6 ms·

New VS Code icon is ugly

66 points by jack1243star 9y ago

porfirium 9y ago
Bad thing about being a designer is that most of the time you have to justify your existence by redesigning things that don't need a redesign.
- philipov 9y ago
  So... the bad thing about being a designer is that it's not a viable full-time profession?
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    The same can be said for developers. 90% of jobs will soon be automated.
    - philipov 9y ago
      I don't know about 90% of all jobs, nor how soon, but as a developer, I see that as my purpose. I build things so I don't have to do the heavy lifting myself. I automate as much as possible and train others to do the maintenance so I can move on to building the next thing. If you're stuck in a rut trying to justify your existence with pointless busy-work, this suggests there isn't enough demand for your real work. Architects don't squat on a house they've built for someone, trying to constantly tear it down and redesign it. If no one needs you to design a new house, and redesigning the same house every year is the only work you can find, maybe there are too many architects out there.
- nkozyra 9y ago
  Surely that can't be the case at MS, they have so many other UX challenges across products that there can't be a need for designer busy work, right? This icon was jarring for me though I rarely use vscode. But I thought it noteworthy that it doesn't share the aesthetic of the application, which makes it tough to mentally map icon to app. I passed by it in my dock twice before making the connection. That's a design problem.
  - StevePerkins 9y ago
    I have a hard time distinguishing parody from seriousness when it comes to UX. The previous icon was a purple "Jesus fish". The new icon is an orange Jesus fish, enclosed by a bottom and right border. Either of those things "mentally maps" to a programmer's text editor?
- Kenji 9y ago
  The worst thing about being a designer is that everyone can look at your work and think they have a clue even though they aren't experts. That's why I like low level programming. No project manager is going to look at your lockfree ringbuffer and tell you that it should be a few bytes larger.
epmaybe 9y ago
On a related note, I felt that the previous sublime text icon was better.
- eat_veggies 9y ago
  I liked the old butter pat design but the new zigzag is pretty slick. I could go with either, especially since I don't see icons anymore now that I use i3 + rofi
- khamisiyah 9y ago
  I thought so too initially, but I've since grown to like the new simple flat S design. Humans in general are probably opposed to changes to things they've grown accustomed to, so naturally it takes a while to adjust to new stuff.
nagVenkat 9y ago
here is a link that is talking about redesign of icons: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2017/08/29/new-vs-code-icons.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2017/08/29/new-vs-...
andrepd 9y ago
It all boils down to this: if it's fine, let it be. See the subl text icon, the endless redesigns of perfectly good tools and programs that serve only to annoy those already used to the interface. There is such a thing as good enough. Changing stuff every x months for the sake of changing it is dumb.
- gonzo41 9y ago
  It's the VS code devs trying to hang on to the good stuff while the going's still good.
JoBrad 9y ago
The updates on this issue (and the linked post to the MS blog) explain the reasoning a bit more. I found a lot of the community-submitted designs to be quite nice. https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/6607 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/6607
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  I was passively confused with the new icon but the rationale just annoys me. They want to make it feel like the full VS icon, but with a gap to signify it's not the full experience. They made the icon incomplete because they thinks devs can't tell them apart (and honestly some of the people I talk to can't, maybe they should have used a different name?) It reeks of some sales guys complaining that devs won't be able to tell it's not the VS they make commissions on, ignoring the fact VS code can make MS money though getting developer mindshare on an MS product again.
  - JoBrad 9y ago
    > We feel that the icon denotes "openness". It conveys that VS Code is (in a good way) a subset of our big brother, the Visual Studio IDE.
eugeneionesco 9y ago
If this is the main problem people are complaining about, I am impressed by Code :) What a great tool from Microsoft!
- Sylos 9y ago
  Well, it's not the main problem. Just a new problem, therefore gathers new attention. The main problem people have with it is the resource usage, as it's built with Electron. There's an abundance of text editors available and there's generally only minor differences between them, so people will weigh up those minor differences all the more.
  - WalterGR 9y ago
    The main problem people have with it is the resource usage From what I've read on HN, people seem to generally like VS Code. (Replies to this comment by people who don't notwithstanding.) So is resource usage the main problem of people who use VS Code, or is it the main problem of people who don't like Electron?
    - swalsh 9y ago
      VS Code is my primary editor. I don't really find myself having any issues with resource usage. Of course, I have 16GB of memory on my primary and secondary machines.
    - Sylos 9y ago
      I don't see what purpose this differentiation serves. It's a problem for people that like the text editor enough in other aspects to still use it and it's a problem in that many people will not use it, due to the resource usage not weighing up with potential other advantages for them. And I really would not think all too hard about the opinion that an open online community seems to have about a product of a bigger company. It's gotta be beyond trivial for Microsoft's PR department to steer the mood in threads about their products by deploying vote bots and a few workers that write enthusiastic comments.
