up vote 9 down vote favorite

I see that all the questions now carry a Google Plus logo, in addition to the Facebook and Twitter ones. However, unlike the older logos, I think the G+ logo is a little too bright:

Voting Panel picture

I can tolerate the colour, but it does distract my attention from the nearby question. In contrast, I have rarely noticed the Facebook and Twitter logos that very much, which points to how well the UI has been designed in general. Kudos for the design team!

Do others face a similar issue? What would be a better choice of colour? My suggestion would be (some shade of) dark blue or dark green; but I am not good with such UI issues, so perhaps others have better ideas.

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Even in meta, downvotes are most helpful when accompanied by comments. I would like to know with what part of the question someone disagrees with. Regards, – Srivatsan Jan 26 '12 at 23:17
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Personally, I politely disagree; I believe the g+ logo fits into the site's overall theme better than the bluer logos do; the Mathematics logo above, the accent colors, and other parts of the site design are (roughly) the same hue. – Aarthi Jan 26 '12 at 23:31
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@Aarthi: Yes, but while the logo is consistent with accenting on the site, (a) why must the social icons be accented in the first place and (b) since the other two icons don't look accented at all in comparison there is a huge asymmetry. Mathematicians hate asymmetry! – anon Jan 27 '12 at 0:06
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@Aarthi: Thanks for your comment (which I appreciated, and hence upvoted). However, I disagree with your comment in two ways: (1) I feel that the logos of the social sites should be accorded nearly as much (or more :)) importance than the main question or the Mathematics logo above. (2) I don't find the Mathematics logo that distracting because it is above the text and I can scroll the page such that it gets out of focus/out of screen. Alas this is doesn't work with the g+ logo. :-) – Srivatsan Jan 27 '12 at 0:08
Ah, you both raise good points. Me, I was looking at the situation from a purely holistic, aesthetic perspective. Same language, two different dialects. :) – Aarthi Jan 27 '12 at 0:20
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I agree with Srivatsan's sentiment. The Facebook icon here is faded out compared to the color of the actual Facebook logo, which is a very deep blue that would be distracting on this site. I think something similar should be done with the Google+ icon. – Rahul Narain Jan 27 '12 at 0:50
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Actually, I find the red icon for the mathematics site a little distracting, too. This is particularly true of the one in the address bar. It is almost the same size and in almost the same place as the notification (inbox) bubble. Thus, I find it draws my eye unnecessarily in that direction because of this similarity even when I have no messages. This doesn't happen on other sites in the SE network. – cardinal Jan 27 '12 at 1:27
Note that the lowercase "g" in Google is blue on that site. I agree a chance in color would match the other icons much better. – cardinal Jan 27 '12 at 1:27
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To me, the g+ logo makes it look like a bounty has been awarded to the question! – Aryabhata Jan 27 '12 at 17:29
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This may have been closed for now, but if you all still feel strongly about this, please make sure to upvote this request to show your support. – Grace Note♦ Feb 2 '12 at 16:15

closed as too localized by Jeff Atwood♦ Jan 27 '12 at 17:36

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Here's a little mockup I made while my code's compiling.

enter image description here

On the left are the actual logos of Google+ and Facebook, taken from their favicons. In the middle is Srivatsan's screenshot of the current sharing icons on math.SE. On the right, I've replaced the icons with the Google+ and Facebook logos, both faded by equal amounts to match the current Facebook icon. I think the faded Google+ icon is much less distracting.

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Thank you for this mockup, Rahul. – Srivatsan Jan 27 '12 at 1:36
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You might think about posting this solution at the link Jeff Atwood gives in his answer. Seems a more likely compromise than greying them out altogether. – Cam McLeman Jan 27 '12 at 17:45
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@cam I did mention this to Jin, one of our designers, and he answered on main meta about the desaturation – Jeff Atwood♦ Jan 27 '12 at 17:49
@JeffAtwood: Ah, okay. I saw Jin's response, but didn't realize it was in response to this. – Cam McLeman Jan 27 '12 at 18:04
up vote 4 down vote

Closing this, as it's a .. very obviously .. global network wide thing, you should bring it up on the main site -- and in fact it's already there

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/120436/would-the-new-share-buttons-benefit-from-being-grey

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Thanks for the link, Jeff. I rarely visit meta.SO, so much so that it didn't occur to me to check it before posting. :-) But I should have; my apologies. – Srivatsan Jan 27 '12 at 17:42
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By the way, just a small note: Looking at the timestamps, it seems that my question were posted more or less simultaneously with the MSO thread (and I don't know which one appeared earlier). – Srivatsan Jan 27 '12 at 17:54
you can mouse over the timestamps anywhere to see the exact UTC time in a tooltip. This works everywhere... – Jeff Atwood♦ Jan 27 '12 at 18:31
This tip is great; thanks, Jeff. // Not that it matters, but I tried this with the two questions at hand: amusingly, it turns out that the two questions were posted within four minutes of each other. With the other question appearing first. :/ – Srivatsan Jan 27 '12 at 18:35
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@Srivatsan, don't worry: it is a pretty absurd requirement to have users monitor several metas to «keep up». – Mariano Suárez-Alvarez♦ Jan 27 '12 at 19:17
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Funny that this is close as too localized, when it's a .. very obviously .. global network wide thing :-) – Aryabhata Jan 27 '12 at 20:39
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"closed as too globalized" – Rahul Narain Jan 27 '12 at 22:07
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@mariano normally it's not required to check main meta, but in this case it makes a lot of sense. Not faulting anyone, just pointing out that this is almost a textbook case of a global change. – Jeff Atwood♦ Jan 28 '12 at 6:17
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@JeffAtwood I would have considered this a textbook case of a site-specific issue, since each site has its own visual appearance (even that logo comes via CSS, right?). – Gilles Jan 30 '12 at 19:04

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