(design decision) Icons missing from context menu , dialogue buttons , firefox bookmark favicons, system menu

[Vish]

The default setting for icons has now changed , the icons will not be shown unless forced upon by the app.
Icons that are essential must be displayed and need to be set accordingly in the app.
If an icon is not displayed.This is a bug in the app. Kindly report it accordingly. And add a tag "menu-icons" to the bug report.

Reason for this change in the default : to have a cleaner , consistent interface.

To have the icons displayed as was in the earlier versions of Ubuntu, Workaround:
- For menu icons : Appearances Preferences > Interface tab > Select "Show icons in menus"
- For buttons , In the gconf-editor, check this option:
 /desktop/gnome/interface/buttons_have_icons

---
The icons are not shown in the menus and dialogue buttons , since update :
libgnome2-0 (2.26.0-1ubuntu1) to 2.27.5-0ubuntu1

Upstream is setting these two options to false by default.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557469
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=583352

Upstream bug for removing the interface tab in the Appearance dialog.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592756

[Lieven (lieven-debels)]

To me this seems a duplicate of bug #407474

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The change is not a bug but a GNOME design decision

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

bug #407474 has some details and the bugzilla bug reference

[Vish (vish)]

Even the drop-down menus dont have icons.

Attaching screenshot of a dialogue window.

[Vish (vish)]

yup , its a dup, didnt notice the earlier one.

[Vish (vish)]

I'm not marking the as a duplicate of this , since this bug is given a wishlist status

[Vish (vish)]

I'm marking the earlier as a duplicate of this , since this bug is given a wishlist status

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

I dont see this problem in 2.27.5-0ubuntu1

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

gnomefreak@Development:~$ policy libgnome2-0
libgnome2-0:
  Installed: 2.27.5-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2.27.5-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2.27.5-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Folks,

Let's gather some meaningful data, reasonable opinion, and (if necessary) exercise our independence as to whether we should re-enable menu and button icons in Ubuntu.

I am asking a very simple question. Where is the best place to discuss this proposal to re-enable icons; the forums, ubuntu-devel-discuss ML, Brainstorm? Or will the user community have no voice in this decision?

It may be a lost cause to petition upstream [1], especially since we didn't participate in a debate that we weren't aware that existed, but we still have an opportunity in Ubuntu.

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557469#c47

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

One place to discuss that would be the <email address hidden>, note that mpt who is a designer working for canonical is subscribed to the upstream discussion

[Vish (vish)]

Quoting from upstream:

I'm afraid a poll on such a trivial UI matter would be a terrible idea.

People never like change for sure, but one of our goals for 3.0 a cleaner and
more well balanced interface. This is one of the steps, and I hope it will turn
out as the better choice in the end. I don't think we should be afraid to fail
every once in a while, and this one is easy to change back. :)

--------------------

It is very clear upstream wants to take this into gnome 3.0 , so any change needs to be done only in Ubuntu, I'v seen mpt argue against this move since 2008! , maybe he[UX team] could decide Ubuntu's direction.

No need for a poll i guess, since even Ubuntu's team is against this change and no amount of polling is going to change this upstream.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

I can see some reasons for doing this - in particular I've seen menus take a while to display properly while the icons get loaded.

But heck - it doesn't look 'clean' it looks incredibly plain; and from a UI point of view the icons help people navigate
faster rather than having to take the time to read the items.

I agree that these should come back - even if it means we have to keep a patch on top of Gnome.

Dave

[Andreas Nilsson (andreasn)]

Setting the two gconf keys to "true" specifically for Ubuntu is quite possible (as it's just a default setting that changed, no icons have been removed for those who wish to keep the old behavior), however, when mpt, Mark Shuttleworth and myself discussed this at the GNOME User Experience hackfest in October last fall, all three of us agreed it was a good idea (it might even have been Mark that first suggested it) and mpt have been very driving behind this change upstream.

