Call for an official Mozilla Sunbird theme

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » June 25th, 2004, 10:41 am

[Edit] Message got duped. Sorry.

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 25th, 2004, 10:42 am

Chris:

The toolbar and the options dialog are the only 2 required, right?

So all he has left to do is the options dialog?

nwillis · Post by **nwillis** » June 25th, 2004, 10:44 am

I know it's a pain, but I was thinking: if the sunbird logo were flipped horizontally, that would help distinguish it more from the thunderbird logo. That way, it's still right-side-up, but the firefox, the thunderbird, and the sunbird -- while looking similar -- would each be sort of "coming from their own direction."

Anyway, I thought it was worth a mention.

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » June 25th, 2004, 10:46 am

rP2 wrote:I think along with a new theme the main calendar-pane needs urgently a visual improvement too. I encountered unadjustable colors and even numbers laying on top of the labellings... This pane should smoothly fit into the rest of the program or theme, at the moment it looks like something hard-coded.

Can you give a screenshot or an example? I don't see any of the things you're talking about.

rP2 wrote:I don't want to compare sunbird with the msoffice03-calendar but look at this picture:

http://centrumxp.pl/office/2003/beta/galeria/11.gif

No offense but that's a bit colorful. I wouldn't want to stare at that all day. Are those the default colors or have you "spiced" it up?

FlashBanG wrote:I agree with you, rP2, but let's split this into a new topic so this one doesnt get off track.. We can post this in the "Other mozilla.org Applications" forum

This thread is not just about icons. These comments are very on topic.

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » June 25th, 2004, 10:54 am

FlashBanG wrote:The toolbar and the options dialog are the only 2 required, right?

Toolbar
Options dialog category buttons
Add/Edit event dialog date/time selectors
Calendar navigation arrows
Throbber (the FF throbber may be used for consistancy if it doesn't change)
Future icons which I suspect will be added as Sunbird implements more of the toolkit

There may be others which I haven't noticed yet.

jeanjean · Post by **jeanjean** » June 25th, 2004, 11:01 am

Chris Cook wrote:
rP2 wrote:I think along with a new theme the main calendar-pane needs urgently a visual improvement too. I encountered unadjustable colors and even numbers laying on top of the labellings... This pane should smoothly fit into the rest of the program or theme, at the moment it looks like something hard-coded.

Can you give a screenshot or an example? I don't see any of the things you're talking about.

I think he is talking about the main visual part of the application: the calendar. Those blue lines are really outdated now. I am playing right now with photoshop and calendar.jar to see if i could use some transparence and drop shadows to enhance it.

Don't take this at a working version though but here is what i'd like sunbird to look like: <a href = "http://www.teledisnet.be/web/mma12231/sunbird blue preview.jpg">blue preview</a> and <a href = "http://www.teledisnet.be/web/mma12231/sunbird green preview.jpg">green preview.</a>

I am playing with the the skin files to see how i could achieve that. (i am not pretending to build a default theme!)

Chris Cook wrote:
rP2 wrote:I don't want to compare sunbird with the msoffice03-calendar but look at this picture:

http://centrumxp.pl/office/2003/beta/galeria/11.gif

No offense but that's a bit colorful. I wouldn't want to stare at that all day. Are those the default colors or have you "spiced" it up?

These are the default luna blue colours. It's more readable under windows classic though.

kepstin · Post by **kepstin** » June 25th, 2004, 11:06 am

I'm unfortunately not all that good at writing xul, so I wouldn't be much help in actually making the skin. I figured that I should try to help out any way that I can, and these icons are something i'm reasonably good at making.
I've worked at bit at the options dialog icons:

I'm wondering, is the Timezone icon going to be needed? IMHO, it would make more sense to put the timezone configuration in the "general" options.
I've updated the toolbar icons image to have a disabled state.

Arg. sorry, I think my server's down - I'll get working on that :)
Man. cheap hardware router - I had to reboot it!

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » June 25th, 2004, 11:13 am

kepstin wrote:I'm unfortunately not all that good at writing xul, so I wouldn't be much help in actually making the skin.

No worries. I'm taking care of the theme. You can take care of the graphics :)

kepstin wrote:I figured that I should try to help out any way that I can, and these icons are something i'm reasonably good at making.
I've worked at bit at the options dialog icons:

Looks good. I'll try them out.

kepstin wrote:I'm wondering, is the Timezone icon going to be needed? IMHO, it would make more sense to put the timezone configuration in the "general" options.

