NetNewsWire 2 / journal / hicksdesign

22/09/04

NetNewsWire 2

The public beta of NetNewsWire 2 is finally available. Go and get yourself a copy, and enjoy new features like (amongst many others) the in-built tabbed browser, with rendering powered by the Safari webcore. Version 2 is also a free upgrade if you’re already a registered user.

With this release, NNW’s welog editor becomes a separate application called MarsEdit. While this doesn’t have the large feature set of Ecto, I prefer the way the interface is laid out and find it much more intuitive. In my last month or so of using Movable Type (before switching to Textpattern), I was using this to write to my journal. One important feature of Ecto’s it does have is the ability to assign your own stylesheet to the preview, to get a better idea of how the article will look. Textpattern is going to include MetaWeblog support soon, so I hope to be back using this when that happens.

For this version of NetNewsWire, Brent Simmons had asked me to redesign the interface icons. A new set was created, although later on in the beta cycle these were redrawn by Bryan Bell to keep them in a family feel with MarsEdit (which had already been finished by that point). So that my icons didn’t go to waste, Brent has added a way of swapping themes via Terminal:

Quit NetNewsWire if it’s running.
In the Terminal, type: defaults write com.ranchero.NetNewsWire toolbarTheme JonHicks (Hit return.)
Launch NetNewsWire.
To get back to the default set, step 2 should be: defaults write com.ranchero.NetNewsWire toolbarTheme default

Here are those icons:

Final NetNewsWire Icons

I’ve had a lot of requests for a write up on how I go about creating icons, so I’ve written an article, using the process from designing the NNW icons from sketches to finals as the basis. This will hopefully be published soon, more on that later.

Technorati Tags Tags: design, hicksdesign, icons, rss

Comments | RSS

Comments are now closed, but you can still have a jolly time reading what others have left:

Alex said 1481 days ago:

NNW was always a great RSS reader, perhaps, even the best RSS reader for Mac and it left Windows users quetly crying because it isn’t available for Windows. But it is only useful if you read your news feeds from one location/computer … otherwise you have to mark X number of feeds as read at every locations and that quickly gets annoying. Hence the reason why I switched to Bloglines (I wish there was something better out there though) because all my read/unread/marked feeds are always in sync. I wish there was a way to sync NNW read/unread/flagged items with a sentral sever using a script. Something that could be set up in your own web space, perhaps.

P.S.
The icons looks really sweet, as always.

Bruno said 1481 days ago:

John, congrats about your iconset. It´s more my taste… more polished. Very nice.
One thing seems strange: i think the font icon in preferences is missing, isn´t it?

mathew h. said 1481 days ago:

i’d love to know how you keep your lines so crisp, sir. i love your work but haven’t been able to keep my icon lines as crisp as you.

can’t wait for your doc.

-m

ozean said 1481 days ago:

Jon, is it possible that your icon set is not included in NNW Lite?

I entered the command in Terminal and the .plist file for NWN now shows this entry at the end:

< key>toolbarTheme< /key>
< string>JonHicks< /string>

However, I still only see the old icons :-(

ozean said 1481 days ago:

of course, there is no space after the ”

Jon Hicks said 1481 days ago:

Ozean – is that working for you now? I wondered if it might be that you had to change the line to defaults write com.ranchero.NetNewsWireLite toolbarTheme JonHicks

Jon Hicks said 1481 days ago:

Bruno – You’re right. That wasn’t on the list when I did the icons, I think it must be a new one that hasn’t had an icon developed for it yet.

ozean said 1481 days ago:

No, it’s not :-(

NNW Lite seems to be using the same pref/.plist file that NNW uses (this has been the case for the 1.x versions too – and it has always struck me as a strange thing…)

ozean said 1481 days ago:

Hmm, I just checked the contents of the application bundle, and the icons seem to be there. (I guess they are the ones called “jh_markAllAsRead.tif” and so forth.) Strange.

I entered the command after quitting NNW Lite. No idea why this wouldn’t work…

#10

Jeff Croft said 1481 days ago:

I’m in the same boat as Alex. When I wasn’t working full time, NetNewsWire was the greatest thing ever. I absolutley loved it, and would live to get back to it. However, when I started working full time again and found myself on a PC at work half the day, and on my Mac at home the other half, I switched to Bloglines.com. I really wish Blglines and NetNewsWire could sync somehow. That would be most brilliant.