yummy 9y ago
It's so bad that I had to switch to WebStorm. At least their icons don't suck...
andai 9y ago
> This is a very critical show-stopper for serious coding and needs to be changed.
manojlds 9y ago
The icon really put me off. It almost feels like colors are inverted and makes you think for a sec if the app is corrupted or something.
te_chris 9y ago
God, we programmers are such babies.
- bartread 9y ago
  Yeah... but it is at least slightly funny seeing how angry the internet has got about this. I must admit, I do agree with the basic sentiment of the bug report though: the new icon is pretty fuggers.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
titanix2 9y ago
The old one was also not as neat as the Visual Studio equivalent. That’s why I made my own and changed from the "get info" menu of Mac OS. But each update override that icon again so I got fed up of changing it each month. The new one is puzzling: it looks like the Visual Studio icon (which is still nowhere near as beautiful as the 2010 version), but the left part is missing. Is it a subtle way to tell that Code is an incomplete VS product?
- dom0 9y ago
  I have to agree, VS2010 had the most beautiful icon of any Microsoft IDE.
herve76 9y ago
Switch to the insider version it has better logo. It is green.
spacetexas 9y ago
Why Orange when the editor's main color is blue? Does not look right.
drngdds 9y ago
It really is. Is there somewhere I can download the old icon and some way that I could use it as a replacement? (I'm on Linux; Ubuntu with Gnome shell specifically.)
- bdz 9y ago
  Old icon: https://cl.ly/2L1K0Q341g29 https://cl.ly/2L1K0Q341g29 Replace it with the one in /usr/share/icons/ https://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/icons.html.en https://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/icons.h...
wejick 9y ago
Can't agree more
whipoodle 9y ago
Well, it is.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
Is it really that hard to compile it with a different icon? There is probably a whole department on the payroll at Microsoft that decided this icon change after several long meetings. Just compile your own and let them do their thing.
- Tarean 9y ago
  At least on windows and mac it is really easy to replace it with another icon as well. Probably would have to redo it with each update but still easier than compiling from scratch.
swalsh 9y ago
I actually like the new icon :\
ameshkov 9y ago
Sublime 3 and VS Code icons have the same colors now, confuses me every time I am trying to run any of them from the dock.
VeejayRampay 9y ago
Finally, I thought I was alone in this. I ended up replacing the icon with one that a designer posted online, but on a Mac, I still see the ugly icon when I Cmd-tab between apps. If anyone has a solution for this, I'm all ears.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- akras14 9y ago
  https://www.alexkras.com/restoring-original-visual-studio-code-icon/ https://www.alexkras.com/restoring-original-visual-studio-co...
chirau 9y ago
I've always supposed HN to be growing very petty. This is just further proof. Really? It's an icon. An icon! And we are spending time deliberating on this? I am now really curious as to the demographics of HN these days. It is clearly not the same place as yesteryear. I'll probably be down voted into oblivion as well but this is the truth. Stop being petty and worry about things that actually matter.
- na85 9y ago
  It's on github, right? Isn't the point of open source that someone can fork it, revert the icon, and call it "IconStudio Code" or something? Why all the fuss?
  - Sylos 9y ago
    Because not all issues are worth forking. You introduce another delay for security updates to get through (and this text editor has a browser under the hood, so very much needs security updates) and you get a not necessarily trustworthy and not necessarily dependable third party into the mix. They could ship malware in their build or abandon updating the software at any point.
- StevePerkins 9y ago
  A lot of things make it to the front page here, not because they are profound or inspire great passion, but simply because... well, they're kinda funny! At least, I assume that is the case here. But yes, the thing that MAKES it amusing is that some non-trivial portion of the readership will debate it seriously.
- rnd33 9y ago
  Well it's branding, and I get the feeling branding is pretty important to the HN crowd.
- falcolas 9y ago
  It’s just another example of bike shedding. Everyone has an opinion about icons, and feels qualified enough to offer up that opinion.
krylon 9y ago
There is part of me who is embarrassed to even think about this, because from a certain perspective, the icon is so irrelevant. If I like the program, I will use it, no matter how ugly the icon is. But having said that, the new icon does look rather weird (and not in a good way), and why did they change the icon in the first place?
maxxxxx 9y ago
Just leave the $%$@$!@##$ icons alone! I hate it when my status bar changes and I have to look for the icon. Whenever a company changes icons I see it as a sign of decline. They are out of ideas to make the product better so they just do some busywork and shuffle the UI around.
thesmallestcat 9y ago
This is absurd because every OS lets you change the icon so you can use the old one if you want. OSX makes it especially easy.
inevitable2 9y ago
Program icons - a man-made problem, and which only appears on graphic-focused desktops… (Disclaimer: I open all my editors by entering the program name or a shortcut thereof/thereto, so am not required to choose it by an icon.)