[Vish (vish)]

From upstream comments , i dont think mpt was "driving" this change.
He was more reluctant against this move...
----------------
 Comment #14 from Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
2008-12-29 11:25 UTC [reply]

I agree with Jeff Schroeder (comment 12) in that merely setting
menus_have_icons=false by default, and doing nothing else, would not make
anyone happy and therefore should not be done. I think this bug report is a bit
confused because it started with a proposed solution rather than with a
problem.
----------------
He has been always driving for a better implementation of the idea rather than simply removing the icons...
Well... maybe his stance on this issue has changed ...
*only mpt can clarify on this* .

Consistency is essential but not at the cost of making *everything* bland .

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

mac_v, the key phrase in that quote of mine is "and doing nothing else". When I wrote that comment I did not know about the always-show-icons flag, and I was asking if such a flag existed. It does, and therefore setting menus_have_icons=false by default is a good step towards our goal of having fewer icons in menus. It may look a little odd for a week or two if you're used to icon-filled menus, similar to how 9.04's change in default font smoothing style might have looked a little odd for a week or two. So hang in there and see what you think after a few weeks.

Meanwhile, now that we have flicked the switch and set icons to be off by default, we need to fix relevant applications to match. You can help! Whenever you see a program that has menu items for objects where those menu items now don't include icons, report a bug on the program that it should use always-show-icons for those particular items. And conversely, whenever you see a program with icons on menu items for things that aren't objects, report a bug that the icons should be removed.

Examples of menu items that count as objects, and should therefore have icons: applications, documents (including any recent documents in a "File" menu), disks, partitions, folders, bookmarks, history items, IM accounts, IM statuses, user accounts.

Examples of menu items that don't count as objects, and should therefore *not* have icons: openable windows (e.g. "Edit" > "Preferences" or "Go" > "Edit Bookmarks"), toolbars (e.g. "View" > "Toolbars" > anything), actions (e.g. "Go" > "Back").

Unlike menus in Windows, whether a menu item has an equivalent toolbar button is irrelevant to whether the menu item should have an icon.

One bug that someone should report, if it hasn't been done already, is to ensure that the change made to Firefox trunk in <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504275> is also applied to the version of Firefox that ships with Karmic.

[Vish (vish)]

mpt , i'm not against this move , this was the weirdest thing i encountered when i started Using gnome & nautilus was that i found that *certain* context menu items dont have icons , initially i thought there was a bug in my install , but only later realized that those items dont have icons. the context menus are definitely odd with icons existing only for certain items.

*My only concern was that this move was done before the other applications have been patched* , but the other apps have to catch-up.

gtk_image_menu_item_set_always_show_image is not set by most of the applications ,

i'v started a separate bug for this, lets keep track of the applications that need icons>
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/408361 , Kindly subscribe to that bug and oversee the patches that are being done so that non-essential icons are not used.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

I'm sorry, I believe actions SHOULD have icons - they make the menus a LOT easier to navigate - why do you want perceived cleanliness to win over ease of use?

Dave

[Sandro Mani (sandromani)]

In my opinion this is a really bad design decision. I think a user actually reads the text of the context menu he uses often only the first few times, then remembers where the relevant entries are approximately located and simply locates them by the icon. Like this the user always has to double check and read if he is not by mistake pressing delete (maybe bypassing trash) instead of what he actually wanted.

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

just to be sure: you are talking about removing the icons from the "flip" and "rotate" actions in the attached screenshot? personally i think that would be a bad idea, but maybe i misunderstood what you are talking about or just am to stuck with what it used to be that i cannot imagine the change.

i always experienced that well-designed, self-explanatory icons used consistently throughout all applications are a great thing to have.

[antistress (antistress)]

concerning c#21, see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588668

[Oleksij Rempel (olerem)]

I tried to be passion and and to see if i can understand it. But i'm
not. Every time i open menu i need to reed it :0 ... . my work is now
slower, from about 1 second (like, see and click) i need now like 10
second (reed, find, click).. i need to work some time with other
languages gui.. and this is like brain corruption, i open menu and i
don't see anything. Ever worst are bookmarks in firefox . i'm not really
click person.. i like commandline and i can just tipe what i will. but
why after this i need bookmarks ... just remove bookmarks too, like you
did with icons.. or ... remove gui - it's not user friendly.
Icon is a symbol.
Letter is a symbol to.
How many brain time you need to reed one symbol or 20...30...50 symbols.

