[Acorn 6] Color/BW Toolbar

Hello,

i’m a longterm user. I just got an e-mail that Acorn 6 is released. I just want to say that i’m missing the color icons very much. The BW icons in the toolbar are looking very flat and “dull” to me. I know someone may say, that they are perfect :wink: I’m used to the color icons.

So any chance to get the switch from Acorn 5 back, but with the option to get the color icons?

That would be awesome.

Thanks,
Torsten

There isn’t any way to get the color icons back right now, sorry.

Hello,

I was looking to send some feedback regarding this last night, before noticing that you have forums now. :slight_smile:

Congratulations on new release. It’s fantastic! Keep up the good work. Below is just a suggestion and definitely not a criticism.

I too was wondering about possibility of choosing between monochromatic icons vs color icons (in v5). I am certain new interface will grow on me, and it does look nice. Colored icons made tool selection easier (visually). I would love to see an option to choose between two set of icons in Preferences -> current + not necessarily old icons, but maybe ones with bit of colour. Or maybe just minor tweaking to current icons, based on feedback you receive.

However, I am not a programmer, and doing this would probably mean wasting time on replacing a lot of other things rather than just “Toolbar icons”. I would rather see focus on bugfixes and feature improvements.

Regards,

r.

I didn’t even notice, agree that choice would be nice, but personally prefer the b&w icons because they don’t compete visually with the color controls, which are subsequently more distinctly about “color.”

Is there a chance that you can reimplement it without big fuss? It would be so awesome and i think some users would like to see the color icons back. :slight_smile:

Color icons aren’t something that I would be able to do quickly ( I wouldn’t want to just stick the old icons in there, because they need to be updated with the background selection, need multiple states w/ the selection, etc.).

So just an update on this.

I have been thinking about color icons a bit more, and while it’s not quite ready to ship yet and is in fact in an incomplete state, Acorn 6.0.1 did ship with a hidden pref to enable color in icons again. I wasn’t able to swap in the previous icons because they wouldn’t blend right with the new selected state of the tools.

At any rate, if you’d like to see a preview of it, you can turn it on by opening up Terminal.app, and pasting the following line in:

defaults write com.flyingmeat.Acorn6 colorPalette 1

And then pressing enter.

Again, these are incomplete (and I haven’t done @1x versions of them either). But I figured some folks might like to see it sooner rather than later.

1 Like

Thanks for all the work and feedback on this.

Current UI is very nice as is. I do appreciate that you are considering adding option for color icons as well. I have enabled it, and I like it so far.

I don’t know what is easier and preferred option for both you and most users. Color icons make things visually a bit easier/faster - that is just me. I do like monochrome UI a lot, and it is a step forward. It does get some getting used to at first. I like the fact that you did not make UI too dark (Affinity Photo/Pixelmator).

If color icons require too many changes, would you consider adding some color to toolbar icon when a tool is selected? Keep current icons, but change to color icon/or tweaked version of it, when selected. Reverse of what it currently does when color icons are enabled. Monochrome Pencil/Eraser icons are what I am thinking about, and what you have done on color version of Paint/Flood Fill tools. A sublte touch of color.

I hope I have not confused you with feedback. In short:

  1. Keep on working new set of icons and possibly make it user selectable so everyone’s happy. :slight_smile:
  2. Tweak current set with a (subtle) touch of color (like current Paint/Eraser tool icons)
  3. Keep default set but consider only tweaking selected state icons - either full color or some color to distinguish it.

This is not a request for v5 UI. Marley a suggestion of what you might improve. Maybe you could try experimenting by making changes to 4 icons/tools, and see what is visually nicer/fits better. It’s, of course, up to you and feedback you get from others.

I’ll have to play around with it on my end. I don’t think it’ll look very good personally, but we’ll see.