66 points by jack1243star 9y ago

Bad thing about being a designer is that most of the time you have to justify your existence by redesigning things that don't need a redesign.

philipov 9y ago
So... the bad thing about being a designer is that it's not a viable full-time profession?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  The same can be said for developers. 90% of jobs will soon be automated.
  - philipov 9y ago
    I don't know about 90% of all jobs, nor how soon, but as a developer, I see that as my purpose. I build things so I don't have to do the heavy lifting myself. I automate as much as possible and train others to do the maintenance so I can move on to building the next thing. If you're stuck in a rut trying to justify your existence with pointless busy-work, this suggests there isn't enough demand for your real work. Architects don't squat on a house they've built for someone, trying to constantly tear it down and redesign it. If no one needs you to design a new house, and redesigning the same house every year is the only work you can find, maybe there are too many architects out there.
nkozyra 9y ago
Surely that can't be the case at MS, they have so many other UX challenges across products that there can't be a need for designer busy work, right? This icon was jarring for me though I rarely use vscode. But I thought it noteworthy that it doesn't share the aesthetic of the application, which makes it tough to mentally map icon to app. I passed by it in my dock twice before making the connection. That's a design problem.
- StevePerkins 9y ago
  I have a hard time distinguishing parody from seriousness when it comes to UX. The previous icon was a purple "Jesus fish". The new icon is an orange Jesus fish, enclosed by a bottom and right border. Either of those things "mentally maps" to a programmer's text editor?
Kenji 9y ago
The worst thing about being a designer is that everyone can look at your work and think they have a clue even though they aren't experts. That's why I like low level programming. No project manager is going to look at your lockfree ringbuffer and tell you that it should be a few bytes larger.

epmaybe 9y ago

On a related note, I felt that the previous sublime text icon was better.

eat_veggies 9y ago
I liked the old butter pat design but the new zigzag is pretty slick. I could go with either, especially since I don't see icons anymore now that I use i3 + rofi
khamisiyah 9y ago
I thought so too initially, but I've since grown to like the new simple flat S design. Humans in general are probably opposed to changes to things they've grown accustomed to, so naturally it takes a while to adjust to new stuff.

nagVenkat 9y ago

here is a link that is talking about redesign of icons: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2017/08/29/new-vs-code-icons.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2017/08/29/new-vs-...

andrepd 9y ago

It all boils down to this: if it's fine, let it be. See the subl text icon, the endless redesigns of perfectly good tools and programs that serve only to annoy those already used to the interface. There is such a thing as good enough. Changing stuff every x months for the sake of changing it is dumb.

gonzo41 9y ago
It's the VS code devs trying to hang on to the good stuff while the going's still good.

JoBrad 9y ago

The updates on this issue (and the linked post to the MS blog) explain the reasoning a bit more. I found a lot of the community-submitted designs to be quite nice. https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/6607 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/6607

BoorishBears 9y ago
I was passively confused with the new icon but the rationale just annoys me. They want to make it feel like the full VS icon, but with a gap to signify it's not the full experience. They made the icon incomplete because they thinks devs can't tell them apart (and honestly some of the people I talk to can't, maybe they should have used a different name?) It reeks of some sales guys complaining that devs won't be able to tell it's not the VS they make commissions on, ignoring the fact VS code can make MS money though getting developer mindshare on an MS product again.
- JoBrad 9y ago
  > We feel that the icon denotes "openness". It conveys that VS Code is (in a good way) a subset of our big brother, the Visual Studio IDE.

eugeneionesco 9y ago

If this is the main problem people are complaining about, I am impressed by Code :) What a great tool from Microsoft!

Sylos 9y ago
Well, it's not the main problem. Just a new problem, therefore gathers new attention. The main problem people have with it is the resource usage, as it's built with Electron. There's an abundance of text editors available and there's generally only minor differences between them, so people will weigh up those minor differences all the more.
- WalterGR 9y ago
  The main problem people have with it is the resource usage From what I've read on HN, people seem to generally like VS Code. (Replies to this comment by people who don't notwithstanding.) So is resource usage the main problem of people who use VS Code, or is it the main problem of people who don't like Electron?
  - swalsh 9y ago
    VS Code is my primary editor. I don't really find myself having any issues with resource usage. Of course, I have 16GB of memory on my primary and secondary machines.
  - Sylos 9y ago
    I don't see what purpose this differentiation serves. It's a problem for people that like the text editor enough in other aspects to still use it and it's a problem in that many people will not use it, due to the resource usage not weighing up with potential other advantages for them. And I really would not think all too hard about the opinion that an open online community seems to have about a product of a bigger company. It's gotta be beyond trivial for Microsoft's PR department to steer the mood in threads about their products by deploying vote bots and a few workers that write enthusiastic comments.

