Taskbar icon obviousness

[funkydude]

Copy-paste from IRC:

the taskbar icon is awful as someone who is colour-blind
cannot tell the difference between talking and not whatsoever
it's easy to tell in mumble itself due to the white background, the "waves" next to the person are obvious
I think I'd rather it be the actual mumble icon when not talking
as a "person" while idle doesn't represent what kind of program it is
then have the talking guy when talking
that will make the difference pretty obvious

[xpoke]

Most of this issue is due to how Mumble handles toolbar icons (at least by default).
Resources for toolbar icon and main window are shared, and when given the choice to fix the toolbar by changing the main window visuals I opted to disregard toolbar icon issues. I still do.

An existing option in the Mumble UI options is "Show talking status in the tray icon", which is on by default. Personally I turn off this feature to have the real Mumble icon show there (but it still changes if you are muted/deafened), but this doesn't show if you are talking or not. It is still very similar to what you want.

I propose a few options, which will need to be taken care of in mumble main:

1. When not talking and not muted/deafened, show mumble icon. When the status changes, show the current icon.
2. Same as 1, but overlay the icon on top of a "background" resource svg - in the case of the default theme, a white circle (similar to mumble's icon background).- so it'll be highly visible on the tray. This will look good imo.
3. Whole different set of resources for tray icon - obviously lots of work for skinners but also the most versatile. Resources should go in a separate folder for sanity. A simple check could see if the folder exists, and if not, use same logic as right now.
4. Change Mumble's default of "Show talking status in the tray icon" to off, and leave it at that.

Thoughts?

[funkydude]

I like 1, but I admit that 2 might work, I just can't visualize it in my head. It would be something I'd need to see to comment on.

I can't comment on 3 and I don't think 4 is a good idea.

[xpoke]

I made a quick mockup for both options -
1 -

2 -

Option 3 would probably have even slightly changed background hue for each state - giving an even better indication or better contrast.

Note that the windows color scheme is user-selectable which can lead to things like this:

[xpoke]

Another take for option 2 with better contrast:

[mkrautz]

Use the dark one for the Dark variant, and the light one for the Lite variant?

[mkrautz]

Like option 2. It requires a change in Mumble, correct?

[xpoke]

I don't think they should be different according to variant - svg resources are shared and also we should just pick the better looking one. These aren't final versions but just mock ups, but the dark version has way better contrast at that size.
And yeah, it would require change in Mumble.

[Kissaki]

Is this still an issue? In my taskbar icon I can see the talking state by "sound wave" indicators next to the person icon when transmission is active. So I guess this has been resolved?

[funkydude]

I wouldn't know as we don't use Mumble anymore. From what you've described it sounds like it hasn't changed at all and thus is still an issue. The solution posted by @xpoke in picture 2 would have been the best solution.