Thanks xxovercastxx!

A while back when the black theme was introduced to VideoSift some of us noticed how the star icons and such weren't really designed to work on both bright and dark backgrounds. xxovercastxx was nice enogh to make an alternative icon set, but the originals were modified to (somewhat) work with the dark color theme and xxovercastxx icons probably ended up mostly unnoticed...

Well not entirely. I replaced the standart icons with xxovercastxx replacement icons on my pc back when he posted them and have been using them ever since! I love their softness and the fact that their diamond colors have a color sheme that relates to real gemstones (the crown being a diamond).

Here's a screenshot of xxovercastxx icon set in action:

Alternative star icons

I don't mean to say that the original star icons aren't good. I just prefer xxovercastxx's icons and wanted to thank him here for enhanching my sifting experience!

xxovercastxx says...

A little insight, for anyone who cares...

"Gold 100" became Platinum Star because I just didn't like the way my "100" overlaid on a gold star was looking. Also, I was trying to make these work on any background color and that made maintaining text readability complicated on such a small graphic. If it was larger, I would have outlined the font with a white line or glow to make it legible on a black background, white background, or anything in between. When you're working at 16x16, it gets crowded fast. I decided then to make them all shapes without text.

The contradiction bothered me when I began making "Bronze Diamond", "Silver Diamond", "Gold Diamond". It's a nitpick, to be sure, and it never occurred to me previously but I decided to make gemstones instead. I liked that it let me introduce new colors... with something so small, you can easily have a great variety of color without making the site look like a harlequin's wardrobe closet.

Then it felt odd to me to have 4 stars and only 2 gems (previously diamonds), so I changed the crown into a diamond. I figured a 4th gem could be added later before moving on to a new shape. Maybe then I'd go to crown, but I have to say I like the theme of very simple shapes and the crown disrupts it a little.

xxovercastxx says...

OCD struck and I couldn't help myself... I just dug up my copy of these graphics and rounded out the gems to a total of 4 (moving diamond up to 1000 and filling 750 with sapphire. Figured I could slap together a Stylish script in a few seconds. Then I found out the icons aren't controlled with CSS.

There goes that idea.

campionidelmondo says...

Yep, won't work thru CSS. I've been using a tiny lil GreaseMonkey script to replace the images. I've uploaded it here in case someone might be interested.

The downside is that dynamically displayed content such as the comment preview box will not be affected by it. Maybe this alternative icon set could be built into the site as a preference choice. The icons sure deserve it ;-)

Send this Article to a Friend



Separate multiple emails with a comma (,); limit 5 recipients






Your email has been sent successfully!

Manage this Video in Your Playlists

New Blog Posts from All Members