yummy 9y ago

It's so bad that I had to switch to WebStorm. At least their icons don't suck...

andai 9y ago

> This is a very critical show-stopper for serious coding and needs to be changed.

manojlds 9y ago

The icon really put me off. It almost feels like colors are inverted and makes you think for a sec if the app is corrupted or something.

te_chris 9y ago

God, we programmers are such babies.

bartread 9y ago
Yeah... but it is at least slightly funny seeing how angry the internet has got about this. I must admit, I do agree with the basic sentiment of the bug report though: the new icon is pretty fuggers.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

titanix2 9y ago

The old one was also not as neat as the Visual Studio equivalent. That’s why I made my own and changed from the "get info" menu of Mac OS. But each update override that icon again so I got fed up of changing it each month. The new one is puzzling: it looks like the Visual Studio icon (which is still nowhere near as beautiful as the 2010 version), but the left part is missing. Is it a subtle way to tell that Code is an incomplete VS product?

dom0 9y ago
I have to agree, VS2010 had the most beautiful icon of any Microsoft IDE.

herve76 9y ago

Switch to the insider version it has better logo. It is green.

spacetexas 9y ago

Why Orange when the editor's main color is blue? Does not look right.

drngdds 9y ago

It really is. Is there somewhere I can download the old icon and some way that I could use it as a replacement? (I'm on Linux; Ubuntu with Gnome shell specifically.)

bdz 9y ago
Old icon: https://cl.ly/2L1K0Q341g29 https://cl.ly/2L1K0Q341g29 Replace it with the one in /usr/share/icons/ https://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/icons.html.en https://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/icons.h...

wejick 9y ago

Can't agree more

whipoodle 9y ago

Well, it is.

cup-of-tea 9y ago

Is it really that hard to compile it with a different icon? There is probably a whole department on the payroll at Microsoft that decided this icon change after several long meetings. Just compile your own and let them do their thing.

Tarean 9y ago
At least on windows and mac it is really easy to replace it with another icon as well. Probably would have to redo it with each update but still easier than compiling from scratch.

swalsh 9y ago

I actually like the new icon :\

ameshkov 9y ago

Sublime 3 and VS Code icons have the same colors now, confuses me every time I am trying to run any of them from the dock.

VeejayRampay 9y ago

Finally, I thought I was alone in this. I ended up replacing the icon with one that a designer posted online, but on a Mac, I still see the ugly icon when I Cmd-tab between apps. If anyone has a solution for this, I'm all ears.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
akras14 9y ago
https://www.alexkras.com/restoring-original-visual-studio-code-icon/ https://www.alexkras.com/restoring-original-visual-studio-co...

chirau 9y ago

I've always supposed HN to be growing very petty. This is just further proof. Really? It's an icon. An icon! And we are spending time deliberating on this? I am now really curious as to the demographics of HN these days. It is clearly not the same place as yesteryear. I'll probably be down voted into oblivion as well but this is the truth. Stop being petty and worry about things that actually matter.

na85 9y ago
It's on github, right? Isn't the point of open source that someone can fork it, revert the icon, and call it "IconStudio Code" or something? Why all the fuss?
- Sylos 9y ago
  Because not all issues are worth forking. You introduce another delay for security updates to get through (and this text editor has a browser under the hood, so very much needs security updates) and you get a not necessarily trustworthy and not necessarily dependable third party into the mix. They could ship malware in their build or abandon updating the software at any point.
StevePerkins 9y ago
A lot of things make it to the front page here, not because they are profound or inspire great passion, but simply because... well, they're kinda funny! At least, I assume that is the case here. But yes, the thing that MAKES it amusing is that some non-trivial portion of the readership will debate it seriously.
rnd33 9y ago
Well it's branding, and I get the feeling branding is pretty important to the HN crowd.
falcolas 9y ago
It’s just another example of bike shedding. Everyone has an opinion about icons, and feels qualified enough to offer up that opinion.

krylon 9y ago

There is part of me who is embarrassed to even think about this, because from a certain perspective, the icon is so irrelevant. If I like the program, I will use it, no matter how ugly the icon is. But having said that, the new icon does look rather weird (and not in a good way), and why did they change the icon in the first place?

maxxxxx 9y ago

Just leave the $%$@$!@##$ icons alone! I hate it when my status bar changes and I have to look for the icon. Whenever a company changes icons I see it as a sign of decline. They are out of ideas to make the product better so they just do some busywork and shuffle the UI around.

thesmallestcat 9y ago

This is absurd because every OS lets you change the icon so you can use the old one if you want. OSX makes it especially easy.

inevitable2 9y ago

Program icons - a man-made problem, and which only appears on graphic-focused desktops… (Disclaimer: I open all my editors by entering the program name or a shortcut thereof/thereto, so am not required to choose it by an icon.)