[Sandro Mani (sandromani)]

Just a side effect: this setting also prevents the icon displaying in the file-browser-applet even if the user explicitly chooses "Show applet icon".

[Taylor "Ripps" LeMasurier-Wren (ripps818)]

Disabling icons was a bad idea.
It's much easier for the brain to process a single image than to read text.
This is very unintuitive, and makes no sense from a usability standpoint.

[Sandro Mani (sandromani)]

Another issue: bug #387796 concerned actually _adding_ icons to the menu (for the open-with application list), it is sort of counter-productive to fix the bug there and then remove the icons again with this setting...

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

obviously this was a reallllyyyyy bad idea, but i wonder: is it going to be like this or you are going to enable icons again?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

fishor, Mozilla has restored the icons in Firefox's Bookmarks menu (bug 408361).

Taylor L-Wren, it is true that icons are more recognizable than text, but only for a few menu items. Unfortunately, those items are almost always interspersed with other menu items that have no possible obvious icons, so the gaps look distracting and ugly. (Microsoft in particular has been experimenting for years with different styles to try and prevent the gaps from looking distracting and ugly, with little success. Gnome and KDE theme developers haven't really even tried.) So, Gnome is now shifting to a model where dynamic objects -- applications, bookmarks, documents, folders, user accounts, wireless networks, and so on -- have icons by default, while all other items do not. There is a fairly high, though by no means perfect, correlation between these classes of menu item and the menu items that, considered alone, would benefit from an icon. Importantly for developers, it's a fairly easy guideline to follow. And importantly for users, the items representing dynamic objects are almost always clustered together in menu sections, avoiding the problem with ugly gaps.

Sandro Mani, applications are an example of the type of object that should have an icon when in a menu, so bug 387796 is quite appropriate.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

Matthew,
   I think where there are (fairly) universally recognised icons for things then they also make sense for actions on menus (e.g. 'play' and back and forward or print). While I understand that the gaps may look unsightly I believe that the benefit in ease of navigation is significant enough to significantly outway the minor appearance issue.

Dave

[Vish (vish)]

@mpt ,
The arrow icons [back , forward , up , down] are very clear by themselves and do not need labels.

But the labels are often different in different apps , for instance either forward / next is used by different apps throughout the system.

Why not remove the labels for these buttons and just have the icons? the label can be displayed as a tool-tip.
 - these action-buttons ,with icons-only, need to be assigned a specific location away from the other buttons, so that they dont look like the old ones[buttons]

 ^ Maybe something for the guidelines?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Dave Gilbert: So basically we disagree on the weight given to usefulness of an individual icon vs. the weight given to aesthetics of the menu as a whole, and there's no way to argue that convincingly one way or another. If it's any consolation, many of the actions that have highly-recognizable icons (e.g. Play, Pause, Back, Forward, Home) are usually accessed from dedicated buttons rather than the equivalent menu items anyway, so the lack of icons for those menu items will seldom make a difference.

mac_v: I agree on the general point that whether an icon, or a label, or both, is appropriate for a button depends much more on the button than on the user. For example, it would make sense for Yelp's (the help viewer's) toolbar to have icon-only buttons regardless of what your icon/label settings are for any other toolbar. Partly for that reason, I think the "System" > "Preferences" > "Appearance" > "Interface" > "Toolbar button labels" setting is misguided (though any further discussion of that should happen elsewhere). But I also think that it depends not only on the button but also on the window, which is where I have trouble with your example of Back and Forward. For example, Mac OS 8 and 9 used icon-only forward and back buttons in their assistants <http://mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_27/arcellana.html>. But that had a substantial disadvantage: it gave the thing you were most likely to want to click -- the Forward button -- one of the smallest target areas in the window.

[Vish (vish)]

On Thu, 2009-08-27 at 12:45 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> For example, Mac OS
> 8 and 9 used icon-only forward and back buttons in their assistants
> <http://mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_27/arcellana.html>. But that
> had a substantial disadvantage: it gave the thing you were most likely
> to want to click -- the Forward button -- one of the smallest target
> areas in the window.
>

Isn't the problem the size of the button "<" ">" ,
wouldn't it be solved if those buttons were larger "<---" "--->" ?
We just need make those icons horizontally challenged ;) and increase
the space used. to a similar size of the rest of the buttons.

