ONGOING DEFAULT THEME CONTEST!!!

[[Saint]]

Q: "Do we need any new icons for this?"
A: "Yep, quite a few IIUC"


ZincAlloy,
Do you have SVGs of the original CabbieV2 by any chance? I'd like to start work on this, but I'd also like it to be as close as possible (no obvious transitions (colour/brightness/etc)) to the original theme...

The only way I can think to achieve this without using SVGs (if you have them) is by chopping the cabbie WPS to bits and reusing bits of it, which is fine, but a little hacky.

EDIT: Nowhere the need for Icons as I had thought...only an "%?ts<is stereo|>" icon would be much use.


[St.]

[JdGordon]

I dont think it will need new icons..

[pixelma]

I think it needs a new icon for "Radio playing" and on some players for "Radio muted" in the list or bitmap strip for playback status. If you also add a "Recording" and "Recording paused" icon to those it could also help an SBS "port".

A mono/stereo icon would be nice too and I suggest using the space of the repeat or shuffle status icons for this.

It is about the general design, I volunteer for adapting to greyscale and monochrome again.

[JdGordon]

http://imagebin.ca/view/HEEi0vO.html and http://imagebin.ca/view/NIBiZGe.html are my current WIP fm screens... I'm not sure where the radio art should go, and the RDS info...?

Also, I think we need at minimum new icons for: 1) radio tuned/not tuned, 2) stereo/mono, 3) scan/preset mode.
for 1 it would be nice if it was something which could be used as a signal meter (when/if that patch ever gets in)

[ZincAlloy]

here's what I've come up with so far. no idea what the scan/preset icon is supposed to look like

[JdGordon]

they look good.. are the rings on the top row supposed to be for mono/stereo? I think it would be better if they were the same size.. maybe half a ring fo mono or something?

as for scan/preset mode.. umm.. what about using the shuffle icon for scan and a straight line for preset?

[ZincAlloy]

Yes, the rings are for stereo/mono. TV guides here use the symbol with the two entwined rings for stereo a lot. They use two detached rings for two seperate mono channels (for bilingual broadcasts), so we should use one ring for mono.
The mono ring is the same size as the stereo rings, but the stereo icon is wider of course..

I guess reusing the shuffle icon would lead to some confusion. We'd better come up with a new icon.

[TexasRockbox]

The two rings is similar to the "official" display of detection of the RDS signal found on some radios.

[yapper]

The RDS logo is only superficially similar. In my opinion ZincAlloy's design is clearly not a copy or based on the RDS logo.

[audio-i]

About the scan/preset icon (not being much of a radio user) it seems like there's not really a standard for those, most of the devices seem to use just the words. But at least a very basic idea to start with, could be something like this (the real icons would of course look much nicer):

Scan:    << >>
Preset: <<o>>  or  <<| |>> or  <<|o|>>

[Llorean]

I don't know if the two rings / single ring is all that recognizable outside of whatever regions currently use it.

Wouldn't it be better to just have something like say, the word "Stereo" or "Mono"? Not everything needs to be an icon. We can take it from what we currently do in the radio screen.

Icons shouldn't really be used unless it's completely self-explanatory and if I saw it alternating between one ring and two rings as I scanned through the frequencies I probably wouldn't have any clue what it meant. If I was in an area where all the stations came in stereo, and I had presets, so I never saw the mono icon, I'd have no idea at all.

[Ezraghast]

ZincAlloy's icons are very nice. I think using the cabbie 'shuffle' icon for scan and the 'stop' icon for presets, with a number embedded would tie in..

[AlexP]

I don't know if the two rings / single ring is all that recognizable outside of whatever regions currently use it.

Wouldn't it be better to just have something like say, the word "Stereo" or "Mono"? Not everything needs to be an icon. We can take it from what we currently do in the radio screen.

I can only speak for myself, but I would say it is quite well known in the UK at least - I recognised it anyway

However, if it isn't universal then yes, maybe something explicit would be better.

[Llorean]

I've never seen it before in my life. I don't know what that says about its universality, since I haven't watched much cable TV within the past few years.

Especially a single ring would mean nothing to me if I didn't have the dual rings to contrast it with. I personally would really prefer something more explicit.

The problem is, for me, that without introduction to what that icon means or good context (I could figure it out looking at both side by side because that immediately let me know both icons existed) a circle just has nothing to do with audio channels to me.

[Vague Rant]

I'll throw in that I, an Australian, have never before seen the one/two rings icons either.

How would people feel about the sound channel graphics used on DVDs and such, which depict mono (), stereo (), way up to 9.2 channels ()? Examples taken from here (bonus, they're released under the GFDL):

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Multi-channel_sound

The only real issue with them I see (besides not knowing how deeply they've penetrated; does everybody know them?) is that they're kind of designed to represent many-channel sound and so just using them for mono/stereo may be a bit of a waste of real estate.