Bulk uploading of icons

Published by Vlasta on August 11th.

Another enhancement of the icon library has arrived. Bulk uploading was requested in the past and I had and still have doubts that this is such a good idea. But, it is true that the old system was very cumbersome and after serving for 15 years, it deserved an update.

How does icon uploading work now?

The page for adding icons was redesigned. Instead of picking a file, specifying a name, description, role and license and clicking "Add icon", uploading is now a 2-step process:

• First, you select one or more files (by holding SHIFT or CTRL in the file selection window) - ICO, PNG, SVG and ZIP files are supported. Contents of ZIP files will be extracted and individual files (ICO, PNG, SVG) will be used. Then you select a license for all added files and press the "Add icons" button.
• Second, in the "Recently added icons" section of the page, you can change the name, description and role of individual icons. If you want your icon to be found by other people, don't leave the description field empty, think about what would people search for if they wanted to find your icon and put that phrase in there.

What is the possible downside of this change?

It seems like simplifying the upload process for icon authors should be a good thing. Who wants to spend their time uploading files one by one and filling all those boxes, right?

Well, it takes a lot of time to make a good icon, the additional time spent uploading and describing it is negligible in comparison. On the other hand, it takes just seconds to download something from the internet or to make a few random brush strokes. In these cases, the time spent uploading is significant. Some people who fall in the second category may actually decide uploading is not worth their time. And that is a good thing, the goal is to have high-quality, original icons in the library, not copied or low-quality ones.

And so, making the upload process easier may actually lower the average quality of icons in the library. But we'll see, I guess, maybe it will work out. If it does, the cursor library will be updated in a similar way.

Finally, there is another small change: the list of roles you can assign to your icons has been broaden a bit.

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eeveelover64 on August 11th 2

will bulk uploading cursors also be a thing?

nibbler on August 11th 1

This change is welcome, and just like eeveelover64 said, doing the same thing with cursor uploading would be awesome.