Desktop icons in MacOS X aren't bitmaps and can scale gracefully. For better desktop integration, we need to have a better icon. An external developer has provided one, albeit not in the right format. I'll attach it.

The author writes: (Just to make sure) These files, and images are released by me, Michael Stearne, under the GPL (GNU Public License).

Nice! I prefer the MozillaIconLightingEffect.psd one.

can view these w/quicktime [i didn't know that till now, heh]. of the choices in the attachment, MozillaIconLightingEffect.psd looks purty cool to me too.

See also bug 43647.

Can someone please attach the pictures as separate files? StuffIt Expander on these machines doesn't want to do anything with the current attachment. Thanks.

you need to upgrade to stuffit 5.5

Ah. Thanks. These icons are all based on the current icon, which dates from the days of Apprunner and the old `purple' skin (which no longer exists). Also, they would all presumably suffer from bug 5698.

Indeed, but they are much better than the "red star". I have had no respectable contributions for a new mozilla icon.

ok, so does anyone with some semblance of artistic talent want to create a new icon for macMozilla? or even just copy the one used on win32 (the gecko lizard icon)?

BTW, there may be an issue with licence; if the icons are indeed GPL licenced then there is a good chance we would not be able to distribute them with Mozilla. Disclaimer: IANAL. Are there any SIT extracters for Win32 or Linux?

for linux visit: http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/expander_linux.html for win32: http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/expander.html

well, given that none of us like the current mozilla icon on macOS, the chances that we'll actually use the submissions is low ;) sfraser vetoed my suggestion for a new icon (the win32 gecko icon) so I think he gets the task to create a new one. ;) rtm++, chop chop! We're on a deadline here ;)

The only problem with the included icons (beside licensing problems) is the transparency - I'm assuming white will be the transparent color. Unfortunately, under OS X, clicks on the transparent area of an application icon are not recognized. Since I don't think many people are going to be viewing their icons at the full 128 x 128, you'll have to "aim" for the non-transparent areas to actually open the app.

See bug 5698. Chance to kill two birds with one stone.

I attached a large-ish screengrab of Tom Hackett's Mozilla OSX icons, as downloaded from Xicons (http://download.macnn.com/xicons/ 0057mozilla.sit.hqx to be exact.) It might be worthwhile to contact him to see if he'd be amenable to contributing the artwork to the project.

nav triage team: Supposedly, Apple is shipping OS X during beta1, so we should solve this then. Marking nsbeta1, p4, mozilla0.9.1

Perhaps this bug should be combined with the work on bug 43647 and other bugs related to the appearance of the application icons. Someone could come up with a complete set of Mozilla icons that includes icons for each major platform.

Marking nsbeta1- to make room for 58667 to make higher upps happy (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

Already nsbeta1-, resetting target milestone to get off 0.9 radar

I think the best solution is to contact some of the major icon makers and see if they would be interested in contributing work to the Mozilla project. Hopefully, they'd be willing to do a full suite. Icons created for other platforms are not likely to be suitable for Mozilla under OS X. We need the best icons for the best technology running under the best OS :) <http://www.icons.cx/> (did OmniWeb icons, I think) <http://www.iconfactory.com/> (did StuffIt icons and MS icons, I think) Netscape would, of course, be required to roll their own (or at least pay for theirs).

Marking nsbeta1- bugs as future to get off the radar

<q class=reminder> the attachment (id=18149) Mike Pinkerton under GPL <b>cannot be used by mozilla</q> :-( Pinkerton can you ask the author about a friendlier license (if people decide they like the icons -- i'm not sure how to open photoshop files) MozillaDOTorg.icns and Mozilla.icns from attach_id=20843 look ok to me.

My attempt: http://www.pp.htv.fi/hsivone1/moz-icon.html

all these are nice, but currently we cannot use mozilla in icons because he's not open source. :( endico? what's the status of what we're allowed to use?

Henri's icon looks wonderful! We can't check these in to the tree today but that situation is in the process of getting fixed. I'd say polish this up some more and work on smaller versions and hopefully by the time that's done, the licencing issue will be resolved. I think the head can be made to work at much smaller sizes. 16x16 is problematic, but so is just about anything at that size.

I quite like the icon, but can it be made more diamond-shaped? It looks odd being longer in one dimension.

can we use the "M" in http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=20843 in the meantime? It's a much more polished version of what we have today.

sure, although you might want to use the ones made by giovanni based on that M. Or did you have color palette/dithering problems when you tried to use those?

Henri, that looks great, though a little rough around the edges (literally, the edges look odd). Have you made the icon at other sizes, or are you saying the 128x128 looks odd scaled down? Ideally putting together a 48x48, 32x32 and a 16x16 would be ideal. One thing is that, as I'm sure you know, Mac 16x16 icons are frequently completely different to the large sizes. I'd say go for it... take the background diamond off and simplify as needed for the 16x16. There's no need to try to make it a scaled down version of the larger sizes. Giovanni's M icon *is* dithered ... which looks really poor when scaled up on Mac OS X. He needs to make one that uses a pure background colour, I think. It has other problems too. A square icon which occupies the entirety of the available canvas causes problems. It butts up against other icons in the dock, and it reduces the visual clue as to what's an application because of the lack of a diamond or other differentiated shape. If I were more artistic I'd probably say something about the fact that its the space you don't use that creates impact, and the huge blue square seems lacking. Me, I prefer the dinosaur. I hope the licensing issues are solved quickly.

