Grey icons

[+Geo-Ewoud]

Did geocaching.com have an appereance update? Most of the icons on the site are now grey.

 

[+clarinetqueen]

Ugh! I don't like them!

[Moun10Bike]

Yes, the icons have been updated. Since this is not a bug report, I'm moving this thread to the General Topics forum.

[+Shaved Ewok]

Did geocaching.com have an appereance update? Most of the icons on the site are now grey.

 

 

They also removed the icon to click on to view the image gallery. To see the images posted on the cache page you now have to click on a link at the top of the logs. I'm curious if this is the cause or fix of the image problem we were having earlier today.

[+Geo-Ewoud]

To bad, don't like the new icons.. i miss the color

[+Slini11]

Its hard to differentiate between "DNF & Write Note"-Icons during I scroll down the page.

I miss the colour, too .

[+sTeamTraen]

I'm settling in with a big bag of popcorn here. I'm on the lookout for the first "won't renew my Premium Membership unless we get the old icons back" (presumably the Facebook page to demand that is being created as I write this).

 

From what I've heard, the new icons were developed by Groundspeak to actually reflect what geocaching means, after many years of using "the nearest we can find to X" from a stock catalogue. If that's correct, I think it's a great idea.

[+ecanderson]

Let's call it a bug report after all, Moun10Bike. It appears we are not receiving the icons for the Found and DNF, Disable Listing, or any of the others now. It is therefore all coming out as text instead. Check the logs on any cache page. I've done the CTRL-F5 to force a cache refresh, and these icons are not appearing.

Edited December 11, 2012 by ecanderson

[+Roman!]

To bad, don't like the new icons.. i miss the color

 

It's the end of geocaching as we know it.

[+Shaved Ewok]

Additionally, it seems they have also removed all traces of challenges. Pity, I had hoped they would at least leave our completion stats, rather than pretend the entire thing had never happened.

[cezanne]

From what I've heard, the new icons were developed by Groundspeak to actually reflect what geocaching means, after many years of using "the nearest we can find to X" from a stock catalogue. If that's correct, I think it's a great idea.

 

I do not understand what you talk about.

 

In any case I wonder whether the resources GS wants to save by stopping the challenge project, go into such "important" work than changing the icons something no caacher has requested for.

 

The new icon for PM-only cache rather looks like an icon for a GC.

 

Cezanne

Edited December 11, 2012 by cezanne

[Moun10Bike]

Let's call it a bug report after all, Moun10Bike. It appears we are not receiving the icons for the Found and DNF, Disable Listing, or any of the others now. It is therefore all coming out as text instead. Check the logs on any cache page. I've done the CTRL-F5 to force a cache refresh, and these icons are not appearing.

 

I'm not seeing that; the server you are on may still be updating:

 

 

[+puczmeloun]

Let's call it a bug report after all, Moun10Bike. It appears we are not receiving the icons for the Found and DNF, Disable Listing, or any of the others now. It is therefore all coming out as text instead. Check the logs on any cache page. I've done the CTRL-F5 to force a cache refresh, and these icons are not appearing.

 

Are you using Greasemonkey skripts? I've same problem and after I had disabled Greasemonkey, icons worked perfectly... My problem is with "GC little helper"...

[+motty.rt]

Under every comment I see "Report" button, but is there any option to report GS as wrong? Because it the the top think that needs to be repaired. GS laughs in our faces.

Edited December 11, 2012 by motty.rt

[+Academy61]

I guess color pixels are expensive these days.

 

Let's put this into the "make better mistakes tomorrow" category.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Academy61

[Moun10Bike]

Up until this point, Geocaching.com has been using mostly generic icons provided in third-party icon libraries. With this update we are now using icons that have been developed in-house by our design team, with imagery that was developed with geocaching in mind and that better matches the actual purpose behind the associated function. For example, rather than using an orange traffic cone for "Archive listing," we now use a red file cabinet. That old traffic cone was also used for about 3 other functions as well (including unarchive), and now each of those functions uses its own unique icon.

 

In addition, the coloring of the icons now follows a theme rather being all over the board. General actions are gray, while "positive" actions are green and "negative" actions are red. Blue is used for informative elements, such as ratings, notes from reviewers, directional arrows, et al.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Moun10Bike
Additional clarification

[+chillypenguin]

Come on lets have a little bit of colour back.

[+Mr. 0]

I like the new icons. They seem to fit better and look "cleaner" to me.

[+sTeamTraen]

I like the grey. Too much colour on the page prevents the important coloured things from showing up. But for those who don't, I'm sure that a Greasemonkey script to replace all the icons with the old ones will be out within a day or so, probably hosted on a passive-aggressive download page.

[+Don_J]

Yes, the icons have been updated. Since this is not a bug report, I'm moving this thread to the General Topics forum.

 

Boy, you guys just want to suck the life out of everything lately. These icons are ugly. The world is full of color, and so should our icons.

 

Also, we were told that we were not getting official Release Notes posts because nothing major was happening. Changing icons and removing an important link are not major?

