Daylife
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Happy Cog
Happy Cog redesigns.
Adium
Eric Giovanola writes, “Here’s a screenshot I thought was great. I use Adium as my IM client, and their mascot/dock icon is a duck. This is the crash report screen.”
Got an interesting screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Send the image and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.
Levi
on 08 Feb 07That Adium screenshot is halarious.
Ben Darlow
on 08 Feb 07Whilst the Adium duck is cute as a mascot, I detest it as an application icon and always replace it. Why would anybody associate a duck with Instant Messaging?
Ruben
on 08 Feb 07More to the point, how can someone be so adamant about an application icon?
Skylar
on 08 Feb 07I agree with Ben, one of the reasons I uninstalled Adium is the ugly green duck icon
Tobias
on 08 Feb 07I really do not mind that the Adium icon /mascot is a duck. What I do care about is their creative use of it—like that crash feedback dialog and when the dock icon flaps its wings to get attention when you have a new message.
Jeff
on 08 Feb 07Ben and Skylar…you guys are retarded. It’s an icon for cripe’s sake.
Eric
on 08 Feb 07you can also change the icon color if you don’t like green. Mine’s yellow : )
Don Schenck
on 08 Feb 07... it’s because people often use Adium to IM jokes to one another and it quacks them up!
(sorry)
heri
on 08 Feb 07you can change adium s icon with a drag and drop. what i dont like is that took me 2 weeks to make adium work. i saw that screen every day on my laptop so i can say i hate it so much
Matt
on 08 Feb 07Yeah, and what does an Apple have to do with computers? Or the word ‘Excel’ with spreadsheets? I’d argue that it’s more important for an application icon to be memorable and distinctive than pictorially descriptive.
I love the Adium crash screen because it takes something that’s usually an annoying circumstance - a program crashing - and makes it funny. There’s a lot to be said for humour in tough situations.
jgwong
on 08 Feb 07I bet those brush strokes on Happy Cog’s new face are from Kevin Cornell! He’s the illustrator on A List Apart (a Happy Cog project) and a hero of mine!
Benjy
on 08 Feb 07mmm… crispy duck!
Chuck Cheeze
on 08 Feb 07Ben, the duck has to do with IM because Adium quacks when you get a message! It’s so obvious!
Jason
on 08 Feb 07I like meebo because, um, there is no crash screen.
8maki
on 09 Feb 07I like the UI of daylife highlights: Let’s pick up news!
Ben Darlow
on 09 Feb 07Maybe ‘detest’ was a bit strong, but I stand by what I said; it completely ignores Apple’s own HIGs for application icon design, which is a shame because in many other areas Adium’s UI is quite excellent. Of course, the point behind this post was more that they used the mascot in a comic fashion on a crash dialog – a screen which in an ideal world we’d never even see.
Chuck: My Adium doesn’t quack because I have always turned all IM alert sounds off.
Ben Darlow
on 09 Feb 07I ought to have linked this above, but here will do: Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines: Icon Genres and Families.
Robb Irrgang
on 09 Feb 07you mean the Apple HIG that Apple rewrites whenever it feels the need (by creating a non-standard UI for an app)?
While I understand your frustrations with the dorky duck, apple is about as much of a posterboy for UI/Icon consistency these days as Microsoft is for innovation.
Chuck Barlow
on 09 Feb 07Wow, a new site from Happy Cog with a beige background, georgia body copy, brown text, warm colored headings, etc. They really have a wide variety of style. Yaaaaaawn.
Anon Coward
on 12 Feb 07I find those crash reporter dialogs to be so arrogant. i.e. Get out of my face, you have just monumentally pissed me off. Needs a “Never bother me again with this crap” button.
They are fair enough if the user has explicitly opted in, though…
Mark Egli
on 15 Feb 07I also detest the Adium crash screen. Mostly because the window is about three times larger than it needs to be. The last thing I want when a program crashes is a obtrusive window that demands my attention.
This discussion is closed.