Tango Desktop Project
Encyclopedia
The Tango Desktop Project is an open-source
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
initiative to create a set of design guidelines and to provide a consistent user experience
User experience
User experience is the way a person feels about using a product, system or service. User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership, but it also includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such...
for applications on desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...
s. The project has created a set of icon
Computer icon
A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
s known as the Tango Icon Library, which is described as a "proof of concept". The Tango Desktop Project is a project of freedesktop.org
Freedesktop.org
freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....
, and is closely linked with other freedesktop.org guidelines such as the Standard Icon Theming Specification.
Objectives
The key objective of the project is to allow developers to easily integrate their software (in terms of appearance) with the desktop. The visual inconsistencies that arise from different desktopFreedesktop.org
freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....
environments (KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
, Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD – though recent compatibility issues have arisen with regard to BSD Unix platforms...
...) and custom distributions make it hard for third parties to target Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. Ideally, any project that follows the Tango guidelines will have a look and feel
Look and feel
In software design, look and feel is a term used in respect of a graphical user interface and comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces , as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes, and menus...
that matches well with other icons and applications that follow the guidelines.
The style does not aim to be visually unique to distinguish itself. Instead, a secondary aim of the project is a style that makes applications look appropriate running on operating systems common at that time, such that ISV
Independent software vendor
Independent software vendor is a business term for companies specializing in making or selling software, designed for mass marketing or for niche markets...
s will find that their application does not look out of place on Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
, or Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD – though recent compatibility issues have arisen with regard to BSD Unix platforms...
.
Apart from the visual guidelines, the project aims to provide a set of common metaphors for the icons. Tango follows the Freedesktop.org's Standard Icon Theming Specification and actively develops the Freedesktop.org
Freedesktop.org
freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....
's Standard Icon Naming Specification, defining names for the most common icons and the used metaphors.
Many free software projects, such as GIMP
GIMP
GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
, Scribus
Scribus
Scribus is a desktop publishing application, released under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is based on the free Qt toolkit, therefore native versions are available for Linux, Unix-like operating systems, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2...
, and GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
, have started to follow the Tango style guidelines for their icons. Also, Mozilla Firefox 3
Mozilla Firefox 3
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation.Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements many new web APIs compared to...
uses Tango icons when it is unable to find the user's installed iconset, and also for icons not covered by said iconset.
It is also possible for proprietary closed source applications to use Tango Desktop Project icons. Examples highlighted by the Tango Showroom include VMware Workstation 6 and Medsphere OpenVista CIS.
History
In 2009, the original Tango icons were released into the public domainPublic domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
in order to make their implementation easier, due to the copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
aspects of the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
license
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
(Attribution-ShareAlike) they were previously released under.
Palette
This is the hexadecimalHexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
color palette
Palette (computing)
In computer graphics, a palette is either a given, finite set of colors for the management of digital images , or a small on-screen graphical element for choosing from a limited set of choices, not necessarily colors .Depending on the context In computer graphics, a palette is either a given,...
used by the Tango Desktop Project, organized by color group and brightness:
See also
- BluecurveBluecurveBluecurve is a desktop theme for GNOME and KDE created by the Red Hat Artwork project. The main aim of Bluecurve was to create a consistent look throughout the Linux environment, and provide support for various Freedesktop.org desktop standards...
- former default GPL icon set of FedoraFedora (operating system)Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
, replaced by Echo - Computer iconComputer iconA computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
- Crystal - LGPL icon set by Everaldo CoelhoEveraldo CoelhoEveraldo Coelho is a renowned Brazilian graphic designer and illustrator. He specializes in iconography, themes and user interface design. Everaldo's works include general illustrations, comics, children's books, corporate design and many other creative areas...
- NuvolaNuvolaNuvola is a free software icon set under the GNU LGPL 2.1 license, created by David Vignoni. Originally created for desktop environments like KDE and GNOME, it is also available in packages for Windows and Macintosh. The final version, 1.0, contains almost 600 icons...
- LGPL icon set by David VignoniDavid VignoniDavid Vignoni is a graphical artist who specialises in icon design.Vignoni is the creator of the Nuvola icon set, which have been used in many projects including script.aculo.us and Prototype JavaScript Framework. He has designed icons for several web sites, including , , and... - Oxygen ProjectOxygen ProjectThe Oxygen Project is a project created to give a visual refresh to KDE Plasma Workspaces.It consists of a set of computer icons, a window decoration for KWin, widget toolkit themes for GTK and Qt, and two themes for KDE Plasma Workspaces....
- LGPL icon set for KDEKDEKDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems... - Palette (computing)Palette (computing)In computer graphics, a palette is either a given, finite set of colors for the management of digital images , or a small on-screen graphical element for choosing from a limited set of choices, not necessarily colors .Depending on the context In computer graphics, a palette is either a given,...
- Theme (computing)Theme (computing)In computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance details, used to customize the look and feel of an operating system, widget set or window manager....