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

at least nautilus should have an option that reads: "Enable Menu icons".
Maybe this is not the perfect solution but it is just an idea that came into my mind BUT maybe this is somewhere i do not know so, please make me know

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

maybe it is in gconf-editor and i do not know

[Sandro Mani (sandromani)]

It is in gconf-editor (ready through the previous comments and you will find the key), alternatively also under system->preferences->appearance->interface

[Marcus Carlson (0-launchpad-mejlamej-nu)]

> at least nautilus should have an option that reads: "Enable Menu icons".

Why? To make nautilus NOT look like the rest of the desktop?

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

i said it because i think nautilus is everything in gnome: desktop and file manager

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

Matthew: Yes, you're right it's a difference in balance - I'm a strong believer in usability being more important than aesthetics; having said that I'd much rather find a solution that satisfies both. I also don't believe I'm on my own, and I don't think everyone agrees that losing the icons improves aesthetics either - I happen to like them.

I understand your point about a lot of recognisable icons having separate buttons rather than being on a menu - but my view is that it's in the menus where the icons are important, since searching a menu for the item you want is slow, and this is especially true on complex apps with lots of menu options.

I think the big problem with icons is that people think they need to have an icon for everything and you get special ones made up that don't really help or are unclear.

(I wonder if anyone has looked at how icons help lightly-visually-impaired users, dyslexics or children navigate - it feels to me they should help them a lot - but I'm no expert).

Dave

[antistress (antistress)]

maybe i'm wrong but i believe that i would be more easier for the user if icons already display in the toolbar would be in also in menus
It would help users to find stuff
i.e i don't know in what menu is X. But X isquite similar to Y which is in the toolbar. Let's find Y in menus and i'll surely find X

Besides, while looking in menus for something that is not in toolbar, user would not lose time reading entries that already are in the toolbar since it would be clearly identified in menus thanks to their icons already display in the toolbar

what do you think ? why not displaying in menus icons already shown in toolbars ? By showing icon in toolbar and text in menu for the same thing, you don't facilitate things to the user!

[RainerT (tr-ml)]

Disagree with removal of icons.
This looks and feels like there are missing icons. -.-

[tgpraveen (tgpraveen89)]

@mpt while on the whole i agree removing icons was a good idea as it makes for a cleaner interface

but this as said in a previous comment really needs to be made a special case and allow icons for this.

"Me too. For example Close button is probably the most widely used button in all windows, but now it have no icon. Previously I could click it without thinking, but now... well, this is disaster, I'm completly inefficient. "

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

Look... I do not care about context icons BUT about "system menu" icons, it looks horrible that we got any other main menu icons and "System Menu" icons are gone, please pay attention to this

[Fabián Rodríguez (magicfab)]

I just came across this bug a few weeks ago when i started using alpha. When using another language in Ubuntu options change positions *and* names, and icons are the only way some options can be found quickly. Without such icons it's not impossible but certainly not so easy to find such options.

As a result I now have to write and maintain documentation about this.

[Revant Nandgaonkar (revant)]

I prefer enabling icons in: /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons
System > Preference > Appearance > Interface Tab > Select "Show icons in menus"

I keep it default (disabled) for
/desktop/gnome/interface/buttons_have_icons

This brings "system" menu back to normal and makes other menus cute again

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Fabián, which items without icons change order when you change language? That's probably a bug in itself.

[Gergely Fábián (gergely.fabian)]

Eg. elements in System and Administration menus change order as language changes (I have seen those menus in several lanugages), the order depends always on the alphabetic order of the current translations.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

That is no bug, they are sorted alphabetically afaik, which makes sense, but it takes some time to find the correct one in another language.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The software entries have icons and the system category order is fixed though there

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

I would just like to know why canonical took this decision

[Taylor "Ripps" LeMasurier-Wren (ripps818)]

@manzur
Canonical had nothing to do with this, it was all Gnome's.

