Animated Vector Icons • Hacker News Board

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#51

Post by dsowers » Sat, May 04, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

Cyranix wrote: post #18

Wow, I'm really surprised at the comments so far. For the Geocities comparison commenters... My takeaway was not "Here are animated icons, you should litter all your pages with them" but rather "Here are animated icons, if you have a use case for them, then these are a very good option". For the too-much-animation commenters... Are you actually surprised that the demo page stuffs a lot of icons into a page in order t…

Yeah, the comments are completely ridiculous.

OP, I salute you for great work. There is definitely a use for these animations. I think the occasional animation can help increase conversion rates by enticing people to click and get further down the funnel.

It's no surprise that wycats tweeted yesterday that he hates it when his work gets on HN. The critiques are getting out of control here.

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#52

Post by empire29 » Sat, May 04, 2013, 10:36 PM UTC

Neat idea, but I dont like the concept. The animations instinctively make me think some action is occurring, which isn't.

I think those would be better served to indicate the processing of an action, like the pin wheel/hour glass of old.

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#53

Post by mahmud » Sun, May 05, 2013, 3:06 AM UTC

Totally useless for devices without a mouse. Touch-screen devices don't have pointer movement events.

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#54

Post by johnbm » Sun, May 05, 2013, 7:01 AM UTC

Cyranix wrote: post #18

Wow, I'm really surprised at the comments so far. For the Geocities comparison commenters... My takeaway was not "Here are animated icons, you should litter all your pages with them" but rather "Here are animated icons, if you have a use case for them, then these are a very good option". For the too-much-animation commenters... Are you actually surprised that the demo page stuffs a lot of icons into a page in order t…

The problem is that this demo page feels like the modern equivalent of a Geocities page. It shows off the technology, but fails to show how it can be used tastefully by using it everywhere without restraint.

Additionally, I find many of the animations confusing and non-meaningful. For example, having an email envelope in a site footer being filled and flying off correctly denotes the concept of "send me an email". But doing the same thing for an email field in a form feels completely out of place. The user is not sending an email, they're just giving their information for future reference. Many of the animations are similar: they demonstrate a vaguely related concept, not the specific use case being demonstrated.

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#55

Post by andyhmltn » Sun, May 05, 2013, 4:13 PM UTC

I like the technical idea of these items, but in reality they don't really provide any added usability. In fact, I would say they take away from a message more than a standard icon. The idea of an icon is to instantly convey a message. Adding an animation to said message on hover doesn't really add any extra 'reason'

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#56

Post by st3fan » Sun, May 05, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

Cute but annoying. And has no place on mobile touch devices where Hover is nonexistent.

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#57

Post by trebor » Mon, May 06, 2013, 1:32 PM UTC

uptown wrote: post #11

trebor wrote: post #9

This is the Geocities of vector art. I don't see this as a good thing, I see this as a poor compensation for bad interface design. If your icon needs animation for it to make sense to your visitor you're doing it wrong.

That seems like a generalization. Surely there are instances where animation is appropriate for an interface. What's so wrong with another tool to achieve that goal with the added benefit of being entirely scaleable?

Animation is suitable in an interface, an icon does not constitute an interface. An icon on a button animating on rollover is just distracting. Now, perhaps if something had to go on in the background it would be relevant (indicating that the work is still in progress) but that's a very edge case.

Re: Animated Vector Icons

#58

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 06, 2013, 1:32 PM UTC

uptown wrote: post #11

trebor wrote: post #9

This is the Geocities of vector art. I don't see this as a good thing, I see this as a poor compensation for bad interface design. If your icon needs animation for it to make sense to your visitor you're doing it wrong.

That seems like a generalization. Surely there are instances where animation is appropriate for an interface. What's so wrong with another tool to achieve that goal with the added benefit of being entirely scaleable?

[deleted]