 

This is major. All of the pages look like garbage because of the grey icons. Hopefully, by the time I get home, someone will have a Greasmonky or Stylish script out that will reverse this nonsense.

[+Roman!]

Up until this point, Geocaching.com has been using mostly generic icons provided in third-party icon libraries. With this update we are now using icons that have been developed in-house by our design team, with imagery that was developed with geocaching in mind and that better matches the actual purpose behind the associated function. For example, rather than using an orange traffic cone for "Archive listing" and about 3 other functions (including unarchive), we now use a file cabinet and use other unique images for the other functions.

 

In addition, the coloring of the icons now follows a theme rather being all over the board. General actions are gray, while "positive" actions are green and "negative" actions are red.

 

What's blue for?

Edited December 11, 2012 by Roman!

[+Don_J]

I'm settling in with a big bag of popcorn here. I'm on the lookout for the first "won't renew my Premium Membership unless we get the old icons back" (presumably the Facebook page to demand that is being created as I write this).

 

From what I've heard, the new icons were developed by Groundspeak to actually reflect what geocaching means, after many years of using "the nearest we can find to X" from a stock catalogue. If that's correct, I think it's a great idea.

 

So, Geocaching is a bland, colorless hobby?

[+Don_J]

I guess color pixels are expensive these days.

 

Let's put this into the "make better mistakes tomorrow" category.

 

But, they didn't even accomplish that. They made a worse mistake.

[+Academy61]

Does anyone know why the stars are different colors in the D/T ratings?

 

Never mind. Hitting CTRL F5 changed them all to blue.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Academy61

[cezanne]

I like the grey. Too much colour on the page prevents the important coloured things from showing up. But for those who don't, I'm sure that a Greasemonkey script to replace all the icons with the old ones will be out within a day or so, probably hosted on a passive-aggressive download page.

 

I do not want to be forced to rely on Greasemonkey just in order to be able to distinguish quickly between GC coins, PM only caches and TBs. For people with a bad vision, it all looks pretty similar.

 

I do not mind that much whether the DNF smiley is blue or grey, but some of the new icons on the search result pages are really annoying.

 

Cezanne

[Moun10Bike]

 

What's blue for?

 

Blue is for informative elements (ratings, directional symbols, etc.).

[+Gustav129]

Yuk. I already miss blue for the DNF's. Will my DNF pin and coin go up in value?

[+Slini11]

Why is the "found it"-Icon () still in yellow but the DNF () in grey?

Blue(or another colour expcet from grey) is a better colour for it so you can differentiate between DNF and Write Note....

Edited December 11, 2012 by Slini11

[+Viajero Perdido]

The image icon needs to be multicolored like it used to be. People shoot COLOR pictures nowadays. Black and white is dead.

 

When I see a stack of grey "image" icons, it's like advertising you'll see pictures of an overcast day.

[+Gushoneybun]

What's blue for?

 

Blue is for informative elements (ratings, directional symbols, etc.).

 

Normally there is a posting detailing changes, which would have covered this, any idea where it is posted nowadays?

[+_SoP_]

Ugly new icons. Very unintuitive. At work I have to deal with SW development and SW ergonomics, and what happended here at gc.com is a big mistake, close to the introduction of challenges... A big No GO!

[+Don_J]

Up until this point, Geocaching.com has been using mostly generic icons provided in third-party icon libraries. With this update we are now using icons that have been developed in-house by our design team, with imagery that was developed with geocaching in mind and that better matches the actual purpose behind the associated function. For example, rather than using an orange traffic cone for "Archive listing" and about 3 other functions (including unarchive), we now use a file cabinet and use other unique images for the other functions.

 

In addition, the coloring of the icons now follows a theme rather being all over the board. General actions are gray, while "positive" actions are green and "negative" actions are red.

 

That right there means that they are not going away. How about giving us a choice? Seriously, my 51 year old eyes need the colors to distinguish what is on the icon.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

What's blue for?

 

Blue is for informative elements (ratings, directional symbols, etc.).

 

Normally there is a posting detailing changes, which would have covered this, any idea where it is posted nowadays?

 

I think I know that answer to that and it's not one I usually associate with good customer service.

 

Was this icon change a feature that one of groundspeaks users suggested in the Feature Suggestions forum, or something the GS decided just to implement without any user input, and without any explanation of what it's intending to accomplish?

 

It seems to me that there are a lots of suggestions that Groundspeak users *have* made, some that even have had a response that GS will work on them, yet, for some reason we never seem to see any of these suggestions implemented.

[+NeverSummer]

I'm wondering where a full list and description for each new icon is located. I can't tell anymore--after having trained my eyes to the old icons--what each means at a glance.

 

Can this get announced in the annoucements forum? How about a new page to the FAQ with the list and descriptions, please?

 

Confused why the change suddenly occurred, and I had no warning about it in any form. Not the best way to go about it, Groundspeak folks.

[cezanne]

Blue is for informative elements (ratings, directional symbols, etc.).

 

The usage of green and blue arrows for retrieval and drop operations of trackables somehow does not fit into your explanation of green and blue.

