Apt-notifier test icons

[AVLinux]

Hi,

As much as I love the apt-notifier and the excellent job it does I'm not a fan of the systray icon choices so I've been experimenting with making some different ones and I'm having some trouble getting them to display in the systray like I'd expect.. As a test I resized the icons to 32x32px replaced the 'classic' set in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps and the icons appear as expected in the Preferences dialog:

shot-2022-07-05_23-16-42.jpg

However when I select the 'classic' set the systray shows the correct icons but the green checkmark (all updated) is simply grayscale, however the red arrow (updates available) is red as expected. I don't know if there is any interest from the developers of apt-notifier but I will attach the icons here at their 256x256px full size to this post in case they are of interest.. Note these are png icons, sadly I'm pretty handy with GIMP but not at all with Inkscape. I should also fess up I tested these new icons with Enlightenment BUT the original apt-notifier systray icons all work as you would expect so I don't think Enlightenment is the culprit as to the color issue, it seems to me to be a colorspace thing..

*EDIT - Tested and confirmed.. The non-color thing is a quirk in Enlightenment after all, These icons display as expected in XFCE4. Issue is solved but whether the icons are of interest still up for debate..

mnotify-none-classic.png

mnotify-some-classic.png

*Yellow instead of Red..

mnotify-some-classic-alt.png

[PatriceLab]

Maybe it's only me but I see the red down arrow as a warning >> "Do NOT download"

[AVLinux]

Maybe it's only me but I see the red down arrow as a warning >> "Do NOT download"

Yes, I suppose it could be interpreted that way, the colors were just to attract attention really and red in the systray is pretty noticeable. To my way of thinking a 'Do not' download icon would have a slash across the circle. The intention is to get your attention that there are updates available..

What about yellow instead, more of a 'warn' than 'stop' color?

mnotify-some-classic-alt.png

[Stuart_M]

I think using a red icon to indicate that an update is available is a mistake. Okay okay, I can't sugar-coat this - it's awful.

In my opinion, if the intent is to "attract attention" then I think the best method would be to use no icon ("hide until updates available") when there are no updates available. A close second/third option would be a transparent or black icon. mx-updater already offers those three options. Using a colored icon, any color, to represent when an update is available will then be very apparent and is already what mx-updater does (green representing "available" or "go" or "ready"). At least that is my opinion.

Addressing the problem of this thread, the green checkmark icon not being displayed in the Panel, I had no problem when testing as shown in the below images. This is how I tested:

I used a Live MX-21.1 Flash Drive with all the default settings when downloaded. The only thing I changed was putting the Panel in the lower horizontal position.

I took the two 256x256 red/green icons from Post #1 and reduced the size to 32x32px in GIMP (Image > Scale Image), saving both as a .png image.

In /usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/ I renamed the original classic icons to something else so I could replace them with the two 32x32 icons (mnotify-none-classic.png and mnotify-some-classic.png) that GIMP had reduced and put them into the 32x32 directory.

The two Panel mx-updater icons:

mx-updater_Panel_Icons_some_none.png

The mx-updater Preferences window just to show that it too displays the two new icons:

mx-updater_Preferences.png

The only thing I can think of to check is if the permissions for the green icon match the permissions (user, group, and other) of the working red icon.

[AVLinux]

I think using a red icon to indicate that an update is available is a mistake. Okay okay, I can't sugar-coat this - it's awful.

OK, yep... gotta start somewhere... hence Post #3

Thanks for testing and confirming they do work on a stock MX (which is the only viable target).. It's not a permissions thing otherwise the icons wouldn't display in the Preferences dialog... I tried changing the colorspace from RGB to indexed but no change and the indexing drops the quality severely.. more testing to do on my end..

[PatriceLab]

This is how I see icons for what you want to do with them (the grayed icon could be white or black for theme purpose)

Untitled.jpg

Why?
Green is like in real life green traffic light, when it's green you can go, you can cross, you can do... thus here with the green arrow down = you can download/update

When it's a red light it's a "NO!" don't cross, don't move, it's like a full "STOP" panel, it drag our attention to the max.
People are used to that >> https://www.google.com/search?q=stop+an ... =isch&sa=X , not the opposite
Also with red, If I don't want to update today, I'll got that red button on the panel for all the day, a week, a month...? distracting me from my work, red is way too catchy for this icon IMO.

The grayed icon or black or white when no update, are perfect as they seamlessly blend with the "usual" other icons

IMVHO the colors chosen by the MX Linux team are perfect and make sense without distracting the user from working.

[AVLinux]

Sound reasoning...

Red is out of the running anyway I think. To be clear my choices of red and green were influenced by the 'pulse' icons already being red and green (they are cut off in your screenshot).. It is really a matter of perspective... green for go does make sense, absolutely but from the other side yellow as in 'warning, the system is not up to date!' also has some logical merit.

[PatriceLab]

Yes, yellow is a better color than red, and not so much "catchy" and it has its meaning as a slight warning a kind of "Hey, you might want to take a look here"