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Who else misses DEV's old Unicorn n Heart icons?

Saloni Yadav on June 17, 2020

I refreshed my Window's DEV app and saw the old colorful unicorn and heart replaced by a some not-so-fancy icon. :(

Anybody else with me?

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Ben Halpern

I know what you mean. I was also hesitant about this move...

I think once we roll out the rest of the related changes we should circle back here and insert more of the flavor back in.

As we see from the comments, things are pretty mixed. I want us to take another spin on really focusing on reactions in terms of where to put them, how they should look in different states, etc. As part of a bigger style overhaul it's hard to go too deep into each component.

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Saloni Yadav

Aye! I noticed the icons move from foot to left side. That was alright. And then all of a sudden the colours evaporated. For a while I thought there was a problem in downloading scripts or something! Just the unicorn pleeeease! Somehow bring back that 🦄 🦄🦄
On a side note- waiting to see what new surprises you have in store for us! I see a lot of UI changes going around with every day’s visit.

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Peyton McGinnis

When you tap the icon again to undo heart/unicorn/bookmark, the icon is in this state:

I think this should be the default. It keeps the circular shape (which makes it feel more like a button) and has some color to it.

Then keep the new "active" state the same, where the icon changes to filled and creates a border around the icon.

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Dave Parr

What other related changes are coming up? Or is that top secret? 🤫

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Ben Halpern

Mostly a bunch of design updates to bring the whole site into our new Crayons style guide.

Most of our work right now is either top-level cohesion and work on Forem.

But since we're open source, different things happen at different paces based on PRs that come in and issues that come up.

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Saloni Yadav

That unicorn was a DEV exclusive emotion. Not one other place have I seen it. Now the reactions have gotten too trite and cliche towards where the rest of the ui/ux world is moving.

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Shaiju T

New icons are good, But it is not colorful and visible like the old ones and can cause less reactions. Users may miss to react, they may not why these icons are there for. Just a feedback :)

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Nabil Kazi

I am actually liking this redesign 😅
The icons, the tags look awesome now!
But I am sure a lot of people would miss that.

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Bernard Baker

Nope. New icons officially rock. The pulse.....oh my...x

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Ben Sinclair

What pulse?

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Saloni Yadav

You have got to heart or unicorn a post for it! 🤪 I see you haven’t been generous with your hearts ever since the ux change.

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Ben Sinclair

It definitely doesn't do that for me.

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Saloni Yadav

Damn! Then you are devoid of the one last pleasure left out reactions. It’s a cruel cruel world!

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Bernard Baker

When you tap the new buttons a circle radiates from the center outward over the UI.

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Saloni Yadav

I miss the retro feel of the old unicorn! The pulse animation is cool. But otherwise it’s so black and white. Previously just looking at the unicorn made me feel rainbow about the post. 🤣🤣 or may be I am unhappy coz it took me five refreshes to digest that the old icons were truly gone!!🤧😂

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Mike Healy

What does the unicorn actually mean?
(I'm aware of "unicorn full stack devs", but not sure if that's supposed to relate to the button)

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Helen Anderson

There's been lots of discussion about the unicorn over the years. Here's Ben commenting on another Devs post with his thoughts on the unicorn but it seems like it's up to your own interpretation

Unicorns typically represent an especially positive connotation in our industry. Unicorn devs, unicorn companies, it’s the things that are wonderful.

Emoji reactions are always a bit abstract and I made no effort to dictate the purposes.

One thing to note: I’d like to have a longer list of reaction types you can choose from like in Slack, just haven’t gotten around to building that out, or even describing it to others.

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Margo McCabe

I didn't notice until this post but I did like the colors!

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Gaurav Saini

I can feel the pain. I was sad too ☹️

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Saloni Yadav

FINALLYYY!!!! Someone who empathises! Everybody seemed to like the new icon. High five mate!

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Valentin Radu

Sorry, can't be in this boat: I actually love the new, simpler versions. <3

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Tim Downey

response button redesign

I'm not sure they're showing up correctly for me on Firefox. 😔

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Ben Halpern

Is this issue persisting or did it go away after a refresh?

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Tim Downey

Went away after a Shift+Refresh. Thanks!

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Francisco Quintero 🇨🇴

Opened this post and the design changed was huge xD

I think is not necessarily better but they new icons look very good plus the animation looks cooler now

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Saloni Yadav

I refreshed five times to locate my unicorn. And when I finally spotted it, I again refreshed to digest that it was truly black and white now! 😂😂 I think I miss the rainbow feel of it. Or just too stubborn to change!

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Pandita

Oh no! my unicorn baby! It looks great but, I miss the colors (mostly on the unicorn).

I'll get used to it eventually 😅

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Saloni Yadav

Don’t get used to it please. We will pester @ben until he gives in to our stubbornness. 😋

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Glenn Carremans

I feel the same. I loved the colourful icons.
Everywhere you go icons are getting replaced with "material" styled icons.

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Shaiju T

@ben New icons are good, But it is not visible like the old ones and can cause less reactions.

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Saloni Yadav

Yes another legit UX perspective. The colours invited a reaction. When I was super pleased with a post and learnt mind bowing stuff... I gave a unicorn and imagined rainbows floating to the author! Somehow feel devoid of that happiness.

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Médéric Burlet

A bit of color would be so nice T_T