Attached image is a 32x32 sized PNG, 32 bit colour (ie with an 8 bit alpha channel). This is hand tweaked, and it looks considerably better than the default scaling you get if you let Mac OS do it for you. If ppl like this, I'm perfectly willing to do a 48x48, 16x16 and other colour depths too. Looks better in Mozilla than "other broswers" ... naturally. I think this is a very viable, recognisable icon. Now, can someone explain the licensing issues? Are they equally applicable to green moz and red moz? What's going on? Henri, all kudos for this work. I can tweak existing images like this, but i could never have created it.

One thing I really like about the Moz star icon http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=20843 is that it is very clear what it is, even at small sizes (like when it's in the dock, smallest size), and even at a distance. It's the one I'm using for Moz now. Just copied & pasted it into my copy in the Finder. - Adam

cc'ing people who can draw.

scc has a wonderful OSX icon that he made by photgraphing my stuffed green mozilla. However, trademark laws would probably require you to gouge your eyes out if you looked at it. or something

there's a bunch of new stuff i found out that's not in the apple HIG yet about designing icons in OSX. i might have some time to work on some moz icons after i finish my current project

I have a busy week but I'll get back to this. (Lordpixel: I have tried scaling the dinosaur head icon. The eye and the teeth don't look good when there are a lot of items in the Dock. Sfraser: Using the usual old diamond shape constrains the visible part of the dinosaur head too much.)

Yes, the eyes and teeth are problematic. Any comment on my 32x32 attempt? Be as negative as you like ;) What Mac OS X seems to do is scale on the fly between the sizes then "snap" to the fixed sizes (16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 128x128) when those are hit. I need to play with it some to see if it truly interpolates between the fixed sized you give it or whether it mostly just scales the 128x128 until you hit one of the fixed sizes exactly. I agree about the diamond enclosing the head too much. I tried it, and it looks dodgy. I think for the 16x16 you'll need to drop the background "diamond" altogether. This is fairly common among Mac applications. I think its acceptable for the smallest icon to be different from the others.

I attached my new mozilla icon. The 48x48 version isn't included (hopefully it'll be ready within a week)

for 16x16, the head looks chopped off, could you add some brownish hinting in the yellow area?

Beautiful...

I've been using the dinosaur head icon in Dock for about a month now. It doesn't compare well with the other icons. * The eye and the teeth get obscured. The icons in the Dock are scaled from the 128px*128px icon. Making manually polished smaller versions helps only in Finder. (The eye and the teeth are too bright in attachment 33139 [details]) Since the icon is continuosly visible in the Dock in the company of better icons, this is a significant problem. * Red doesn't fit in the Dock. Notable other browsers use the initial letter of the name. I tried to make yet another M icon. The result wasn't good, but I am attaching a screenshot anyway in case someone else cares to develop the design further. (Source available on request.) Anyway, I think the letter M is more likely to work as icon than the dinosaur head. (I don't like the throbber M or the mozilla.org logo M, though.)

this was given to me by Paul Drummond. the m icon at 128x128 and lower resolutions/bit depths.

my resource changes to add this icon to fizzilla are r=saari/sr=sfraser.

a=tor

new icon and plst checked in for fizzilla. do we need anything else to keep this bug open?

IMO, this one could be closed as fixed.

Works for me on Asa's machine. Marking fixed.

Marking verified, since the app icon has been fixed. Filed bug 88393 about document icons.

It would be great if those of you who were cc'd on this bug would cc yourselves to bug 88393. Your graphic excellence is needed on some 128x128 document icons to help make OS X a beautiful place to live. :) - Adam

Maibe it's just me, but I really don't like the icon that was commited to CVS (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=36432). Everywhere we hear about Mozilla we see the lizzard: on the web page, the splash screen, slashdot... Gecko is a sort of lizzard, Mozilla is a representation of a lizzard. I beleive that not using a lizzard as Mozilla's icon is a mistake. IIRC, Mosaic used the letter M as its icon and it was not particularly good looking. IE is using the letter e to give it a serious look (I guess). Netscape Nav. is using the letter N for the same reasons too (I still guess). But Mozilla isn't about looking serious, it's about geeks/freedom/thinking outside the box; putting the letter M as its icon is pretty much copying what was done in the past. IFAIK, not using the Lizzard as an icon was for legal reasons, but as Dawn Endico said in 2001-04-26 12:22: --- Henri's icon looks wonderful! [...] I'd say polish this up some more and work on smaller versions and hopefully by the time that's done, the licencing issue will be resolved. --- I really go 100% with what Dawn said. IMHO, Henri's proposition (http://www.pp.htv.fi/hsivone1/moz-icon.html) is the best one received so far. So I beleive we should concentrate on tweaking Henri's proposition. After all, the Lizzard image is copyrighted Mozilla/Netscape, so it should be easier to deal with than if it was copyrighted Micro$oft... 8) So, in short, considering that the M-icon was only there 'in the meantime' (Mike Pinkerton 2001-04-26 12:29) before we clear the legal issues for the final logo, I reopen this bug, hoping that we'll be able to resolve the legal issues about the image of the lizzard and use it in the future as an icon.

