Misleading icon style in Qube Manager

[GWeck]

Qubes OS release

Qubes OS 4.3

Brief summary

The icon used in the state column of the Qube Manager is nearly invisible for a newly started qube.

Steps to reproduce

1. In the Qube Manager, select any stopped VM.
2. Click on the start icon or the start menu entry.

Expected behavior

After the start of the VM, its new state should be visible in the Qubes Manager.like it was in previous versions of the Qube Manager.

Actual behavior

The icon is set, but it is now just a small green circle in the blue line showing the selected VM, which is nearly invisible. This may lead to the belief that the VM was not started after all. Only after moving the blue bar to another line, the "started" icon becomes clearly visible.

Additional information

Just a personal opinion: I liked the previously used icon style in the Qube Manager much more. The new style is to me rather ugly and less informative.

[jamke]

UX idea for making any icons more visible on selected (normally blue) line: add white border of 1-2 px width to icons.

[GWeck]

This probably must be done within the Qube Manager. Setting the tray icon style changes, as the command suggests, some tray icons, but has no effect on the icons in the Qube Manager.

A better solution would be, in my opinion, just to return to the old icon style, which was quite good.

[marmarek]

@marmarta

[alimirjamali]

Just a personal opinion: I liked the previously used icon style in the Qube Manager much more. The new style is to me rather ugly and less informative.

I would like to emphasize some points:

1. There is another improvements to new Qube Manager icons which was merged 15 hours ago here. It is not yet released to main branch and r4.3 testing repository. It would improve some of the issues.
2. The previous set of Crystal icons by Everaldo Coelho have been used for around 15 years. It is understandable that many of us are highly used to them and it might be hard to quickly adapt with drastic changes.
3. Some of the recent changes could be the result of the recent Qubes OS Usability Audit by Ura Design. The audit report might explain the background for some of the changes.

[GWeck]

While the audit report explains the change applied to the icons - something which clearly could be discussed, as it may be based on personal preferences - this is a separate issue from the status icons in the Qube Manager. Coming from a Windows environment, I have grown very skeptical about "new", "modern" styles used in a UX, as they generally tend to reduce ergonomy. By the way, what about @ninavizz? I would appreciate her opinion about that.

[marmarta]

Good point on improving the icon readability on selecting a row.

Why this change to icons?

1. old icons were terrible to read for daltonists
2. old icons were pretty confusing for new users
3. old icons were inconsistent all over

I am aware that when people are used to things, some dislike all changes, but those changes do have a point, and while I'm very much open and interested in improving things, I don't want to return to the hodge-podge icon set that we used to have (it wasn't even all Crystal icons, it was some Crystal icons, some random default DE icons, some icons whose provenience I wasn't able to find..).

[GWeck]

I see your arguments, especially the first one. (I had a friend who was a daltonist and had to sort resistors according to their color markings - it was a horror!)

The new icon style lacks colors completely (with the exception of the New qube icon!), and so cannot transport some additional information which might be helpful but not vital. For example, the icon for "Delete qube" might be shown in read, Global Config and the Backup icons in blue to distinguish them from operations only affecting single qubes. As this could be helpful for some users and irritating for others, I wonder if it might be possible to use different layouts, depending on the window style selected in XFCE???

Apart from that, for me, the icons for "Edit firewall" and "App shortcuts" are rather unimaginative - I associate thing with these patterns.

[GWeck]

In order to avoid the discussion about which icon style is better or more appropriate: Would it be difficult to let the user select which artwork should be used in the Qube Manager and in the taskbar? If I am not wrong, this would mean selecting which version of qubes-artwork should be used - old, new, or something customized. Maybe this could be coupled with the general UI appearance, thus improving the handling of dark mode or such. What do you think about it?

[alimirjamali]

If I am not wrong, this would mean selecting which version of qubes-artwork should be used - old, new, or something customized.

Regretfully it is not that easy. Please let me explain. At some point, the technology behind Qubes OS GUI tools diverged.

1. PyQt based GUI Tools: Qube Manager, VM Settings, VM Clone, VM Boot From Device, Backup, Restore, Log Viewer, Template Manager, Template GUI. Most of their icons are here.
2. PyGTK based GUI Tools: Qubes Update, Global Config, New Qube, Policy Editor, Domains/Devices/Clipboard/Disk-Space/Updates systray widgets. As well as the Appmenu. Most of their icons are here.
3. qubes-artwork is kinda shared between everything. But it mostly contains only Qube (Qute Sushi) Icons.

Group 2 uses icons directly. So theoretically delivering alternative svg or png icons via official/community packages for them should be easily doable (in theory).

Group 1 load the icons in a complex way. Mostly as a resource file which is generated at the time of building. For group 1, the code should go through some change to allow user configurable themes.

[GWeck]

What a pity!