News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

October 25, 2007

geekery

Folderol: Leopard’s new folder icons

Posted Oct. 25, ’07, 12:56 PM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Geekery

foldericon.jpgI really don’t get the chance to use the word “folderol” enough. There’s been some criticism of Leopard’s new folder icons, which are kind of blue and matte, as opposed to Tiger’s more colorful icons. I dig that, and I agree: the monochrome aspect is less-than-awesome, making it harder to distinguish folders at a casual glance, especially in list mode. But at the same time, it’s not as bad as I’d feared from what little I’d seen, especially when you consider that they’ve designed the small icons to be simpler and easier to distinguish. We’ve also lost OS X’s 3D perspective in favor of a flat front-on view, which is kind of elegant in my opinion.

However, you can’t fully appreciate the detail of the icons until you look at them at in big sizes. And I mean big; as Dan P. pointed out, Leopard supports up to 512x512 icons. For example, look at any folder in Cover Flow and you’ll notice something kind of nifty: the folder’s aren’t really matte at all. At first I thought my screen just needed to be cleaned, but when I used Quick Look to blow up the icon I realized something: they’ve actually got grain, just like real-life folders. Admittedly, the exact same grain on each folder, but still. That’s attention to detail. And hell, if you don’t like them, you’ve always got plenty of great alternatives.


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