[Vish (vish)]

Taylor "Ripps" L-Wren:
Pls read the initial comments , it was not all Gnome.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Gergely, I tried with French, Latin, Polish, and Portuguese, and none of the items in the System menu changed order. If you have a specific example of menu items without icons that change order in a particular language, please report that as a *separate* bug, including exactly which language you were using and exactly which items moved.

[Gergely Fábián (gergely.fabian)]

Sorry, it was a misunderstanding, the items in the System menu itself do not change order (I wanted to say Settings instead of System). Order is changed in Settings and Administration menus, but there *are* icons, so Fabián should tell which menus are those that have no icons and change order in different languages.

[Andreas Nilsson (andreasn)]

I agree with this change, but this is not a election, so I don't think those kind of comments adds any additional value to the bug report.

#80 "...and makes other menus cute again"
A cute looking Operating System is not something I think we should strive for. Cute stuff could make you forgive the OS easier (like the stupid Sony robot), but a professional looking one will make you trust it to begin with.

[Revant Nandgaonkar (revant)]

I support decisions taken by gnome developers and I also thank them for keeping enable/disable option open for me to choose how my menus look.

#90 I didnt want to target your comment with the word "Cute"
I took it as:
"clean and slick" and "cute" are two options available

I also believe clean and slick is the future. It will make the gnome look standard and polished over all types of resolutions.

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

Let's organize things my friend... Ok canonical desired to have this option off by default OK, no problem for that... But there is a bug in here.. What thing is context menu icons and other completely different is menu Icons, like system menu one... those options should be separated, Don't they?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The same guidelines apply to menu items no matter what type of menu they're in. For example, the use of icons in Nautilus's "Open With" submenu should be exactly the same regardless of whether you are opening that submenu via the context menu or the "File" menu. And icons in buttons and icons in menu items already are covered by separate options.

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

So why do we have no icons in the System menu, if they are already separated options?

[Vish (vish)]

On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 15:09 +0000, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> I agree with this change, but this is not a election, so I don't think
> those kind of comments adds any additional value to the bug report.
>
>
> #80 "...and makes other menus cute again"
> A cute looking Operating System is not something I think we should strive for. Cute stuff could make you forgive the OS easier (like the stupid Sony robot), but a professional looking one will make you trust it to begin with.
>
@Andreas Nilsson:
I agree that we should strive forward for a professional looking OS.
Also agree that the *present* haphazard arrangement ,of icons and no
icons in menu, makes the menu look a bit incomplete.

I wouldnt say that icons are just for cuteness though. And stripping
down *all* the icons doesnt necessarily make OS professional.

Icons are very useful for quick navigation , of the menus , as they can
catch the attention more easily. And as the saying goes... a picture is
worth a thousand words.... ;p

Flipping the gconf only hides the problem of the haphazard menu items ,
Until the guidelines are finalized.

Quoting mpt from the usability mailing list:
"... Even then, I think icons should either be used for every item in a section
(between the end of a menu and a separator, or between two menu separators),.."

But such a cleanup of the menus and icons would be a much harder
process, and making a guideline even tougher , than just flipping a
gconf. A fair trade-off for the time-being, i guess ;)

On a sidenote:
The design team seems to have observed ,during user testing , whether
lack of icons made it harder to use the shutdown menu. And had not seen
any indications of difficulty using the menu without icons...
[ I *suspect* that such tests were only conducted in users either new to
Ubuntu OS or are new computer users]

Such a test , would be a highly biased test and not a
reasonable/reliable indicator of the usefulness or need for the icons.
- Any new user would *always* read the menu option listed and not
initially depend on the icon.

Icons become more recognizable over a period of usage and help navigate
quicker only when a user is familiar with the system, rather than
initially.

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

I do not really care about context menu with no icons BUT I'll never agree about having NO icons Under system menu, those are different this, and it is really horrible to have some "main menu" menu with icons and some other with no one like is the case of "System menu" and some icons under "Places" menu as well, It looks really a bug in the case it isn't... They should be separated options and they should be really be enabled, do u people get the idea?

