white wrote:Something different: Is this Topic important enough to be sticky?

As it is essentiell imho about the future of tc I think yes

Sir_SiLvA wrote:

white wrote: If all forum members will be jury members I will vote against an icon competition.
If Christian Ghisler (author) will be the only jury member or if as many as possible Total Commander users will be jury members I might vote for an icon competition.

A better explanaition for that reason would be nice...

If Christian Ghisler (author) will be the only jury member, the winning collection of icons will be his favorite. I would like to see in Total Commander the icons he likes most. (If I do not like these icons I can still replace them.)

If all forum members will be jury members..
I do not think the group of people who would vote are a good representative of all TC users.

I'm absolutely against hiring in prof. designers. Websites made by those people are too often terrible to handle,
with all kinds of useless gadgets and bad navigation, because the 'artistic' show-off is the main goal.

StickyNomad's icons are a good starting point for the future i guess... and a good choice to replace the current ones until something new arrive
(A professional designer could suppress the 'copyrights' story and give our tool the best 'look')

Why not post the new icons (one by one or together) on the forum for remarks and suggestions to help the author and/or the designer and allow the final user to give it's voice too


( if it can help take a look to those icons especially the view_xxxx ones)

Another idea would be a competition for just the new main icon - floppy disks are rarely used these days, even we now ship CDs.

I could also imagine a competition for just one icon, so professional designers could propose only one icon in professional quality so users here could choose what is suited best. But which icon should be chosen for this competition? Price for the icons isn't such a big problem if we keep the number moderate (not too many more than now).

ghisler(Author) wrote:Price for the icons isn't such a big problem if we keep the number moderate (not too many more than now).

Then I guess we should establish some specifications prior to any competition or professional work giving answers
to questions like:

1. What icons would you like to see in the remake? Covering which internal commands?
2. What should be the maximum size and color depth of the icons?
3. What kind of backwards compatibility should be applied?
4. Do we need a logo remake?
5. Do we need a remake of drive button icons and filelist icons as well?
6. If #5 is positive, how should the final work be distributed? Single file, or three separate ones and in what
type of icon format? icl, ico, dll?
7. What type of artistic elements should be applied? i.e. simple, clear, modest usage of colours etc.
8. Do we need different states for each icon? i.e. regular, inactive, hot (selected). That will also require
of TC modification to incorporate the three states.

...and many more I just cannot think of now!

My answers:
1. Only the most used.
2. To keep the size of the EXE small, only 16x16, 32x32 in 16 and 256 colors. More colors are usually overkill.
3. The icons in the toolbar should resemble the current icon, but must have a more modern look
4. Hmm, I don't think so, but this can be done separately. The logo isn't used in the program, only on the homepage.
5. Definitely!
6. The same way as they are distributed now.
7. That's up to the designer, as long as it's visually pleasing to the users.
8. The button bar doesn't support them and they aren't needed for drive icons and file lists either, so no, just one icon.

2Christian

>1. Only the most used.

That is just too general! We need some more detailed specs here. We certainly cannot
expect from a designer (pro or not) to spend hours of work on icons for functions
that can be considered for some users as not "most used". We probably need a poll
or something here to make this more clear IMHO!

>4. Hmm, I don't think so, but this can be done separately. The logo isn't used
in the program, only on the homepage.

You misunderstood me there. I was referring to TC's logo not the homepage's.
i.e. The little blue floppy icon

Just a little update:

meanwhile I'm doing some makeup and color adjusting to my icon package and will release my vicons Version 3 in the near future.

If you want to see a preview screenshot, click here (16x16), and here (32x32)

This is a very, very preliminary Preview, so the look may change until final release! I'm actually trying to make some real XP icons too, but I will priorize 256 Colors with a custom, somewhat XP-oriented palette, because:

ghisler(Author):
2. To keep the size of the EXE small, only 16x16, 32x32 in 16 and 256 colors.

...and I'd like to see my Icons in TC, if the users (and the Author of course) like them and if my creations can stand the competitors.

Finally an icon competition. So want kind of graphical programs are you guys using top design icons? I want a shot at the prise, so give me some advice...


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now playing:
The Doors Of The 21st Century - Live In Hollywood - 101 - Peace Frog.mp3
now drinking:
Oblomov vodka, 1 liter @ 37,5 %
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Maxwish wrote:Finally an icon competition. So want kind of graphical programs are you guys using top design icons? I want a shot at the prise, so give me some advice...

Axialis IconWorkshop...

@StickyNomad:
It's completely enough to use 256 colors only on 32*32. If you look at all those XP icons you see that all of them are using colors <256. There is absolutely no reason to use more than 256 colors when there are only 1024 pixels available.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to exist a format with 256 colors and 256 alpha channels which would be completely enough. There only is that Windows XP style using 24 Bit colors+8 Bit alpha which leads to shell32.dll being at least twice as big as needed. I wonder how ghisler wants to keep the exe size small when Windows XP icons are used...

If you get limitations on 256 colors you simply cannot use alpha channels because those are needed to create the XP style with drop shadows. Correct me when I am wrong...

@Maxwish:
http://www.microangelo.us/

Icfu

You cannot use alpha channels for the drive buttons anyway, because the Delphi Bitbuttons and Speedbuttons don't support them anyway - the pixel in the upper left corner defines the transparent color. For the buttonbar, I'm storting the images in a bitmap, so the alpha channel is used during the creation of the bar.

Give the user the possibility to change the icons by himself - that´s all

tombik wrote:Give the user the possibility to change the icons by himself - that´s all

You allready can