We'll have to wait and see.

kepstin wrote:I've updated the toolbar icons image to have a disabled state.

Arg. sorry, I think my server's down - I'll get working on that :)

I took care of the hover and disabled states in the current jar since you supplied only the normal state.

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 25th, 2004, 11:28 am

kepstein: excellent work, again! did you create the icons by yourself? What did you make them in?

They look remarkably similar to winstripe. (by the way, have you seen the updated winstripe icons?)

kepstin · Post by **kepstin** » June 25th, 2004, 11:47 am

The reason they look like winstripe is because they are - take from firefox 0.9. I havn't seen any updated ones, can you point me to them?
I only created the calendar, clock, and add event icons, the rest are taken directly from firefox.
I'm using The Gimp (on linux) to create the icons in, version 2.0.2 to be specific.

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 25th, 2004, 12:04 pm

kepstin:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=90503

I dont believe any of the changes so far affect any of your icons though..

markcarson · Post by **markcarson** » June 25th, 2004, 6:12 pm

I was about to suggest the following to replace the month to month navigation buttons

<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunbirdNavSample.png">

on the top of the calendar by using the "Back" and "Next" buttons from Firefox, however I see from the above post that the Firefox/winstripe buttons are changing yet again. No matter, the arrowheads (vice the triangle arrows) shown would still do fine. As a previous post mentioned, there are still other UI items that beg to be updated (now that "we" like kepstin's icon set that is) :-)

markcarson · Post by **markcarson** » June 25th, 2004, 8:02 pm

Spark (from the UK) - I know you had to sample up the image for your paste up of an About page, so I did a version starting from the vector original of the logo. Tried to match your changes and blue gradient as best I could. On your about page, I assume the text is, well text, so I did not reproduce wording on this "about" version of the logo.

<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/Sunbird-4-About.png">

Chris, is this something you need for theme construction?

markcarson · Post by **markcarson** » June 26th, 2004, 1:53 am

Well, I was surprised to find that the icons in the default theme of Thunderbird (version 0.7) are taller than those in the default theme of Firefox (version 0.9). If, and I know this is a big "if", we are trying to make Sunbird look more like Thunderbird, then a taller (32x32) set of icons may be appropriate after all.

I created a mock-up using some icons from Thunderbird ("Write", "Cut", "Copy", and "Paste") and used the document portion of the "Write" icon as the basis for a new "New Event" icon (with the winstripe green plus sign). I also used the "Write" icon (with pencil removed of course) and the red X (from the Thunerbird "Delete" icon) added to create a matching "Delete Event" icon.

The mock-up shows these 3 matching icons (New, Edit, Delete) followed by the standard Thunderbird Cut, Paste, and Copy icons. Lastly, I recreated kepstin's view icons (as new vector art) and produced 32 pixel wide icons to complete this set.

Again, whether or not a larger icon set is the right thing or not remains open for debate. These are just offered up as an alternative in case a 32x32 icon set is needed.

<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunbirdNavSample-2.png">

Nietzman · Post by **Nietzman** » June 26th, 2004, 2:39 am

jeanjean wrote:Don't take this at a working version though but here is what i'd like sunbird to look like: <a href = "http://www.teledisnet.be/web/mma12231/sunbird blue preview.jpg">blue preview</a> and <a href = "http://www.teledisnet.be/web/mma12231/sunbird green preview.jpg">green preview.</a>

Thats looking great, keep it up!

I am currently working on a logo of my own since I dont really like the yellow in the current one (no offence), but I completely suck at doing vectors, so its more draft at the moment. (I also suck at making logo's, but I guess its the idea that counts. :{)

markcarson wrote:I created a mock-up using some icons from Thunderbird ("Write", "Cut", "Copy", and "Paste") and used the document portion of the "Write" icon as the basis for a new "New Event" icon (with the winstripe green plus sign). I also used the "Write" icon (with pencil removed of course) and the red X (from the Thunerbird "Delete" icon) added to create a matching "Delete Event" icon.

Thunderbirds default theme is still Qute, but its getting a "winstripe makeover" soon too. So wouldnt it be a better idea to hold on to winstripe? For consistency?