New icons for Word plugin

[dstillman]

Red Z and larger versions of the function-specific icons

[mccaskey]

An Add Citation icon?

[mccaskey]

I may have been the first to propose using a red Z. On and off, I've messed around with trying and have not come close to anything I liked. -- But then, I'm no expert on icon creation.

I've since experimented with using the Zotero red instead of the letter Z. So far this has seemed more promising. See attached. A red dot could become the cue for a Zotero citation. Add Citation (as in the attached file) would be a red dot with a plus sign. Edit Citation would have a pencil and a red dot. A Bibliography would be red text. Select Style could be a red gear. And so on. Might be better than a row of icons all with a red Z in them.

What did you mean about getting larger versions? For Word we need 16x16, don't we?

In general on Zotero icons, I have called for things more legible to us over-40 people. This isn't a matter of the size of the icon, but of high-contrast and clarity.

We need an icon for editing a citation. The pencil has become a somewhat standard indicator for edit, but that is already in the Insert Bibliography icon. I suggest we get it out of the Insert Bibliography icon right now and not propagate that non-standard usage any further. The transition would be eased by having all new icons anyway. The transition might also be eased by the fact that we can't implement the Edit Citation yet. So a good plan could be to replace the current four with new ones, ones that don't use the pencil. Then reintroduce the pencil in an Edit Citation later.

-- John

[mccaskey]

Experimental icons for plugin

[mccaskey]

What about something like this for plugin icons?

The z inside a rectangle represents a Zotero citation, red text a Zotero bibliography.

From the left,

• Add citation
• Edit citation
• Add bibliography
• Edit bibliography
• Refresh
• Edit preferences (aka Select style)

We don't currently have Edit citation and Edit bibliography, but we'll need them soon.

The z suggests that the last two affect only citations, which is wrong. The bibliography cue should probably go in the background of these two.

Any thoughts?

[dstillman]

By larger icons I meant that, at least in Mac Word, the icons are actually as big as 20x20px. I don't have a Word/Win install to check at the moment, but I guess if memory serves that's not the case on Windows.

Doesn't really matter, but if it improves clarity we might separate the layers a bit on the Mac versions.

[mccaskey]

How about these? They are based on the famfamfam page icon, with red cues for things Zotero adds.

With Ian's idea that we don't really need separate icons for Add and Edit, we don't need plus signs and pencils, just one icon for citation and one for bibliography.

Which of the citation icons do you prefer?

If you like this direction, I can redo the ancillary icons as well.

[dstillman]

Sorry, I missed the message that the plus sign was no more. I don't think the page icon is necessary, so let's just go with what you had before minus the plus and pencil icons (though presumably the refresh icon can still use the famfamfam arrows).

(I don't need to be listed in the CC field, by the way--the Reporter and Assignee get notifications, and I get notification of all Trac changes anyway.)

[mccaskey]

Here are some without the famfamfam page icon. I didn't use the famfamfam arrows on the refresh, but could of course. I need to break now, but maybe later I'll play with that.
I didn't see a famfamfam question mark. Did I miss it? If it's there, I could use famfamfam images for the cog, refresh and hook and they'd be consistent.

I'm open to ideas. Any opinion on the repeated Z background for the cog, refresh and hook?

John

[dstillman]

Will need an edit icon for editing citations and bibliographies. Can probably use the same button for both (unless we want to be able to just click a button to edit a bibliography without scrolling down).

[dstillman]

Closing, since we're OK for now. May end up with a different set of icons eventually due to #799.