Lucid updates messaging menu icon

By , Published April 14, 2010

Another day another new icon! This time the trusty ol’ envelope of the Messaging Menu applet has recieved a, in my opinion rather logical, new design.

When there are no messages or alerts the Messaging Menus’ envelope icon displays itself as ‘open’. I.e. You’ve read your messages.

When there are alerts or messages waiting to be read the envelope displays itself as sealed, in a vibrant attention seeking colour.

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Subtle icon changes in Lucid of late
  2. Lucid adds green messaging alert. REALLY green messaging alert.
  3. Applications in Ubuntu 10.04 Messaging Menu get Renamed
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  • Anonymous

    Easier to see that we have new messages with this new icons.

    • Mohan

      Yep, pretty cool!

  • Iswanto

    Nice…

  • Paul

    Slightly offtopic but have they put Google back as the default search engine? In beta 2 it wasn’t and Lucid code freeze is coming up tomorrow…

    • Anonymous

      yes they did.

  • Anonymous

    Thought this kind of changes would not happen anymore until the final release..

  • http://ubuntuzoom.com/ Lucid_Lynx

    so the icon is still green? why not closed when you have to read something and open if you have read the messages?

    • Warren

      because thats illogical :P

      • http://ubuntuzoom.com/ Lucid_Lynx

        not for me :P … I mean if you want to know what’s inside a box/letter envelope you must to open it so if you se the “closed” icon you should understand that there is something to read.
        Sorry for my english :D

        PS I don’t like the “rainbow coloured icons”

        • Warren

          that is how its shown!

          ha! rainbow, its only green :P

          • http://ubuntuzoom.com/ Lucid_Lynx

            In a old post I have read about red icons too if there are problems or this kind of things

          • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

            Because open/closed is a subtle change =)

            And although red it’s nice for attention, bright purple would fit much better for the purpose, considering the desktop colours =)

    • http://twitter.com/gebagu Grigori

      it is that way. plus the additional »get my attention« green.
      and it’s not illogical, my mail at least, comes in closed envelopes ;p

      • http://ubuntuzoom.com/ Lucid_Lynx

        If you read your emails you can understand the meaning of a closed/open envelope … all this colours will drive me crazy

  • http://twitter.com/gebagu Grigori

    hmm, looks as if it’s angry :D

    • Mike

      agreed, Angry that you have no messages perhaps. :)

      • http://twitter.com/gebagu Grigori

        thought so too.
        i can imagine those long afternoons to come, sitting in front of my desktop. a bale of straw blowing past in the wind. and the angry no-new-messages monster just stares at me. stock-still and merciless. brrr. :D

  • Anonymous

    What if it glowed white instead of turning green?
    Maybe animated glow as well.

    We have the monochrome icons for the panels + green + red + orange for the menu.
    They should call it ubuntu-tricolor icon set:)

    • http://ubuntuzoom.com/ Lucid_Lynx

      exactly … that’s what I mean

  • Zsolt Sándor

    I’d still prefer a freakin’ pink pony marching across the display. :D

    • Anonymous

      and the mouse should be progressively dragged to the applet and an high pitch sound until you actually click it?
      =))

  • Anonymous

    Very nice

  • Anonymous

    That’s awesome – I mentioned in a comment here before I was hoping to see something like this, and I’m excited it has come to pass.

    …still don’t care much for the green, though. I think the different shades would be sufficient (gray vs white) now that the icon itself changes shape.

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    Looks good.

  • none

    It looks bad and nobody ever used an open letter to indicate “no messages”. After you read a letter, you usually close it, you don’t leave it open. Green is also a pretty random color, if you are asking for user’s attention, you should go with yellow/red. Everything else makes no sense.

  • Anonymous

    gr8

  • SeventhR

    I’d prefer to see an Envelope with a letter sticking out the top of it when we have a notice/message and a closed Envelope when everything is normal.

