Old iconography in AWM creation process

[amilica]

Hello everyone! Back with one low-hanging fruit from a series of small improvements on AWM.

Note: I’ve edited this main post with the feedback I got in the comments.

Issue: Multiple icons are not UI cohesive, are outdated and look pixelated

Proposal: Update their mapping to the IconTheme

JIRA issue | XWiki Design page

Outdated icons in AWM

What icons we should have instead for these cases

Based on the available icons in the IconTheme:

---

Icons in picture 1 (adding fields in step 2)

---

• Configure icon - should be or or (wrench would be closest) → wrench icon
• Delete icon - should be and still red → cross icon
• Move icon - should be or preferably the normal move icon but I cannot find it or we don not have it → arrows icon (it doesn’t have an Elusive mapping though)

---

Icon in picture 2 (validating the deletion of a field in step 2):

---

• Question mark icon - should be , but it’s also okay if we don’t have any icon → question icon

---

Icons in picture 3 (all field types in step 2 listed in the right):

---

• Short text field icon - could be → font icon
• Long text field icon - should be → align-justify icon
• Number field icon - I don’t think we have a good number icon, but the only one that has a reference to numbers would be
• Boolean field icon - should be → check icon
• Static list icon - should be → list-bullets icon
• Database List field icon - should be → database icon

What do you think

1. Do you have another suggestion for the number icon from the IconTheme or from the full FontAwsome list?
2. Would you change something else?

[MichaelHamann]

Just a short comment, all new icons need to be from the XWiki icon theme. It is not clear from your proposal which of the icons you are suggesting are from the icon theme. If there is no suitable icon in the icon theme, you should suggest adding icons to the icon theme. Could you please add the information which of the suggested icons are in the icon theme, and for those in the icon theme, if the Silk icon matches the currently used icon?

[amilica]

@MichaelHamann

@amilica

Based on the available icons in the IconTheme:

I’ve written this before my suggestions, sorry if this didn’t make it clear. All of my suggestions are from the IconTheme, FontAwesome set.

@MichaelHamann

and for those in the icon theme, if the Silk icon matches the currently used icon?

So the AWM icons that are currently Silk icons and exist in the IconTheme:

wrench
cross
help

The “move” icon and the rest of the icons in picture 3 don’t seem to be part of the IconTheme in any of the sets.

[vmassol]

@amilica

I’ve written this before my suggestions, sorry if this didn’t make it clear. All of my suggestions are from the IconTheme, FontAwesome set.

We don’t use a specific icon set. This is configurable in XWiki. We use XWiki font names that are then mapped internally to the configured set.

So you need to make icon proposals based on the xwiki icon names, not the FA names. And make sure that for each xwiki icon name proposed, there’s a mapping for all the supported sets.

Hope it’s more clear.

Thanks!

[vmassol]

For example instead of proposing to use fa-wrench, to propose using the xwiki wrench icon which has a mapping in all icon sets (fa-wrench, glyphicon-wrench, el-icon-wrench).

Note: We might need to support all sets. The minimum I think are silk and FA (which are the 2 sets bunlded by default in XS: https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Icon%20Theme%20Application#HIconList) . We’re not very clear on this and what we need to support AFAIK. It’s best ofc if it’s supported in all sets.

[vmassol]

@vmassol

We’re not very clear on this and what we need to support AFAIK

I think we need a proposal/vote to decide and then to document it in https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices#HIcons. Maybe I’ve missed past proposals and they have not been documented though. If anyone remembers please let me know.

EDIT: Note: it’s not normal for a set to be missing a mapping (we need to fix that). We need all entries to be filled, even if the icon is not the perfect one, otherwise we fall back to a worse icon by default AFAIR.

[vmassol]

@amilica

Icons in picture 1 (adding fields in step 2)

---

• Configure icon - should be or or (wrench would be closest) → fa-wrench
• Delete icon - should be and still red → fa-times
• Move icon - should be or preferably the normal move icon but I cannot find it or we don not have it → fa-arrows-a

I think they all have mappings for all sets except for the elusive set for arrows (ie for fa-arrows-a in the FA set), which is acceptable IMO.

I haven’t checked the rest. I’ll leave you to do it. Thx

[amilica]

Changed the names, thanks for your explanation, it’s more clear now

[vmassol]

@vmassol

I think we need a proposal/vote to decide and then to document it in https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices#HIcons. Maybe I’ve missed past proposals and they have not been documented though. If anyone remembers please let me know.

Actually we have it documented here: https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/DevGuide/FrontendResources/Icons/ (just missing a link from https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices#HIcons I think, I’ll add it).

