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Say hello to Octicons

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Re: Say hello to Octicons

#61

Post by cemregr »

kijin wrote: post #30
huhtenberg wrote: post #7

Good idea, but, sorry, don't like 'em. Neither the execution nor the conceptualization. The execution is too detailed. Details, regardless of how pixel-perfect they are, do blur upon quick glance, and the more details there are, the more it looks like a gray blob. The execution is also inconsistent - why the book is 3D, but the rest is flat? Except for the coffee mug that is neither. The conceptualization is off too.…

Completely agreed. The icons are not only excessively detailed for their small size, but also sit rather awkwardly in relation to the rounded-rectangle container. The top right corner of every Github page now looks like the notification area of an old Linux desktop with an amateur-designed theme. Every minor redesign Github has released over the last couple of years increasingly reek of "designed by programmers". But…

Can you tell me what other redesigns Github has done feel undesigned? I personally think Github has a pretty great design team.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#62

Post by notJim »

agwa wrote: post #32
agwa wrote: post #11

I have Firefox configured to force the same font face across all sites (I love the consistency this gives me, and also some some sites are extremely abusive in their font selection) so this doesn't work for me. The "icons" show up as unknown Unicode characters. Not cool. This seems like the wrong approach - shouldn't characters have semantic meaning? It also doesn't seem accessible. Screen readers wouldn't know what…

I've given it some thought and GitHub should be able to make this more accessible by doing something like this: Notifications Using media queries, serve CSS like this only to screen-like media (i.e. not screen readers): .mini-icon.create:before { content: "\f030"; } .mini-icon span { display: none; } Hopefully they'll adopt something like this, though it wouldn't help people like me who just want a consistent font ac…

I think screen readers actually respect display:none. I believe the preferred solution is to use a large, negative text-indent.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#63

Post by bane »

This speaks to an overall bigger problem with browsers, the need for a universal vector graphics format. The fact that designers are resorting to fonts to try and get resizable art assets is not a good thing IMHO.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#64

Post by agwa »

notJim wrote: post #62
agwa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've given it some thought and GitHub should be able to make this more accessible by doing something like this: Notifications Using media queries, serve CSS like this only to screen-like media (i.e. not screen readers): .mini-icon.create:before { content: "\f030"; } .mini-icon span { display: none; } Hopefully they'll adopt something like this, though it wouldn't help people like me who just want a consistent font ac…

I think screen readers actually respect display:none. I believe the preferred solution is to use a large, negative text-indent.

That's why you use media queries to set display: none only for non-screen readers.

Of course, screen readers might not respect that, in which your solution would work.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#65

Post by reledi »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #51

What GitHub needs is a 'like' button, not new icons (so we don't have to `watch` projects we find interesting and want to somehow remember just in case - which results in thousands of commits and pushes (every hour) in our news feed we absolutely don't care about).

Agreed. The signal to noise ratio in my newsfeed is very low because of it. There exists some workarounds (e.g. https://www.codeshelver.com) but I'd like to see GitHub fix the problem.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#66

Post by kijin »

cemregr wrote: post #61
kijin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. The icons are not only excessively detailed for their small size, but also sit rather awkwardly in relation to the rounded-rectangle container. The top right corner of every Github page now looks like the notification area of an old Linux desktop with an amateur-designed theme. Every minor redesign Github has released over the last couple of years increasingly reek of "designed by programmers". But…

Can you tell me what other redesigns Github has done feel undesigned? I personally think Github has a pretty great design team.

Just off the top of my head, stacking row upon row of toolbars and metadata on top of every repository, so the first real file is actually 500px down the page. Also, excessive use of icons where text labels would be much clearer, as other commenters have said.

There were several posts on HN over the last couple of years where people complained about these and other issues.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#67

Post by pooriaazimi »

reledi wrote: post #65
pooriaazimi wrote: post #51

What GitHub needs is a 'like' button, not new icons (so we don't have to `watch` projects we find interesting and want to somehow remember just in case - which results in thousands of commits and pushes (every hour) in our news feed we absolutely don't care about).

Agreed. The signal to noise ratio in my newsfeed is very low because of it. There exists some workarounds (e.g. https://www.codeshelver.com ) but I'd like to see GitHub fix the problem.

I didn't know about CodeShelver! Thank you.

I'll give it a try in a few days, but just a question: what happens if www.codeshelver.com dies tomorrow (assuming they save shelved repos on their server) or their Safari extension be buggy and it removes/corrupts all my precious repos (assuming it's the extension that saves the repos)? Will I lose everything?

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#69

Post by kijin »

amirmc wrote: post #52
kijin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. The icons are not only excessively detailed for their small size, but also sit rather awkwardly in relation to the rounded-rectangle container. The top right corner of every Github page now looks like the notification area of an old Linux desktop with an amateur-designed theme. Every minor redesign Github has released over the last couple of years increasingly reek of "designed by programmers". But…

The redundancy is a little irritating. I could tell what buttons did simply from the text (and they were useful) e.g 'unwatch', 'your fork' etc. Now there's more space taken up with the text and the icon. The icons don't seem to provide additional info in any way. Perhaps that's because Github would like to switch from text to icons eventually (with text+icons in the interim)? I hope not, as it would mean way too man…

> Perhaps that's because Github would like to switch from text to icons eventually?

Like Gmail's new icon-only interface? I hope not! It's difficult enough for people to figure out what Gmail's icons represent.

Re: Say hello to Octicons

#70

Post by fusiongyro »

brcrth wrote: post #15
agwa wrote: post #11

I have Firefox configured to force the same font face across all sites (I love the consistency this gives me, and also some some sites are extremely abusive in their font selection) so this doesn't work for me. The "icons" show up as unknown Unicode characters. Not cool. This seems like the wrong approach - shouldn't characters have semantic meaning? It also doesn't seem accessible. Screen readers wouldn't know what…

So you force a behavior through your browser but when it doesn't work you blame the site? Ok...

Fonts are not behavior. When the web was made of pages and style was secondary to content, this wasn't a problem.
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