#11

J.D. Myers said 1481 days ago:

I’m running into the same problem as ozean with NNW Lite. Maybe it’s a bug in NNW Lite? Or a feature exclusive to NNW, which would prove strange since the icons are obviously in the application.

#12

Wilson said 1481 days ago:

I might be biased, but those icons of your’n seem a lot nicer than the alternative (default) set.

Nice to have a new version of NNW to play with, but in the meantime NewsFire has changed the way I read RSS. Not sure which will win out. Not sure if I can handle switching between 3 browsers and 2 RSS readers.

#13

Andrew Phillipo said 1481 days ago:

Loverly looking icons! Would you ever consider doing a set of icons/theme for firefox? I love how well all of those icons instantly convey meaning and in my opinion are better than the current firefox defaults.

Looking forward to how you made them!

Andy.

#14

Dave Winter said 1481 days ago:

Argh!

Just when I was starting to love NewsFire :(

I’ve now gone and started using NetNewsWire Beta and I think I may pay my money for this rather than NewsFire.

I’ll see how the 30 day free demo goes.

Jon, I prefer your icons over the defaults. They look far more friendly.

#15

jheyer said 1481 days ago:

Jon, Awesome Icons! Like Andrew points out, they instantly convey meaning and I agree with him in that we need a FireFox them from you.

Can’t wait for that write-up! I’m really wanting to experiment with icons and see what I can come up with! Your icon write-up will surely reveal some light on the technique to creating beautiful icons.

Thanks!

#16

Matt Wilson said 1481 days ago:

Regarding MarsEdit and post preview, you can edit the html template which is used to construct previews, so it would be pretty easy to add a `<link>` to your stylesheet.

#17

Deny said 1481 days ago:

nice icons, sir.
can wait to see your tutorial making those icons :)

greetz,
Deny.

#18

Philippe said 1481 days ago:

Jon, is it possible that the icon for ‘Fonts’ is missing (in Preferences) ? I got a blank gap there.

p._/_

#19

Tom said 1480 days ago:

When are we going to see a Hicks firefox theme set? Your icons are superb, I would love something like that for FF. Pretty Please!!!

#20

Hicks Fanclub said 1480 days ago:

Bug 261160 Firefox toolbar icons are not designed by Jon Hicks.

#21

Hicks Fanclub said 1480 days ago:

Bug 261160 – Here’s the link.

#22

Jon Hicks said 1480 days ago:

Tom – While I appreciate your admiration for my work, I must ask you to remove that bugzilla bug report. It isn’t really using Bugzilla for its intended purpose. In my view the icons provided by Stephen Horlander are excellent, and they certainly aren’t going to be replaced after all his hard work, and many versions.

I’m currently using a theme with Stephen’s original button style icons from Firefox 8. I wouldn’t want to use anything else.

#23

John See said 1480 days ago:

Nice icons, Jon. I wonder how you keep their edges neat and trimmed. They looked so pretty!

Any plans for a book someday? Rather than just how-to articles…

#24

Phil said 1480 days ago:

I don’t know, those icons just don’t seem like OS X ions to me. They just seem a little TOO 3D. The first time I saw them on the private beta test I was a little disappointed.

#25

Phil said 1480 days ago:

Sorry, I meant the first three icons.

#26

Christopher Davis said 1479 days ago:

The syncing-between-multiple-NNW-instances feature is on the list for 2.0 final, and is one thing that I am looking forward to as well for the same reasons that Alex and Jeff switched to other aggregators.

#27

Amit Karmakar said 1477 days ago:

Looking forward to your tutorial Jon :) downloaded the NNW icons too, Well done!

#28

Sam Rae said 1477 days ago:

For everyone who wants to use these icons with NetNewsWire Lite, just drop the following file into NetNewsWire Lite > Contents > Resources:

ToolbarThemeJonHicks.plist

Basically there was no file specifying which icons the “JonHicks” style uses. It just needed some simple text-editing from the default style.

#29

Sam Rae said 1477 days ago:

Doh… serves me right for not reading how to use Textile. Here’s the proper link (I hope!):

ToolbarThemeJonHicks.plist