Icon Wunschkonzert - AISS Edition

@Chris

that is what I'm thinking... why AISS haven't a glow effect? and if there was a right reason, why all selected images are not much changed from normal ones? (for example I love find selected image, instead seems all navigation images haven't a visible changes on their selected images)...

btw: 10x Mason for images I've asked

@Wanderer

Quote:
Using ReAction's bitmap.image, for example.

@mason
A bitmap for a "CD Rip" button (maybe just the "sendtocd" bitmap with the arrow reversed )
Also, I think there's a mistake in the 4.5 distribution, the "popup" ghosted image is a copy of the "popwin" one.
Good work!

@ShInKurO

The more I think about it the more glaring an omission it seems. Before AISS all GlowIcons style toolbars had a glow effect on the selected image (where supported), so AISS should have the same.

My request: Glow effect on selected state for all images.

Thanks

@Chris

Perhaps the old glow effect (yellow) is not good anymore on OS4.1...you see white glow effect of new gadgets of windows, perhaps all selected images should follow that kind of selected state (white and more defined, or a "more professional yellow" like many of icons for OS4.0 which Mason has upload on his site, but in that case for a coherent way even window gadgets should be "yellow selected")... what do you think?

@centaurz

> using ReAction's bitmap.image, for example.

A bitmap or an image?
There are two structures in AmigaOS, or is it something different?

Is it ok to deliver three ARGB AmigaOS "BitMap"s for the three States (normal, selected, ghosted)?
Or would be an ARGB PixelArray or an "screen friendly" bitmap and an alpha pixelarray better?

In my Toolkit (tui.include) I will probably just add an "AISS -Button" that handles all the stuff.

@Chris

Quote:
There is only one simple reason why AISS has no glow effect: There is just not enough space for it! There are just 2 pixels on each side and that is not enough for a glow. I made several tests but it never looked good.

@Chris

I'm pretty sure that the reason a glow effect is not included is that the images would require quite a bit more pixel space around the edges without looking any bigger if the glow is going to have a smooth fade.

(Edit: Mason was faster on the submit button.)

@centaurz

all done

@Mason

>The problem is not the licence of AISS! Imho the one >and only problem was the complexity of AISS! Even I >said it is better NOT to add it to OS4.1. If a change of >the icon style is needed in 4.2+ you have to change >that 2000 AISS icons too.

Why would there be a change of icon style in OS v4.2?
I see no good reason. With the new GlowIcons in 24-bit, I feel AmigaOS has found the right style.

Or do you know something I don't?

Inclusion of AISS in OS v4.1 would have been a good
thing. At least the basic AISS support would have
been there, which is better than nothing.

For example, the OWB toolbar would have been there
in all its glory

> Imho the best solution to deal >with this issue is used >by Epistula from Slash. It comes >with generic >Glowicons toolbar images and AISS >support is >provided by changing the prefs.

Well, if AISS was bundled with the OS, then it would
not be necessary to provide a generic Glowicon toolbar
image...

@Mason

So the olny thing which you could do would be to add for each image a selected one with a visible change, like on find image... for example for navigation arrows you could move the image in the direction of each arow, in this way when it's clicked an arrow seems to move...

@Kotler

Perhaps a project could be started to provide a more free AISS variant that could be included in the OS as default images? And then people could download Masons AISS archive if they want to use his icon style.

;)

If an aiss.library is created, couldn't that handle the glow effect dynamicaly? So that the glow effect is configurable? Ie, yellow glow, white glow, darker, negative etc.

And as for speed, the library could add some sort of caching.

@jaokim

Real-time glow would be a nice option, however it would look bad with those icons that have a shadow - Mason, I'm pointing this out just to suggest you to remove shadows: icons will look just as nice, will look fine in any context and will be less work for you when creating new ones

I'll seize the chance to express my opinion on a related subject - I know many (most of the) Amigans will not agree, but here it comes anyway...
Replacing alternate icons with a real-time plugin-based selected-state system* (so that the selected state would be calculated on the fly by applying a "selected" effect), would save Mason and whoever creates icons a lot of work and pain (thus enabling them to draw more icons and update the current ones with much less effort) and would help keeping a consistent look'n'feel throughout the system. Basically, this is already what happens currently when icons have no alternate image, only that there is only one fixed effect.

Edit: *implemented directly in the icon system.

I'm perfectly aware that this means giving up on a peculiarity of AmigaOS icons, so - as said - I do not expect this suggestion to be popular. I'm making it anyway only because its advantages are great and the flip side is just losing something which, IMHO, is mostly eye candy.

saimo

@Mason

I can easily do an aiss.library, that loads, caches, resizes and adds glow-effect (or alternative, configurable effects) on-the-fly. The ghosted effect could be added on-the-fly as well. Might be even faster than loading the 2 additional images.
There are plenty of functions for this in AmiBlitz3.
It will also fix the problem of loading ARGB images on OS3.x, since there the datatype doesn't support this.

The shadow is a problem for Glow Effect indeed, unless I make pure Black "non-glowing". It would be better to have no shadow though, and calculate the shadow on-the-fly as well. (strength and distance could be configurable as well).

Plus, the whole stuff can get "stamped" into different Button-Sytles, like Aqua Bubble etc.

I dont know if such a library is in the interesst of Mason, I dont want to hijack the name "aiss.library". So what do you think about that? Your images would serve then as "raw-material" that gets finalized on demand.

I almost finished the Library. I will call it "toolbar.library", unless Mason likes it and allows it to call aiss.library.

As a side effect, it can not only load AISS images, also any kind of images (like JPEG, PNG, GIF, IFF, BMP etc.) and Icons, scale them and display them or provide access to the ARGB Bitmap.
It can also do some postprocessing, like adding a shadow or Glow-Effect (in any color).

The interface works like this:



You can query information or apply effects with



wheras

taglist[].ti_Tag can be...

e.g.


would fade the ghosted image 50% grey.


would resize the image to 32/32 and add a yellowish glow effect to the selected image.

Does that sound cool or do you have any suggestions/wishes?

@Wanderer

Quote:
I could not pay the API the due attention, but at the first glance it looks nice. Suggestion: drop the explicit reference to AISS - as you said yourself, you library has a general characterization

Keep up the good work!
saimo

@Mason

How about a "News" AISS image or image set?

Thanks.

@saimo

yes, renamed AISS => TB for now.

(toolbar.library)

I hope there is no toolbar.library out there yet...

@Wanderer

Will this library be open source? Will you give Hyperion access to it should it become a defacto standard for amiga apps?

Sure it is OpenSource.
But I doubt that EVIL 68K library can get "standard".
So someone would need to do a C port.
It is not much Code in Amiblitz, just a bunch of lines. The power comes from the so called "Includes", which part of them would need to be ported to C.