I used the icon with the dinosaur head for a month and I concluded that it looks bad in the context of Dock. OTOH, I've used builds with current icon for more than a month now and I think the current icon looks better in the Dock than the icon with the dinosaur head. Let's keep the current icon and forget the dinosaur head icon. Sure, icon design guides says that you shouldn't use letters in icons, but designing an icon that communicates "this is a Web browser" is really hard. IE has an 'e'. Netscape has an 'N'. opera has an 'O'. I think it is OK if Mozilla has an 'M'. (It's not like using letter is unheard of. The generic OS X app icon has an 'A'. BBEdit has a 'B'. XDarwin has an 'X'.) Mosaic is no longer in use. At least the Mac version of Mosaic 2 didn't even use 'M' as the icon. I don't think clashing with Mosaic is an issue. (BTW, I don't have a problem with Mozilla looking "serious". You do want Mozilla to be taken seriously, right? OTOH, I don't particularly like attempts of forcibly trying to look as "thinking outside the box". See also: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/fonts2.htm) Returning to fixed since Mozilla does have a scalable icon now.

Okay, I realised that this bug was about a scalable icon in OS X. This is fixed, so I verify this. As for having a lizzard/dino as the icon, I've filed bug 98761 describing this. I invite anyone interested to join the discussion. Also this will make one more bug in MozillaQuest's insane bug count! 8) Henri, I will respond to your arguments in bug 98761.

I'm starting an effort to formalize an effort to revise the parts of Mozilla's appearance outside themes, such as the icon suite, the installer, the splash screen, and the Profile Manager dialog. I've started a web page with some initial ideas and bug links at [http://greg.tcp.com/mozilla/ui/Outside/introduction.html]. I welcome any and all comments on it.

There are some icons that are very close to the existing ones, but Aqua-fied, here: http://comp.uark.edu/~pgauria/MozillaIcons/ I can't draw either, but I like these ones... and they seem to be pretty much a drop-in replacement for what we have now. No document icons though, just an app icon.

I've created a Mozilla Mac OS X icon set for my personal use. After receiving a lot of positive feedback I'm currently thinking about putting them out under the mpl, gpl or any other license you want. I've used the M instead of a lizard partly because of licensing issues and partly because the lizard shape makes it difficult to create a good looking icon set: Basically I love the blocky, industrial identity of Mozilla but I'm not sure as to whether anybody has ever drawn the Mozilla.org lizard as a whole, not just the head and the upper body. Using just the head in an icon often creates the disgusting appearance of a beheaded lizard, especially since it has a bloody red color. I'm well aware of the fact that text in an icon should be avoided. You can even take a look at my Icon Design Workshop (in German: http://www.theparallax.org/wissen/grafik/icondesign/index.html) for some of my suggestions on that issue. - But I don’t think that the use of the M creates any usability problems. The special capital M is a kind of logo that stands for Mozilla, not a letter that can be either used for Mail, Management, Multimedia or whatever. All Microsoft Mac products use a logo character as an icon and about 25 percent of all applications (Hotline, Unreal, BBEdit, etc.) do the same. While it is extremely bad design to use a word like "color" in an icon instead of just showing some colors (see this picture: http://www.theparallax.org/wissen/grafik/icondesign/texticons.gif), I see absolutely no problem at all in the use of the capital Mozilla M logo. -- Personal taste put aside... The picture just shows the basic design direction I have taken. I've not been using any existing artwork (besides the logo) so there would be no licensing issues. The icon set is not completed yet but I'd be happy to produce any icon that is needed. I have two questions: * I'm planning on using the Mozilla license. Would that be okay? * Which icons do you want exactly? Please list all document categories that need an icon. – For example: "Program component," "Preferences," etc. – I don’t have the time to create individual icons for each and every member of a category. (.rdf, .jar, .shlb, .xpt, etc.) Please give me some feedback. Thanks, Simon. Here's the image: http://www.theparallax.net/sd/proposals/Mozilla-Icons.jpg

The icon set is now updated, more polished and complete, contains descriptions and licensing information: http://www.theparallax.org/sd/proposals/mozilla/icons.html - It's still not ready, tough.

Hi there, Ages ago I did the blue 'M' icon which is currently used for the Mac OS X version of Mozilla. This was basically a quick hack to get things going. I'd really like to help create a full icon suite, perhaps even one for Windows too. Contact me if you want to get things moving again.

The Icons mentioned above and discussed in #88393 are finally finished. Download them here: http://www.theparallax.org/sd/mozilla/ Please read the document for further discussion. Discuss here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88393 Thanks, Simon.