Ui
 

I normally wouldn't say anything negative as UI design is tough - I work on it for web and specialist interfaces myself. I know it's always hard making a break to something new when you're ready to leave the old behind. However I think Avandelay makes some very good points.

One additional thing - I think the current desktop (and old iPhone) icons work because folders are grey, and the standard projects are white with coloured accents. It makes them feel like "documents" in the finder would. And single action lists stand out as something else again. The visual heirarchy "feels" right.

The new iPhone icons put everything as base grey, and leave less room within the grey box to differentiate.

The old offset "pause" and "dropped" overlays leave the main icon much more readable too.

Either way - consistency between the Mac app and iOS app seems most important. It was great to be able to see a (mostly) consistent icon set across devices. At least using the same colour palette and approach, adapting the details to match screen size and resolutions. Especially as the app doesn't seem to be an either/or choice - it's more like "collect the set"!

I hate to be the guy adding a "more options" request, but maybe in the future the comprehensive Mac app's styling options may extend to custom folder/project icon we can sync to the iPhone - much like perspective icons sync now. Then we'll can all just shut up and choose "classic", "new" or customise our own.

That was longer than I thought! Love the apps, and will be buying the iPad one regardless even if it does have a 3rd set of icons!

Is this sort of feedback worth emailing directly to Omni? Or is that best reserved for bug reports?

[QUOTE=uof;79276]
Is this sort of feedback worth emailing directly to Omni? Or is that best reserved for bug reports?[/QUOTE]
If you care enough about the issue to want something to happen, you should send it directly to them.

[QUOTE=wolfneuralnet;79084]Alas, I haven't misunderstood. ;)

I realize 2X res is for iPhone screen. The point is if you have now programmed your app for an 960X640 screen, its should look very good on the iPad, which is 1024X768. If the emulator for 3.2 for the iPad doesn't allow it to display this way, fine, but the resolution was supposed to translate from what I understood from some of the initial chatter. Hopefully this will be taken care of in iOS4 for the iPad, but in the meantime, I guess I will keep waiting for OF for the iPad.[/QUOTE]

This might be true if OmniGroup had a native-resolution version of their iPhone app, but they don't. They have a standard resolution version. Icons might look a little better if all their icons are higher resolution, but the text, controls, etc. won't.

Also, developers don't "program for" a 960x640 screen, per se; generally speaking they're including new, higher resolution images, which the iOS 4 selects when running on a device that can use those images.

iPad doesn't run iOS 4, and thus has no knowledge of these higher resolution images and thus won't load them up.

I'm not just talking out my rear; this is based on reading the developer documentation.

You can read the [URL="http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/SupportingResolutionIndependence/SupportingResolutionIndependence.html"]Supporting High-Resolution Screens[/URL] section of the iPhone Application Programming Guide for detailed info.

[QUOTE=Toadling;79250]PS - iOS app icons are all the same shape and size as well, yet users don't seem to have trouble telling them apart, do they?[/QUOTE]

Right, and you'll also notice that app icons are 48x48 pixels, and the OF icons are 25x25 pixels*. So app icons have nearly four times the area that's allotted to OF icons. That's four times the number of pixels usable for color and contrast that we don't have here.

And in the tiny space the OF icons [I]do[/I] have, they've chosen a medium grey background -- you couldn't find a color that hampers contrast more if you tried, could you?

[SIZE="1"]* Pixel dimensions on the new "retina display" iPhone would be higher, but the same proportions apply.[/SIZE]

Icon design
 

One thought about the different look of the search button:

This is very well done. The search button represents something completely different - an action to perform. It actually *does* something.

All the other buttons just show different categories or types of listing.

So I really appreciate the probably well thought-of distinction. And the search button is as I would expect it in that context. I wouldn't mind if the other buttons would lighten up a bit, but it's ok with me.

I really really dislike the new app icon though. That dark dull checkmark just turns me off. The color of the background could also be more bright - just put it in the dock together with Calendar, Mail, and Safari. Might be my taste only, but it really loses ground there.

Almost looks like your design team have their monitors set too bright. ;-)

Edit: Just don't want to let it go unsaid: It *really* works well on the iPhone 4. Looks still great, and is so fast.

[QUOTE=chess77;79304]One thought about the different look of the search button:

This is very well done. The search button represents something completely different - an action to perform. It actually *does* something.

All the other buttons just show different categories or types of listing.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry but that doesn´t make any sense. Unless search is the no.1 thing OmniGroup wants people to do in the app there is no reason to point people´s attention to it. from a UI standpoint it just looks really sloppy and messy.

The old icons clearly showed their functionality and what "family" they belonged to.

If they want to do square shaped icons they should take some cues from Apple, where every icon is color coded and is easy to distinguish from the others:

[QUOTE=Nicolas_Thomsen;79317]Sorry but that doesn´t make any sense. Unless search is the no.1 thing OmniGroup wants people to do in the app there is no reason to point people´s attention to it. from a UI standpoint it just looks really sloppy and messy.

The old icons clearly showed their functionality and what "family" they belonged to.

If they want to do square shaped icons they should take some cues from Apple, where every icon is color coded and is easy to distinguish from the others:[/QUOTE]

I dunno. I like the new ones. And they are pretty clear to me. Orange and red are not the same color at all (of course, I'm not color blind) and the flag is clear enough. I have no problems distinguishing between them, and once you read them once or twice you'll also be familiar with where the icons you want are located.

I agree with Nicolas Thomsen: It's not that they can't be distingueshed at all, but if their background (which is the largest area) would have color to indicate the icon it would be recognized much faster. And no, I'm not color blind as well.

[QUOTE=FatalError;79378]I agree with Nicolas Thomsen: It's not that they can't be distingueshed at all, but if their background (which is the largest area) would have color to indicate the icon it would be recognized much faster. And no, I'm not color blind as well.[/QUOTE]

I am, and so are 1 out of every 20 men. The orange and red look different to me, but it's still a pretty weak visual cue. Unfortunately when you throw shape out the window by turning your icons into low-contrast grey boxes, you're just left with very small blobs of color to distinguish your icons from one another.

I just can't see the logic, in an icon smaller than a pinkie nail, of jettisoning so much potential information by ignoring shape as an identifying feature. Shape is literally the first thing the eye sees.

I am obviously missing something... I mean, doesn't the giant text next to each icon give you enough of a clue as to what the category represents without colorizing the icons more?