[vmassol]

@amilica

Based on the available icons in the IconTheme :

This is not the right doc actually The right one is https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/DevGuide/FrontendResources/Icons/

Could you tell me how you found that old page so that we can fix the links? Thx

[amilica]

We still have the issue with the number icon.

Should we go with something that’s not ideal, but that does exist in the sets? These icons kind of send to the idea of numbers (btw, they don’t have a mapping for Glyphicon & Elusive)

@vmassol

Could you tell me how you found that old page so that we can fix the links? Thx

I think I have it from @tkrieck , he probably had it saved

[vmassol]

Thanks but it would be better to not edit past posts as this makes the comments and history hard to read and understand. I’d have preferred a new reply with the new changes.

For ex Michael’s comments don’t make sense anymore (nor mine)…

[amilica]

Ah sorry abt that, i assumed most people that will come new to the thread will probably read the main post and then just scan through the rest of the replies. It made sense to keep the source of truth in the main post.

I’ll keep in mind to do changes in replies. For now, I’ll put a disclaimer that I edited the post based on comments.

[vmassol]

@amilica

Should we go with something that’s not ideal, but that does exist in the sets? These icons kind of send to the idea of numbers (btw, they don’t have a mapping for Glyphicon & Elusive)

In the meantime, I’ve clarified what sets we support and it seems it’s only Silk and FA. I’ve updated the doc accordingly, see https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/DevGuide/FrontendResources/Icons/?viewer=changes&rev1=5.1&rev2=6.1&

This means that if the icon names you proposed have a mapping for Silk and FA, they’re good enough to be used.

Thanks!

[MichaelHamann]

What would also be good is if you could show how the chosen icons look in the Silk icon theme as we need to make sure that AWM is usable with both icon themes that we include in XS.

[tkrieck]

Hi @amilica thank you very much for the proposal. These icons definitely should be updated.

@amilica

Do you have another suggestion for the number icon from the IconTheme or from the full FontAwsome list?

The calculator one seems to be the closest one currently available on the IconTheme. But for me, it reminds a lot of calculated fields, operations. FA has a hash icon that I’ve seen used as a number icon sometimes Hashtag Classic Solid Icon | Font Awesome. IMO this warrants an inclusion on the IconTheme as hashtag being mapped to fa-hashtag

The icon fa-list-olis not very good IMO because it can give the impression of a Numbered List, which is not the case, and we have a “List” type already on the page that would reinforce the interpretation of another type of list.

@amilica

I think I have it from @tkrieck , he probably had it saved

Yeap, my bad. I’ve updated my bookmark as well. Thanks @vmassol

@MichaelHamann

What would also be good is if you could show how the chosen icons look in the Silk icon theme as we need to make sure that AWM is usable with both icon themes that we include in XS.

Most of the ones @amilica is proposing to update are from the Silk theme, but probably are hard coded. Those that are not from Silk are used in the sidebar with the field types (Short text, Long Text, Number, etc) and also have a label there, so it would be usable even without icons.

Overall, I really like the proposal, thanks @amilica =)

Below are my some thoughts on Silk and the IconTheme and probably should be on another topic, but I will put them here as they were mentioned.

---

Regarding Silk

@vmassol

In the meantime, I’ve clarified what sets we support and it seems it’s only Silk and FA. I’ve updated the doc accordingly, see

Can we just drop the table columns about Glyphicon and Elusive? Their presence on the page might give the impression that they are well supported (even if the text says otherwise).

Regarding Silk, wasn’t it deprecated already? I am talking about this comment on another topic:

@vmassol

BTW this is already the case (not to use Silk) and we’ve already been migrating to FA over the years. I don’t think we have used Silk anywhere else since we introduced FA, as, when we introduced FA we effectively deprecated Silk back then. So for me we don’t need a proposal for this (but it’s ok to reiterate it, no harm done!).

Topic:

Proposal: deprecate silk icons theme

Hi everyone, this topic is a fork of the proposal originally made by @CharpentierLucas on Proposal: add icons to the XWiki Icon Set. As part of this proposal Lucas said: Unfortunately, silk was created in 2005 and not updated for a long time, so there’s some huge holes in its icon theme cover. When checking out a list of the icons in silk, I could not find anything closer to those we would expect for those actions. So I proposed that we deprecate the Silk theme in future version of XWiki: …

So from my point of view, current mapping of Silks are OK, but should be migrated eventually (and @amilica is helping us with this proposal), but no new mappings should be made on it. If this is the case, then it would be good to have a notice of the deprecation on the IconTheme page. WDYT?

If Silk and FA are our officially supported ones, but Silk is being deprecated, that makes FA our only official set on the IconTheme. Which is a big plus for me but would be nice to have this oficial.