    • John

      +1000

      • http://cldx.blogspot.com/ Joern Konopka

        totally

    • daas88

      Great idea!

  • Anonymous

    One can easily tell that d0od is still unhappy about the greenness of the icon.

  • Anonymous

    why not make it glow orange? in keeping with ubuntu style….green is not a colour used in the ubuntu desktop at all….
    it would be conspicuous enough amongst the monochrome icons if it were orange….

    • Anonymous

      i agree.

      • Yfrwlf

        Agreed, green is especially attention-grabbing because it’s not used anywhere else, is the only argument fori t, but orange doesn’t even exist at all on the screen unless you’ve got some windows open, and then it only exists on the left side usually.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/27K3RKLZDU25XWU7DCEH4B4QBI Ernesto

    Great! i was having a hard time noticing new messages with karmik. This is a welcomed change ^^

  • daas88

    Good idea, bad execution. That open envelop looks a bit weird, they should work on it.

    • Anonymous

      i agree. why in heavens name should the whole icon shift?

  • http://www.geniuslife.wordpress.com Júlio

    Why the hell don’t they use RED as everybody does?!

    It would make much more sense

    • Anonymous

      the reasoning is that red basically translates to: “STOP” “WARNING” “PROBLEM” or various other iterations of the same theme, not “Hey, your pal wants to chat!” or “You got tweeted! Alright!”

  • Anonymous

    Did they change it back already? I’m fully updated and the envelope is back to the way it was before…

    • Anonymous

      mine too. i never actually saw the open version.

      • http://cldx.blogspot.com/ Joern Konopka

        Jesus, this Icon must be one of their TOP Priorities since they seem to find the Time to change it any other day.

  • Anonymous

    After using this though, I feel that this green glow is good. I would need to see it in purple to be able to compare

  • Anonymous

    Now could anyone explain if he understood the decision of grouping the messaging applet with the volume applet and rhytmbox and other applications?
    If this new indicator applet is to be a new systray then the messaging applet shouldn`t be grouped with it … it is realy confusing me now i don`t know where to put it on the panel :|

    The way it was before … a standalone applet was great

    I realy don`t get it

  • http://twitter.com/nicolaide Nicolas

    Somebody know how to remove the MAIL ICON from the indicator-applet? Because i don’t use it and i want to remove that… The new behaviour of the panel in lucid SUCKS!

    • Anonymous

      Yeah i hate that the volume and the messaging applet are combined into one i posted a bug report but i`m sure no one will give a f about my bug report.

      You can`t remove only the Mail Icon you have to remove the hole indicator applet :| and if you do that then you wont be able to minimize rhytmbox to the tray because it doesn`t support the sys tray :(( grrrr and this also aplies to other apps

  • brianp

    i guess i’m ok with the whole envelope thing, but in my opinion the whole green attention seeking color is unnecessary and it’s not consistent with the rest of the theme(s). i am unimpressed and dissatisfied.

  • norbs

    I think when you get an alert, the icon should not be closed just colored.
    For example when one of my contacts get online the icon is closed.

  • timo

    the opened mail icon looks disgustingly out of place!!! how can anyone come up with this?

  • Capo

    I just install now the final 10.04 lts, pretty good and stable. But after setting email accounts on Evolution, i see that memenu doesn’t seem to work correctly, i mean it don’t notice new messages and the icon doesn’t change. And btw i don’t understand why when i close evolution form the red cross on the title bar, it closes defintly…. any suggest?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      The evolution won’t minimize issue is one of the reason I don’t use Evolution. AFAIK there is no elegant fix to this (anyone else?)

  • Capo

    Hey, i’m making progress with the indicator applet, now the icon change color and the new message is notificated, file:///home/massimiliano/Scrivania/Schermata.png

    but i am really far from this http://mypaglia.altervista.org/_altervista_ht/2009/12/messaging-menu-lucid.png.jpeg

    and notification plugin in evolution has not all the options listed here
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu#Initial setup