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Help White Icons

Unforgiven

Unforgiven

...eschew obfuscation...
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So I finally got Kit Kat on my N7 and notice the battery and WiFi icons are white. This begs the question, how to I know if I am connected to Google. Specifically, before, white meant pretty much no connection and blue meant things were good.

Also, it is messing with my OCD having the Weatherbug Elite temp still ICS blue.:mad::p
 
techrider62 said:
Why do you need weather bug when google now has the weather?But your right all icons are white.
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Did you ever here the saying that in New England if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes? The is really quite accurate. Snowfall amounts can vary greatly (6" or more) just a mile from my house. My mother can be having severe thunderstorms while I have sunny skies, and she live about 8 miles from me. Having radar updated to within the last 60 seconds is important for me. For generic "how's the weather" now is OK, but when mother nature has taken aim, I need something a bit more.:)

As far as the white icons, how do I know I'm connected?
 
Yeah, considering my DNA is all white icons as well, it's kind of nice having a similar look, I can lie to myself that my phone has 4.4 as well ;)
 
Unforgiven said:
So I finally got Kit Kat on my N7 and notice the battery and WiFi icons are white. This begs the question, how to I know if I am connected to Google. Specifically, before, white meant pretty much no connection and blue meant things were good.

Also, it is messing with my OCD having the Weatherbug Elite temp still ICS blue.:mad::p
Click to expand...

If you pull down the quick settings, it will show your wifi an orange color if you don't have a connection.
 
jhawkkw said:
If you pull down the quick settings, it will show your wifi an orange color if you don't have a connection.
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Well that's a pain. What was wrong with just having colors on the toolbar?

I know you didn't make it buddy, just venting.
 
Unforgiven said:
Well that's a pain. What was wrong with just having colors on the toolbar?

I know you didn't make it buddy, just venting.
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The reason given is having active icons in the toolbar meant having redraw and using resources. This way supposedly is less resource intensive and leads to better efficiency. To me if that's their thinking, why not get rid of animations and widgets, they also use resources, as do large screens. But then you're left with an iPhone.
 
vzwuser76 said:
The reason given is having active icons in the toolbar meant having redraw and using resources. This way supposedly is less resource intensive and leads to better efficiency. To me if that's their thinking, why not get rid of animations and widgets, they also use resources, as do large screens. But then you're left with an iPhone.
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Connection isn't something that changes every few seconds, so it shouldn't be driving redraws. And if the connection was flaking out that frequently, screen redraws would be the least of my battery problems.
 
Unforgiven said:
Well that's a pain. What was wrong with just having colors on the toolbar?

I know you didn't make it buddy, just venting.
Click to expand...

They also said a lot of end users didn't understand why they turned grey so they didn't really see the point in keeping it. There's a phandroid or Android Police article somewhere explaining their reasons.

I'll dig it out when I can get to a PC.
 
El Presidente said:
They also said a lot of end users didn't understand why they turned grey so they didn't really see the point in keeping it. There's a phandroid or Android Police article somewhere explaining their reasons.

I'll dig it out when I can get to a PC.
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I'm starting to get the feeling that the folks at Android are beginning to regard us the same as Apple regards their customers. A greyed out icon is universally understood to be no connection, and when it changes to a color, it means active or signal present. Anyone who's used any computer or connected device knows this. They seem to be moving away from being a tinkerer's device towards being one that someone with a head injury can operate front to back. Not liking this new direction, especially when they put words in our mouths, saying what we want and are capable of.
 
vzwuser76 said:
A greyed out icon is universally understood to be no connection, and when it changes to a color, it means active or signal present.
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I'm afraid that is NOT universally true. I have icons for battery charge, speaker status, and network connection in the task tray on my Windows 7 laptop. They are ALL white.
 
I'm just confused about a simple and subtle indicator that conveyed quite a bit of information that was removed for some yet to be explained to me reason.
 
tukatz said:
I'm afraid that is NOT universally true. I have icons for battery charge, speaker status, and network connection in the task tray on my Windows 7 laptop. They are ALL white.
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Never dealt with Windows 7 (still on a Vista laptop, don't laugh), but on Vista and earlier there were (for LAN) 2 computers flashing back and forth, and (on WiFi) 2 computers with a little circle to show connectivity. Either way, wouldn't a flashing icon convey connectivity more than a static one, or a brightly colored static icon more so than a gray or white one? Apparently if you go into the settings it will show as orange when not connected, so why not show that in the status bar? One would think that as an app or OS progresses, that there should be less button presses to accomplish a task, rather than more. But what I don't get is anyone seeing a static grayed out icon, then seeing it colored with arrows blinking, could not be able to tell that the former had no connectivity, and the latter had connectivity.

The other thing is they have finally allowed for showing the battery percentage inside the battery icon, but since both the percentage and icon are white, it's not useful until your at 40-50% remaining. Why wait to enable a feature until it won't be useful. Don't get me wrong, Android is the only mobile OS I've ever worked with to any extent, and it's still suits my needs better than anything currently out there. But Google's actions lately are just puzzling to me.
 
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