[antistress (antistress)]

i'm not against the decision to remove icons but i agree with manzur : having icons in Applications and Palces and not in System looks like a bug to the user

[komputes (komputes)]

I have no issue with icons being turned off, but turning them back on should be a easy consistent, which it is not.

The location for this preference:
System > Preferences > Appearance > Interface (Tab)
The option that turns it on/off:
Show Icons In menu

1) The issue with this is why would someone go to "Appearance" instead of right clicking the menu and selecting "Edit Menus".
2) Show Icons In menu does not turn off all icons. There should be one checkbox to turn all icons off/on or there should be one checkbox for each (Applications, Places, System)
3) Even with icons disabled, "Control Centre" icon is displayed

Until the layout and logic behind this choice are completed, I think the best course of action is to keep displaying all icons by default in karmic.

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

a developer could tell me if I am wrong?
can we have system menu back even with context menus disabled by default?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Only by violating the guidelines for which items should have icons. None of the top-level items in the System menu obviously represent applications, files, documents, people etc, so they shouldn't and don't have icons.

It is true that the "Show icons in menus" option is badly worded, but it has had that same problem ever since it was introduced years ago.

[Nedenom (nedenom)]

Guidelines or not... think practical, in the end the missing icons in System and Places menus look like a bug to the common user. It doesn't look clean or professional, but rather opposite; buggy, incomplete, inconsistent. Is this Linux for Human Beings or Linux for Guideline Obsessives?

[laurent (laurent-wozniak)]

Style or Usability ?
The eternal debate between graphic designers and people from ergonomics.
Each group evaluates usability its own way. Basically:
One says nicer is better (because aesthetic design ...),
the other focus on methods and numbers (measuring user efficiency ...).

I've seen them fighting at work for such a long time...

Let's forget this debate for a while,
and let the user choose, in the easiest manner.
The user should be able to decide what's better for him.
He should not be imposed choices by some pretending to know the way he works better than him.

For now, to choose you want icons in both menus and buttons is just a pain.
If you don't have read it from other people complaining,
you have no chance to find it.
Especially, the Gnome Registry should not be considered as a gui and therefore is not the way to go.

PROPOSAL:

When you open "Appearance Preference", the first thing you see are visual summary of themes.
If we put those 2 preferences (icons in menus and buttons) directly inside themes,
we could see in a glance themes with or without icons.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/6513/themes.png

The customize theme dialog would have a new tab "Controls Icons" containing those 2 prefs.
Then let theme designers create clean themes or themes with icons.
For example, Ubuntu could have a "Human" and a "Human Clean" theme,
and choose which one is the default (by voting or whatever).
And the default theme in Gnome, Clearlooks, would have no icons.

So graphic designers would be happy to have more control on the design of their themes.
And users would be happy to easily choose the aesthetic/usability they prefer.

Firefox is using this way with its theme.
For example, when you are on Mac OS with Firefox, the default theme has no icon in bookmarks, just like Safari.
If you feel that makes bookmarks unusable, and you want them back like on Linux or Windows, you just pick-up another theme and problem solved.

[ubuntolo (ovitaerc)]

Reading comments here is clear enough that a lot of users (including me) saw the missing icons as a bug. Guidelines are good tools to give consistency, but we should also concentrate on *what* we perceive as "consistent".
A main menu with tree items, where the indentation clearly shows that something is missing on a number of menu items is just inconsistent.
To the end user the theory of item and non-item menu object is just a technical aspect, what he/she can see is an inconsistent looking menu.

[kgeist (casteg)]

I also thought there was a bug when I noticed missing icons in the main menu, that's why I came across this page.

I appreciate the idea of UI "consistence" and "balance", but it's getting too inefficient. Let me explain: my OS is in Russian while lots of programs still miss the Russian documentation (or have 50-90% or so), tutorials etc., so I usually read it in English. English docs and how-to stuff on the internet have lots of screenshots: where to locate the menu, where to click etc. The trick is that every time I read some article, I need to map the English-language interface which I see on a pic to the Russian-language interface which I have on my machine. It was a pretty simple task prior to 9.10: I just relied on icons. Now, with icons gone, it's very frustrating (I'm glad that the option can be reverted, but since every ubuntu release I have to make more and more actions to make simple things work, I'm like feeling this option will disappear in 10.04 - so please, make icons default :) ).