 

The TB icon is so small that I cannot recognize the bug - so it is just a grey dots cluster as the new PM only icon and others.

 

How old are the designers of these icons?

 

Cezanne

Edited December 11, 2012 by cezanne

[+mobywv]

Pointless change. I do like the wrench, though.

[+Gustav129]

Is this the "Better Mistake Tomorrow"?

[+thebruce0]

So... green=good, red = bad...

 

Some most common partnered logs:

 

Maint needed/done: vs

Enable/Disable: vs

Find/DNF: vs (???)

Publish/Archive and...? vs vs (???)

Unarchive and...? vs http://www.geocachin...logtypes/25.png

 

(the blue icon is reviewer note)

 

Thoughts:

1) DNF should not be grey.

2) Archive filing cabinet is out of place. With green up and the check marks being a theme, I'd have expected the red downarrow, or solid red X for the opposite, or even the red file folder for archive, which goes well with the green file folder for unarchive.

3) The rest of the grey icons... I guess we'll have to get used to them. Original icons or not, the previous icons set a precedent and we got used to them; making them grey takes away half the recognizability. Takes more more mental effort to recognize a shape than a colour. If they were always grey, we'd be attune to not focus on colour as much, attributing the grey icons to less important; however we've grown accustomed to picking out specific items by their shape and colour. So our brains now have to re-adjust.

 

But mainly, #1 and #2 are my main critiques...

 

(also, 10 images max? tsk )

[+clarinetqueen]

 

1) DNF should not be grey.

 

 

Agreed. I like the wrenches, and the other stuff I can probably get used to. I just really HATE the gray DNF for some reason.

[+NeverSummer]

<(Boooooooooo.)

 

Announce it properly next time. Any changes to the game should be beta tested and reviewed with a sample group. That's how games and improvements work. Not so sure this happened outside of the echo chamber in the office.

 

That is all.

[+puczmeloun]

1) DNF should not be grey.

2) Archive filing cabinet is out of place. With green up and the check marks being a theme, I'd have expected the red downarrow, or solid red X for the opposite, or even the red file folder for archive, which goes well with the green file folder for unarchive.

Exactly that's the point ;-)

[+Geo-Ewoud]

1) DNF should not be grey.

3) The rest of the grey icons... I guess we'll have to get used to them. Original icons or not, the previous icons set a precedent and we got used to them; making them grey takes away half the recognizability. Takes more more mental effort to recognize a shape than a colour. If they were always grey, we'd be attune to not focus on colour as much, attributing the grey icons to less important; however we've grown accustomed to picking out specific items by their shape and colour. So our brains now have to re-adjust.

 

Agree with point 1 and 3. It's the recognizability of the grey icons.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Geo-Ewoud

[+Teuto-Yachter]

I'm settling in with a big bag of popcorn here. (...)

 

Exactly my senitment; I've been waiting for an hour now for the first comment to be posted. ;-)

 

Myself, I'm not sure if I really like the new icons, but I guess I'll get used to them. Since geocaching is not about looking at the icons (for me at least), this is a minor point for me.

 

Kind rgards

T.-Y.

[+niraD]

IMHO, a blue DNF icon would fit the idea that blue means "informative elements".

 

The Needs Maintenance and Owner Maintenance icons look like they'd be confusing to someone with red-green colorblindness.

[+irisisleuk]

Today they took my challenges, they took my nice blue DNF faces, I think the end of the world is really getting closer...

I would like to add an emoticon to this sentence, but there aren't any appropriate grey ones available.

[+Gustav129]

Today they took my challenges, they took my nice blue DNF faces, I think the end of the world is really getting closer...

I would like to add an emoticon to this sentence, but there aren't any appropriate grey ones available.

 

Ten more days.....

Edited December 11, 2012 by gustav129

[+RIclimber]

Up until this point, Geocaching.com has been using mostly generic icons provided in third-party icon libraries. With this update we are now using icons that have been developed in-house by our design team, with imagery that was developed with geocaching in mind and that better matches the actual purpose behind the associated function. For example, rather than using an orange traffic cone for "Archive listing," we now use a red file cabinet. That old traffic cone was also used for about 3 other functions as well (including unarchive), and now each of those functions uses its own unique icon.

 

In addition, the coloring of the icons now follows a theme rather being all over the board. General actions are gray, while "positive" actions are green and "negative" actions are red. Blue is used for informative elements, such as ratings, notes from reviewers, directional arrows, et al.

 

So make the DNF red then. The Write Note looks like a broken image. Yet another thing I'll need to customize with the lubricated primate.

[nonaeroterraqueous]

I think the DNFs are gray to make them neutral. They're probably trying to get the stigma out of it, so that people will be more likely to admit that they tried. A little psychology, perhaps?

[+Harry Dolphin]

And Groundspeak actually pays people for this?!? Change for the sake of change is seldom a good idea. This is a prime example. Can we get the generic icons back?

[+Panther&Pine]

I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but I've always thought the DNFs were sad looking. Now they look depressed.

 

I'm empathizing with a computer graphic... it's been a hard couple of months.