winstep wrote:
Ok, all joking aside, I said I was going to give my very honest opinion and I will go a step further than that, I am going to be
brutally honest (Ric is a grown man and he can take the heat lol):
Ric has been pressuring me for what seems like ages now to make
iconic modules free skinning.
This is just more of the same as should be obvious by Ric's 'With the new fonts etc. you could still would have the option of the old style icons...' statement above.
Each time he approached the subject I have replied with a categoric "NO, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN" and I explained why more than once.
But Ric is stubborn, so he keeps nagging me in different ways (which sometimes does get on my nerves as I am trying to fry much bigger fish and this little hand keeps pulling on my sleeve, disrupting my train of thought).
I'll say again: it will never happen.
As for form vs. function: I don't think you will find ANY other customization application out there were so much thought went to - and so much emphasis was put on - functionality.
What you really need to understand is that it might be functionality that makes the user STAY, but it's the EYE CANDY that SELLS. Steve Jobs knew this very well, and I too learned this very precious lesson years ago.
On one side you have the PC world, where anything can be customized but most of it is butt ugly (including unimaginative beige cases for YEARS!) on the other side you have Apple, where every little thing is a work of art but is not very flexible at all.
What you need is balance. Don't use functionality as an excuse to turn everything into beige cases.
Why do you think WindowBlinds no longer sells? Because once Microsoft realized how important eye candy also is they 'beautified' Windows (starting with Vista) in such a way that the OS is now 'good enough' in terms of aesthetics - as a result 99% of all the WB themes out there became WORSE than the real thing, which instantly made WB obsolete.
Users already have a choice of two different styles per each iconic module. They can even change the *background* of most of the iconic modules. That is as far as it will EVER go and I am not going to explain why again.
Also, what matters if a module is still readable at 16x16 if the price to pay is the same module being butt ugly at 128x128?!
What, I could make different versions of the same module for each icon size, you say?! No, that would not work for a TON of reasons, and no thanks, I'm not about to shoot myself in the foot like that either.
Jorge, as I said at the outset of this thread, this is *NOT* about anything like free-form skinning for iconified modules, it is merely about improving the defaults of the clock and perhaps calender modules.
All that would be needed to accomplish this is, in the case of the clock, change the text by dropping that weekday line, moving the time text up a bit and adding the short format date below, and using a better, cleaner, clearer and more legible font. The icon itself could stay exactly as it is. And in the case of the calender, yes, the icon would need some minor modification - it would just need to be cropped, getting rid of all that wasted transparent space and thus making the icon itself large enough to accommodate a better font. (And capitalisation would help, as can be seen very clearly in my examples.)
No need for any free-form skinning. With the choice of background already available, the skinner can do his own and specify the font colour. (And so could the user.) I repeat, I do not advocate or ask for free-form skinning here. And as I've already stated more than once here already, this is *not* what this is about, it's not even about changing the default icons but just advocating improving the actual informational content in the form of the text and fonts.
Of course, it's your choice to distort the whole thing into a free-form/different icon thing, just as it was your choice to completely mislead people with the poll propositions which state that it's about background.
Ooh, and suddenly you're advocating ignoring 16 px. icons in favour of good 128 px. ones? How quaint, how odd Jorge. ISTR that you always placed great emphasis on the importance of how 16 px. icons look....
As for 'form follows function', in this case (the other) Ric is right - the informational content of the current default does not adhere to this principle but solely relies on the perceived eye-candy factor.(Which is itself debatable IMO.)
The images say it all wrt the point of this exercise - clarity of information content. Clarity, cleanness, legibility. Text becomes pointless when it is less than that.
:Edit: And as for nagging you Jorge and sometimes getting on your nerves - didn't you realise that that is in my job description?
You need to be nagged and have your views/ideas challenged, in fact we all do of course. And I'm challenging/nagging only because I consider you a friend and not the enemy, and in the hope of helping to make Winstep even better than it already is, and that (challenging, that is) is something that sadly doesn't seem to happen here too often anymore. Naturally I may not and indeed am not always right, but hopefully I may be even just once in a while.
And in this particular case of suggesting a minor change to the text and fonts (and *not* the icon itself!) I feel I am right. Come on Jorge, you know I am. You know it makes sense.
As for the icon (the calender one, which would need slight modification) - I'll gladly crop off all that empty (transparent) space and resize it for you to prove the point. I can't say fairer than that. :/Edit/