[David Wood (dtwood)]

As much as I do agree that going back on the old way of including icons on every menu item possible is a good (both productively and aesthetically) change, I do feel that the lack of icons on actions on the main panel menu items is a step backwards in aesthetics (see screenshot-1), and feels to a user as if the icon should be there, because the other items all have icons, and the option to change their icon is in the menu editor. I therefore propose that 'essential' icons, present across almost all programs should have icons, but 'non-essential' icons should no. I believe that these 'essential' icons should be limited to the following: File: New, Open, Save, Save As, Print, Print Preview, and the recent files list; Edit: Undo, Redo, Copy and Paste; View: None; Search: Find...; and Help: Contents and About (the icon for which I think should be changed to the actions/gtk-info icon). Of course this is simply my opinion as a Ubuntu user, and should of course be put to community review, but could you please create a system to put this to review. Alternatively this feature could be implemented with a option in the menu editor (right click on panel menu -> Edit Menus) with "Enable icons for all menu items", and a checkbox in System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Interface with the option to "Show icons on common menu items"

Thank you.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

@mercedes

Please don't change bug status without a comment.

[Kolargol00 (kolargol00)]

Default menus in 10.04 Beta2 are also inconsistent: Applications and Places menus have icons, while System menu has no icons (and its sub-menus do have icons). Moreover, the option to enable icons in menus has been removed from the Appearance control panel.

[Krzysztof Kosinski (tweenk)]

"So, Gnome is now shifting to a model where dynamic objects -- applications, bookmarks, documents, folders, user accounts, wireless networks, and so on -- have icons by default, while all other items do not."

What? This is completely backwards. Dynamic objects should not have items, while actions and dialogs should.

When you have "dynamic objects" in a menu, 90% of the time all will have the same icon. This is the case for example with Recent Documents menu, disks, folders, wireless networks, and bookmarks pointing to the same site. The usefulness of icons in such cases is minimal, because most of the time you have to read the text. Moreover, clicking on any of the icons usually represents the same action (e.g. opening a recent document).

On the other hand, each action or operation in an app (like any of the path boolean operations in Inkscape) is very different. By giving them icons, the user can associate an image with a specific action being performed on the document. This gives a large and very noticeable speed boost.

At the minimum, the Interface tab should be brought back. Forcing users to drop their productivity in e.g. Inkscape and GIMP by several percent in the name of some rather abstract "UI consistency" and not giving them an option to revert to pre-Lucid behavior is unacceptable.

BTW, I also do not see what is the problem with "gaps" created by iconless menu items. The gaps will be present even if no menu item has an icon, because some of them have checkboxes and radio buttons. Taking away icons doesn't solve anything in this regard.

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

Dave Gilbert: (and otheres)
My brother is dyslexic and I have also for a long time had a deficient time writing and reading. We both prefer navigating using visual ques rather then text. The fact that the option to enable all icons has been removed in 10.04 is doing us a grate disservice. If nothing else it should be added to the Accessibility tool.

[Pacho Ramos (pacho)]

Is people aware this was an upstream decision and not an Ubuntu one?

[Pevzi (pevzi)]

> Applications and Places menus have icons, while System menu has no icons (and its sub-menus do have icons). Moreover, the option to enable icons in menus has been removed from the Appearance control panel.

That's right. Menu looks very ugly now.

[Pevzi (pevzi)]

And icons can be returned to their native places only using gconf-editor. Not very user-friendly -_-

[Kolargol00 (kolargol00)]

Icon presence in default GNOME menus is still inconsistent in 10.04 RC. Please fix this flaw even if it comes from upstream.

[Pevzi (pevzi)]

> Icon presence in default GNOME menus is still inconsistent in 10.04 RC. Please fix this flaw even if it comes from upstream.

+1

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Kolargol00 and Pevzi, if you have any specific examples of inconsistent use of icons, please report them as separate bugs. Thanks.