Typing icon

[Sean Egan]

On 7/24/07, Ka-Hing Cheung <khc at hxbc.us> wrote:
> Can we simply turn off transparency on the png?

I don't think that's the problem. The icons use transparency only
extremely slightly, to anti-alias the corners.

The Tango style guidelines are specifically designed to look good on
dark and light backgrounds by specifying a double border. The icons
all have an outer, 1px border in a dark color, and then a
light-colored 1px highlight right inside it. The notion is that in
light themes the dark border will provide contrast, and that in dark
themes, the dark border will disappear somewhat and the highlight
border will create contrast. I believe this was inspired by the
default Firefox icons.

Each key in the current typing icon is just 5 by 5 pixels in size. If
you take one pixel off each side for each border, you wind up with
just a single pixel.

The depressed key, which is smaller, would be nothing *but* borders.

Because of this, those icons lack an inner highlight border (but keep
a bit of subtle shading). When viewed, then on a dark background,
there's nothing to provide contrast, and the dark border blends into
the background. Both of these contribute to the bluriness.

-s.