
New VS Code icon is ugly - jack1243star
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/35783
======
chirau
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
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
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.

------
porfirium
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.

~~~
nkozyra
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
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?

------
andrepd
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
It's the VS code devs trying to hang on to the good stuff while the going's
still good.

------
krylon
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?

------
JoBrad
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
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
> 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.

------
te_chris
God, we programmers are such babies.

~~~
bartread
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.

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

~~~
khamisiyah
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.

------
manojlds
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.

------
maxxxxx
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.

------
VeejayRampay
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.

~~~
akras14
[https://www.alexkras.com/restoring-original-visual-studio-
co...](https://www.alexkras.com/restoring-original-visual-studio-code-icon/)

------
ameshkov
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.

------
cup-of-tea
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
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.

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

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

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

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

------
drngdds
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
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.h...](https://developer.gnome.org/integration-
guide/stable/icons.html.en)

------
titanix2
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
I have to agree, VS2010 had the most beautiful icon of any Microsoft IDE.

------
thesmallestcat
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.

------
wejick
Can't agree more

------
herve76
Switch to the insider version it has better logo. It is green.

------
swalsh
I actually like the new icon :\

------
eugeneionesco
If this is the main problem people are complaining about, I am impressed by
Code :)

What a great tool from Microsoft!

~~~
Sylos
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
_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?

~~~
Sylos
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.

------
whipoodle
Well, it is.

