Daylife
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Happy Cog
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Adium
Eric Giovanola writes, “Here’s a screenshot I thought was great. I use Adium as my IM client, and their mascot/dock icon is a duck. This is the crash report screen.”
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Matt Linderman wrote this on Feb 08 2007 There are 21 comments.
Levi 08 Feb 07
That Adium screenshot is halarious.
Ben Darlow 08 Feb 07
Whilst the Adium duck is cute as a mascot, I detest it as an application icon and always replace it. Why would anybody associate a duck with Instant Messaging?
Ruben 08 Feb 07
More to the point, how can someone be so adamant about an application icon?
Skylar 08 Feb 07
I agree with Ben, one of the reasons I uninstalled Adium is the ugly green duck icon
Tobias 08 Feb 07
I really do not mind that the Adium icon /mascot is a duck. What I do care about is their creative use of it—like that crash feedback dialog and when the dock icon flaps its wings to get attention when you have a new message.
Jeff 08 Feb 07
Ben and Skylar…you guys are retarded. It’s an icon for cripe’s sake.
Eric 08 Feb 07
you can also change the icon color if you don’t like green. Mine’s yellow : )
Don Schenck 08 Feb 07
... it’s because people often use Adium to IM jokes to one another and it quacks them up!
(sorry)
heri 08 Feb 07
you can change adium s icon with a drag and drop. what i dont like is that took me 2 weeks to make adium work. i saw that screen every day on my laptop so i can say i hate it so much
Matt 08 Feb 07
Yeah, and what does an Apple have to do with computers? Or the word ‘Excel’ with spreadsheets? I’d argue that it’s more important for an application icon to be memorable and distinctive than pictorially descriptive.
I love the Adium crash screen because it takes something that’s usually an annoying circumstance - a program crashing - and makes it funny. There’s a lot to be said for humour in tough situations.
jgwong 08 Feb 07
I bet those brush strokes on Happy Cog’s new face are from Kevin Cornell! He’s the illustrator on A List Apart (a Happy Cog project) and a hero of mine!
Benjy 08 Feb 07
mmm… crispy duck!
Chuck Cheeze 08 Feb 07
Ben, the duck has to do with IM because Adium quacks when you get a message! It’s so obvious!
Jason 08 Feb 07
I like meebo because, um, there is no crash screen.
8maki 09 Feb 07
I like the UI of daylife highlights: Let’s pick up news!
Ben Darlow 09 Feb 07
Maybe ‘detest’ was a bit strong, but I stand by what I said; it completely ignores Apple’s own HIGs for application icon design, which is a shame because in many other areas Adium’s UI is quite excellent. Of course, the point behind this post was more that they used the mascot in a comic fashion on a crash dialog – a screen which in an ideal world we’d never even see.
Chuck: My Adium doesn’t quack because I have always turned all IM alert sounds off.
Ben Darlow 09 Feb 07
I ought to have linked this above, but here will do: Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines: Icon Genres and Families.
Robb Irrgang 09 Feb 07
you mean the Apple HIG that Apple rewrites whenever it feels the need (by creating a non-standard UI for an app)?
While I understand your frustrations with the dorky duck, apple is about as much of a posterboy for UI/Icon consistency these days as Microsoft is for innovation.
Chuck Barlow 09 Feb 07
Wow, a new site from Happy Cog with a beige background, georgia body copy, brown text, warm colored headings, etc. They really have a wide variety of style. Yaaaaaawn.
Anon Coward 12 Feb 07
I find those crash reporter dialogs to be so arrogant. i.e. Get out of my face, you have just monumentally pissed me off. Needs a “Never bother me again with this crap” button.
They are fair enough if the user has explicitly opted in, though…
Mark Egli 15 Feb 07
I also detest the Adium crash screen. Mostly because the window is about three times larger than it needs to be. The last thing I want when a program crashes is a obtrusive window that demands my attention.
This discussion is closed.