Support

Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#29136 Icons

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Akeeba Backup version
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Latest post by nicholas on Thursday, 08 February 2018 05:55 CST

rbuelund
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Description of my issue:
Very annoying icon set you have changed too !! Also in Admin tools. Bad choice in my opinion.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
We didn't change the icons just because the decades old Everaldo Crystal Icons set was long in the tooth. We changed it for reasons of usability, consistency, efficiency and responsiveness. As with anything artistic some people will like it, some people won't. I'm sorry you don't like it.

If you are as upset as you come across, feel free to provide us with a vector icon set which fulfills ALL of the following requirements:
  • visually fits in Joomla! 3, Joomla! 4 and WordPress at the same time.
  • has enough icons to represent all the abstract concepts among our very diverse software, something that the Everaldo Crystal Icons set and the custom Akeeba Backup set designed by Helvecio for us a couple of years ago did not cater for, making us reuse unrelated and confusing icons, leading to an inconsistent design and cognitive burden to the users of our software.
  • can be shipped as compact set of icon fonts in at least TTF, EOT and WOFF formats instead of massively huge PNGs for reasons of efficiency and not crashing your sites when installing our software.
  • allows us to create subsets if need be for the same reasons.
  • comes with its own icon font CSS which can be namespaced to avoid conflicts.
  • scales nicely from 16px to 1024px without artefacts since our software is responsive, i.e. can be used in anything from a 4" smartphone to a 45" 8K display.
  • works on a variety of color background so we can give color context to our users.
  • allows redistribution and use in commercial software without a fee so we don't have to increase our prices.


Let me comment that the IonIcons set we use not only fits all those requirements but also follows the flat, abstract design of iOS, Android, Windows, Joomla 3, Joomla 4 and WordPress itself. That's in stark contrast to the old icon sets. The Everaldo Crystal Icons dated back to the early 00's era of skeuomorphic 3D-cartoon icons (e.g. Windows XP, iOS 4, Android 1). The custom Akeeba Backup icon set -which was tying our hands- was a nod to the 8-bit computer era with blocky, pixelated icons. Both of them made our software look dated and out of touch with the current design trends in the computer industry.

Which brings me to an honest question: how can even use a computer if you have such a strong reaction to flat, abstract icons? Are you using XFce or a retro icon set? How about all of the sites. Even Joomla! 3.8 has done away with gradients and gone almost full flat (bar some icons from the IcoMoon set that nobody wants to rip out until Joomla! 4 is out).

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

rbuelund
Well if am the only one thinking it is to much of color bucket, then just let it be :-)
The icons themselves are fine.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Actually, the number of colors on your screen at any given time is MUCH lower in this version of Admin Tools than it was before (four instead of the entire rainbow). That's what I said before about consistency.

The Control Panel page uses four colors:
  • Red: it will immediately block access to your site. Red = danger (also see road signs).
  • Yellow: potentially dangerous stuff which can lock you out of your site or Admin Tools. Yellow = warning (also see road signs).
  • Dark grey: The main security features, i.e. the ones you need to use most of the time.
  • Teal: everything else i.e. utilities, teal being the main brand color


Before you had random gradients, round corners, randomly colored icons... If you call the new design a "paint bucket" then what would you call the previous design? The super market catalog?

Not to mention that as I already said this design is the same you see in Joomla! 4, WordPress, iOS, Android, Windows etc. You are either not using computers or, more likely, you just complain because it's something "new". Get used to it.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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