Reimagining Bitstream MIME Icons in DSpace

With the next iteration of CGSpace we want to replace the generic "document" icon that is displayed when an item doesn't have a thumbnail — it's ugly and it doesn't give the user any indication of the type of content the item contains.

DSpace generates decent thumbnails for PDFs but for everything else it displays the bland document icon. Instead, when the item contains a bitstream such as a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, MP3, etc, we can give the user a cue using familiar icons for those formats.

New Icons (2020)

Breeze is clean, modern icon set from the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment. Here's how the icons look for a few of the file formats common in CGSpace:

New Icons (2015)

Breeze is clean, modern icon set from the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment. Here's how the icons look for a few of the file formats common in CGSpace:

License

Breeze is free, libre, open-source software (LGPLv3) which allows us to use it in our project free of charge.