Talk:Mouse Tail
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Mouse Tail
Alex Forster
I want your feedback, Kelly. You're the main person I know who will be against this.
Liam Dawe
Thos cursors look fine, i see nothing wrong with them or any reason not to include them, Kelly?
Kelly Rush
My only issue with the mice is that I wanted something to differentiate them from other OS's. Every step of the way, we are going to be fighting the "how is this different from XYZ OS?", so any time we can get away from that, I think is a good thing. That said, I don't want that to ever get in the way of something looking good, or being functional, or usable. If these cursors fit that criteria, I don't have any issues with them being included.
Do they fit that criteria? =)
Greg Vernon
If we want to do something different, I don't think that the mouse cursor should be the first thing to change. I'm with Alex on this, there is just something about the lack of a tail that just seems off to me.
I think this will also let users feel more "at home" with SkyOS. Obviously, the UI will be radically different than what they are used to on Windows, G/KDE, or MacOS, but, with their cursor being the same, it won't feel so "far away".
Robert
>> If we want to do something different, I don't think that the mouse cursor should be the first thing to change.
Well, its definitely not the first thing, and additionally it has been done already. Anyway, I personally like the cursor as it is now. And don't forget, once the theme engine is done, switching the entire cursor set is an easy operation too.
Alex Forster
You have to just feel the difference. The nub is fine, but an arrow feels so much more solid.
Personally, I think the nub looks worse/less professional and is less functional. Let's try it for a beta and see what the reaction is. I swear it will make a huge difference in the feel of the UI.
Vectorized Mouse
Greg Vernon
I like it, whomever actually came up with it. Perhaps this would be a reason to start implementing some vector things into the UI? I dunno how much work that would be, but, it might look nice.
Alex Forster
I came up with it. You'd be surprised how long it took, too. A cursor is one of those things where you can tell if any point is even slightly misplaced, and I had to place all the points by hand since I was working at such a small scale.
I do think it's a good example of the need for a vector UI.
Greg Vernon
Well, assuming it would be possible (without extensive SkyGI rewrites) to have a vector based UI, it would definitely be worth the effort to implement, no? Granted, you said it took a long time for you to design the cursor, so, would there also be a time issue involved as well?
Alex Forster
It doesn't take much more time than it would in Photoshop. Pixel-aligned vector work is surprisingly easy; this was an off-case. By far the hardest part is designing partially-transparent gradients in Illustrator (fuck masks), which isn't even that hard.
Greg Vernon
Well, what I mean is coding wise. Would implementing a Vector Based UI take hours upon hours of coding time, when we could use somethings more than this? ie. drivers, wireless networking, etc.
Alex Forster
I can't really answer for that. It depends on the quality of the implementation Robert is willing to do. The hardest part is going to be supporting a format I can export to from Illustrator (i.e., SVG). That unfortunately eliminates the use of AGG unless Robert extends its very basic SVG support. The Haiku guy that implemented the vector icons with AGG didn't take too long and he invented his own format and wrote a conversion utility for it. It's a beautiful format, too. I wouldn't need any more functionality than it provides. I just can't export to it via Illustrator.
Greg Vernon
That's pretty cool. I guess then it is up to Robert to decide if we have vector icons or not then :)
