v22rc4 tool button icons

[joecar]

I'm using the extra small, default low color tool button icons...

I like those buttons better in v22b3 than in v22rc4, they have now become harder to see;

how can I go back to the buttons in v22b3...?

this url shows buttons in v22b3, see how they are small but clear (easy to see detail):
https://community.slickedit.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15683.0;attach=8950;image


compare to these buttons in v22rc4 (hard to see detail):
https://community.slickedit.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15683.0;attach=8954;image


in particular, look at the Goto-Definition, Goto-Declaration and Pop-Last-Bookmark buttons over on the middle left.

[joecar]

see attached pic for comparison...

[joecar]

This is pretty bad, you won't believe how much this is slowing me down (I can hardly make out the buttons).


( I can't make the icons bigger because then the toolbars get bigger than the screen... I need to see all the buttons at once )

[Dennis]

Interesting.  Those icons did not change between rc3 and rc4.  In fact, they haven't changed significantly since rc1 when we switched from bitmap ICO's to scalable vector graphics.

What it looks like to me is the icons were reloaded as part of a switch to the dark theme, but then somehow, not reloaded again when you went back to the System theme.  We adjust the image darkness for the themes.

Try this:  go to Tools > Options > Appearance > Tool Window and Toolbar Options..., and change the style to "Monochrome", hit Apply, then change it back to "Default (Low Color)" and hit OK.  This will force all the toolbar buttons to be reloaded.  They should look exactly the same as they looked in RC3.

If my theory is correct, then the question is how the Dark theme options and the toolbar button loading got out of sync.  We reload the buttons when you switch themes in the GUI.  Would have to try to track down how your editor got into this state.

If this does not improve the appearance of your toolbar buttons, I can look into tweaking the image processing to darken the default buttons a bit more for light backgrounds.

[joecar]

Interesting.  Those icons did not change between rc3 and rc4.  In fact, they haven't changed significantly since rc1 when we switched from bitmap ICO's to scalable vector graphics.

I went from b3 to rc4 when I noticed this.

...
Try this:  go to Tools > Options > Appearance > Tool Window and Toolbar Options..., and change the style to "Monochrome", hit Apply, then change it back to "Default (Low Color)" and hit OK.
...

I did this, and they look the same as rc4 (the ones that are hard to see).



I looked in the b3 bitmaps directory, the icons are .ico files; in the rc4 bitmaps directory they are .svg files.

If you look carefully at the b3 icons, you will see that they are different than the rc4 icons.

[Dennis]

Sorry, misread that B3 vs RC3 detail.

I will put in the tweak I described and compare the results to B3.

Unfortunately, at the "Extra Small" size a small amount of detail is lost going from ICO to SVG images.

Fortunately, when we made the switch to SVG, it made it possible to add a toolbar icon size (Small, aka 20x20), so you may want to experiment with that.

[joecar]

I can understand some detail being lost, but the icons are different, look closely:

[jporkkahtc]

Looks like what Slick is doing now for Icons, is they are all "*.svg" format and rendered to the desired size on the fly.
There is only a single SVG icon for each button, and it is rendered to match the setting - for size and colors.

So the challenge is in creating these drawings which render all these variations nicely.

Dennis, is that right?

[Dennis]

@jp:  That is correct.  The SVG icons are also much more compact and easier to create than ICO's with multiple bitmaps.  We managed to shrink the size of the installers (and installations) significantly by switching to .SVG.

@joecar:  The main change was that I switched from the generic empty rectangle to represent a symbol to a filled blue rectangle.  This was to be consistent with prior releases and the color icons where symbols are represented by a blue rectangle.  My opinion is that it looks better than before, but I do note your issue with it being harder to distinguish between the icons at the lowest resolution.  Have you tried 20x20 (Small)?

[joecar]

Yes, I've tried Small, but this causes the toolbars to be bigger than the display, so now you can't see all the buttons in one go.