The Tango Desktop Project was an open-source initiative to create a set of design guidelines and to provide a consistent user experience for applications on

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

s. The project created a set of

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...

s known as the Tango Icon Library and that were described as a "proof of concept". The Tango Desktop Project was a project of

freedesktop.org freedesktop.org (fd.o) is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Hav ...

, and was closely linked with other freedesktop.org guidelines, such as the Standard Icon Theming Specification.

Objectives

The objective of the project was to allow software developers to easily integrate their software, in terms of appearance, with the desktop computer. The visual inconsistencies that arise from different

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

environments (

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

, GNOME, Xfce ...) and custom distributions make it hard for third parties to target

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

. Ideally, any project that follows the Tango guidelines will have a

look and feel In software design, the look and feel of a graphical user interface comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces (the "look"), as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxe ...

that matches well with other icons and applications that follow the guidelines. The style did not aim to be visually unique to distinguish itself. Instead, a secondary aim of the project was to create a standard style that makes applications look appropriate running on operating systems common at that time, such that ISVs would find that their application did not look out of place on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, GNOME, or Xfce. Apart from the visual guidelines, the project aimed to provide a set of common metaphors for the icons. Tango followed the Freedesktop.org's Standard Icon Theming Specification and actively developed the

Freedesktop.org freedesktop.org (fd.o) is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Hav ...

's Standard Icon Naming Specification, defining names for the most common icons and the used metaphors. Many free software projects, such as GIMP,

Scribus Scribus () is free and open-source desktop publishing (DTP) software available for most desktop operating systems. It is designed for layout, typesetting, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus can a ...

, and GNOME, have started to follow the Tango style guidelines for their icons. Also, ReactOS uses Tango icons, as does

Mozilla Firefox 3 Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008, by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard ...

when it is unable to find the user's installed icon set or for icons not covered by said icon set. It is also possible for proprietary closed-source applications to use Tango Desktop Project icons. Examples highlighted by the Tango Showroom include VMware Workstation 6 and Medsphere OpenVista CIS.

History

The Tango icons were originally released under a

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

(Attribution-ShareAlike), but were released into the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

in 2009 in order to make it easier to reuse them.

Palette

This is the hexadecimal color palette used by the Tango Desktop Project, organized by color group and brightness:

References

External links

*
Tango Icon Library version 0.8.90
nbsp;— in tar.gz archive format
''Tango project aims to clean up the desktop''

Standard Icon Theming Specification

Tango Icon Replacement for Windows
{{GNOME 2009 software Communication design Computer icons Free software projects Freedesktop.org GNOME Graphics

Objectives

History

Palette

See also

References

External links