Bad close icon

There is definitely something wrong with way this is looking at the small size that occurs in the tab-close location. I have attached a screenshot.

(In my opinion, it also looks bad on the regular "Close" button that occurs in gtk dialogs, but that's just an opinion.)

In fact the icon is not optimal for this situations, since when some close tabs have too little space, it gets cropped and stops looking good.

I supposed the artwork team is trying to use a close icon similar to the one in Firefox. But we still have to come up with a solution for the sizing problem.

Mannheim, thanks for posting a screenshot, and I share your opinion on the regular "Close" button.

Another example is in gaim's tabs, here is a screenshot of what I mean
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/7139/display2kf.png

In epiphany, there is a similiar, but different problem - notice how the 'X' jumps around from tab to tab.

This is a really old problem. The old GNOME "cross" was cropped for sure in my GAIM windows.

Perhaps this should be a scalable icon? (The "right" answer, of course, would be for app developers to actually give this icon the space it needs in GTK ui's...)

GonzO, I noticed the X has always been a little bit to small on the tabs of some applications. But with this one it is really obvious and ugly.

It doesn't scale too well with gnome-terminal either when there's multiple tabs open.

note that there is an upstream gedit bug for the icon cropping (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318461), however the workarounds in that bug are not applied upstream because they either break other themes or make the tabs too big.

Even if the cropping issue gets resolved I find unfortunate and annoying having an "orange dot" on every tab of gedit, epiphany, gnome-terminal and so on.

It is true that (in gedit as well), the cropping of the "close" icon on the tabs is not a new problem. (I just looked at the old gnome cross in gedit: it is indeed cropped the same way.)

But the new icon really exposes this old bug in a bad way. With the old cross, you need picky eyes to care about it. With the new close icon, it jumps out at you.

This change was made after RC 1, and seems like a negative step as far as the fit and polish of dapper is concerned.

Maybe it is now the time to fix this cropping and maybe forward this to the GNOME dev team and tell them to fix this so other distributions will not have this problem (As if they don't know already, LOL).

As I explained above (and in the upstream bug I pointed out) it's not a "simply fix the cropping issue" bug. Fixing the crop with clearlooks (and ubuntulooks) breaks other themes or makes the tabs just to big to be bearable. The other solution is to use a custom close icon icon instead of STOCK_CLOSE, but this is not a viable solution at the moment (too much code change) and would make gedit/epiphany/gnome-terminal/gaim etc inconsistent unless all agree on it.

Last but not least as I said above, even if the specific cropping issue is fixed, a big orange square is not well suited to have on each tab.

I do think this new close icon on close buttons in various dialog boxes is indeed nice and polished. But this icon has to be some how worked into the current dimensions of the button. The new Firefox beta, Bon Echo has a close icon on thier tabs similar to this new close icon. Maybe that is an idea?

It's definately ugly, awkward, and doesn't fit in the UIs, IMHO. No offense to the designers.
Here's a thread (with screenshots) I made about it on the forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=183261

Confirming and assigning to the artwork team.

>Confirming and assigning to the artwork team.

This means that a fix will be on the way soon?

I suspect someone will attempt to kill it.

I have tried to bring it to attention of the
folks who are in a position to change it.

It is apparently an issue with GTK related items,
so filing a bug there might help.

On Sun, 2006-28-05 at 05:18 +0000, theLastGnu wrote:
> >Confirming and assigning to the artwork team.
>
> This means that a fix will be on the way soon?
>

Paolo Borelli, not using the default stock items is not a good idea, that way things will get really messy in Gnome.

I hope it changes to something sane before the release of Dapper. There will be enough time before the release of Edgy to look into the sourcecode and fix the "cropping of the close button" issue.

same problem here

I wish it would be reverted back to way it was for Dapper,
then customize it with Edgy.

There is nothing unusual going on here. The reason you do not see this with other icon themes is because they do not make the gtk-close icon a button. I have no real preference on whether or not it is a button. The problem can usually be fixed adjusting the x and y thickness in the gtk theme, but as stated, not in 'looks'.

1. put 2 pixels of transparency between the icon and the icon border
2. go back to an X

Maybe a orange X would be best, with no background. This means that the X bit might be smaller in some tabs, but would look better than this one.

In the comment from the connected gnome bug report a fix is suggested:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318461#c11

Can't this be done in Human?

Why a 2005 bug's still around? :(

I don't know about in the engine but not in the theme. Also, disregard my first solution above about 2 pixels. Looks like solution #2 is the quickest fix to make dapper.

Would it help if we provided smaller sizes for this particular icon? For example, 12x12 and 8x8? What sizes do gnome-terminal and gaim try and use for their tabs? For edgy I think we should standardise on putting the close-tab [x] on the right of all the tabs, as FF does in 1.5, across all tab-enabled applications.

That would require patching a bunch of apps. Plus, Firefox 2.0 will have close buttons per tab (to be more like every other tabbed interface, and less oops-prone), so we'd be going backwards.

