Re: best gnome globe icon ever

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 11:02, Francis Whittle wrote:
> The point is it's always the part of the globe that includes *their* 
> part and maybe America (Actually I must congratulate free software 
> artists who live in America because I haven't yet seen any free 
> software art globes with just America in them but that's what normally 
> happens elsewhere).  I have no idea how Australians get that idea 
> because in contrast to the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean *is* that big.
> Getting to the point know, I think it's fair to say that we should try 
> harder to use something that includes the *whole* world instead of just 
> someone's favourite hemisphere.

The Industrial Globe actually uses a trick for this - I just took the
world map and pasted it on a globe, so it contains pretty much the
largest part of the world you can fit there without making it look
totally strange. I mean it still looks like spherical globe, but it
includes North and South America and Europe and Middle-East. Much more
than you could see in a real globe.

The problem is if you try to fit more it doesnt look real anymore.

>   The are various ways of acheiving this 
> - transparency is an arty one (although the light tricks that make it 
> appear as either side is on top aren't really usable in compliance with 
> HIG - or even in something that small), also those mappings that have 

Transparency can make the icon rather hard to see against different
backgrounds.

Of course there's always the possibility to do completely nonfamiliar
shape for the land and sea in the globe so it looks like a "globe" but
doesnt have any recognizable geographic areas. But it has the challenge
that it might not be recognized to represent "world".

I think the point is not trying to please all inhabitants of every
continent, but to make an image that is recognizable as "the world".
Sure, you could localize icons so that .fi locale shows Finland towards
you, but uh, I dont really think it is a real problem for the usability
of an application.

Tuomas


--
Tuomas Kuosmanen | tigert ximian com | www.ximian.com