Op 29-mei-2006, om 15:40 heeft Jeff Waugh het volgende geschreven:

> That would require patching a bunch of apps. Plus, Firefox 2.0 will
> have
> close buttons per tab (to be more like every other tabbed
> interface, and
> less oops-prone), so we'd be going backwards.
>
> --
> Bad close icon
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/46801
>
>

This is unrelated, but I don't see how it is less oops-prone. Having
close buttons on every tab only increases the potential errors. You
could close a tab that you don't want to close by accidentally
clicking its close button instead of clicking the tab itself (to give
it focus) this way.

Michiel

I think we should roll that change back for dapper, it will require to patch some apps to look good. Note also than the stock close button (used by the theme manager by example) really looks weird with an orange square like that

Yeah, assigning this to the art team will take a few days. Rolling it back will allow for a faster short-term solution.

If it is possible what Mark Shuttleworth says, that would for now be the best solution.
Make suitable 8x8 or 12x12 variants of the close icon. Although I am not sure these will be used automatically on the tabs.
I agree with Jeff Waugh that effort has to be made to get this tab close button issue fixed and standardized.
Now is not the best time to discuss wether to use close buttons per tab or just a single one. We should be focusing on how to fix this issue before the upcoming release this Thursday. Discussions about what would be the best for usable need to bee posponed untill after the release of Dapper.
I think.

Jeff Waugh wrote:
> That would require patching a bunch of apps. Plus, Firefox 2.0 will have
> close buttons per tab (to be more like every other tabbed interface, and
> less oops-prone), so we'd be going backwards.
>
This destroys muscle memory because you have to move the mouse to a
different location to close a tab. All good tab systems allow you to
middle click on a tab to close it directly. Take it from me, we will
standardise for all tab apps on one common behaviour, and my starting
point will be having the [x] close tab icon to the right on the tab bar,
as FF does it in 1.5. If we are consistent for ALL tabbed apps in
Ubuntu/Kubuntu then we will be well ahead of everybody else.

For this release I did try to get them all onto the same shortcuts for
new tab, close tab, tab left, tab right, and move-tab-left and
move-tab-right. Kubuntu was pretty close to successful, but I don't
think seb got Ubuntu done.

Mark

Ok, I'll try to be as clear as I can at the cost of repeating myself.

Providing smaller icons will not fix the bug without patching the apps.

The workaround used by some apps to avoid the cropping it's a hack that involves overriding the default padding around the icon done by the theme. This fixes the cropping, but breaks other themes and that's why it wasn't integrated upstream in other programs.

Moving to have a single close button out of the tabs (ala firefox) is out of the scope of this bug and definately can not be considered in the current timeframe.
Given the above it's a fact that apps will keep the close button on the tabs right now, so the solution for this bug should take into account that even with the cropping issue solved a colorful orange button on every tab is very distracting and annoying.

I really think that the solution right now should be going back to the old icon or design a new one similar to the old one with sober color.

I've just tried the updated package from Daniel with the new variants for that icon, it looks better for epiphany but it's still an issue for:
- gaim
- gedit
- libnotify
and every app using a stock close button (theme manager, synaptic, ....) which have an orange square to a button which looks really weird

Mark, about the shortcut to change tabs it's not doable without breaking other feature as replied before, that's why it has not be done by upstream nor for dapper. We could force the change, but I'm not sure users and upstream are going to like having GTK inconsistant between the different distributions and between the different versions of Ubuntu. Anyway that's not the topic of that bug ...

Although it continues not being the topic of this bug, I want to comment on the per-tab/single close button.
Isn't a thing as close button functionality on tabs something that needs to be put in GTK?
I think delivering a tab widget with either close buttons per tab, or just a single one (make it a setting of the widget perhaps, or a user settable option for all tabwidgets, just like text or no text beneath toolbar icons) is something to be done by the toolkit, not the application itself.
Reverting back to the old one is the best option for now I think.

gnome-terminal seems to be alright, as for the other 2...

Gaim is an ugly app... the icons are incoherent, some are from the default theme, some don't belong to the action (cancel while connecting, for example)... IMHO and off-topic, gaim feels like when you are working on a recent gnome desktop and open an old gtk1 app, that what's this ugly thing?! :P

Oh well, we'll have to wait for a stable 2.0 and for it to reach tha backports... :\

Sorry for the off topic rant.

My bad, I've only just noticed that the dialog's cancel is an undo arrow (so gaim is right)... Well, in evolution cancel is a white cross on a circle... And the delete is still a forbidden sign. Is this the final artwork?

Must be as it is now T-5.25 hours.

the close button seems nice and easy to spot with the new orange X.

it has to match orange human and to be easy to differentiate for an less important button.

I think this problem is now solved for GEdit and other applications.

Yes except for the fact that it is still ugly ;).
This bug can be closed I think.