Toolbar

First hotel versions didn’t have the options we’re used to these days. There was a time there were no private rooms. You could walk around, chat and send messages, so the toolbar was simple. It also used to be on the bottom, in a fixed-size popup window, as opposed the the resizable, any size playing area of current hotel.

Private rooms came to be, and with that the catalogue to furnish them. Pretty soon this version of the toolbar will have been followed by the next. Financing before will have been done with ads and games, but now we’re talking about virtual - paid for - furniture and with that comes the need to offer support. The ‘Wallet’ and ‘Call for help’ icons are a logical expansion - customer is king.

Meanwhile, the ‘Navigation’ icon was a representation of the English hotel, when more international hotels arrived this was replaced with current icon, though Swiss, Japanese and maybe other hotels had to live with it.

The new icon is somewhat incongruous, not being ‘isometric’ like the others.

Then, with introduction of Trax (v13, June 2007), also the ‘Mute’ button is introduced. For this the icons needed to be a bit closer to eachother, so there’s little space for new icons. New functions like the ‘Tutorial’ for new users (aborted after a while) are being implemented differently.

Version 21 (March 2008) solved this space problem by making the Mute and Help icons smaller and stacking them, and introduced the ‘Events’ button.

Version 22 (May 2008) has less space problems anymore, as the hotel went widescreen (still, smallscreen option inside for people on lower resolutions). We’re seeing a major update to most of the existing icons, and a new - chat - icon being introduced.

Major changes break user habits, Habbo wants you to find stuff easily though. They simply send the picture to the left around, which tells all there is to say at a glance ;).

And v24 (July 2008) introduces, with games becoming free, a new ‘joystick’ icon to get you the BB2/Snowstorm dialogs. To make room, purse got integrated into the catalogue, as is its icon.

Once they released memorial furniture, for the hand, hotel view and a - not even that long there - loading screen. What would have been cool is the purse to have been materialized into a piece of furniture, preferrably with some flies above. It left very silently…

…and then we went into beta

The 31st of May, 2009, Habbo went into private, soon public beta (v34+). The bottom toolbar was replaced with a toolbar on the left. At same time, the fixed width/height Habbo popup was left behind. All icons had some major work done, turned animated on hover, and well, nothing the same anymore. Let’s have a look at the new icons (hover them for animated version, when available):

 

The ‘Call for help’ button changes to an exclamation mark when hovered, and is on top.
 
 
 
Originally they implemented a ‘Nest’ icon. It would always be there and take you to the room you had set (new feature) as your ‘home room’. If you hadn’t picked a room for that, it would take you to hotelview. They ended up with two ‘emergency exit’ icons for both occasions.

The new navigator icon.
 

New console & messenger icons.
 

The new catalogue icon.
 
The new hand cq inventory icon, to display your furniture, badges. In first, closed versions of BETA the Hand itself was not part of the icon, later on added in.
 
Beta/v34 introduced the ability to zoom in big rooms at same scale as small rooms (actually, that is now default view when entering). So the ability to zoom out/in was introduced, this is the icon that takes care of it.
 
The ‘room’ icon is new when inside a room. Gives information on the room, option to rate, and for room owners, access to the room settings.
 
And here are you again (only in toolbar when in a room). Clicking your head gets you to all your settings (including changing clothes again, in client, hurray) and actions, effects and more.

…later changes

 
 
v63, November 2010, changed things again. Go to hotelview/home room and the zoom icon are gone, both added as a button when clicking the room icon. Text is now displayed below the icons, and there’s room for temporary icons, like the ‘quests’ icons for quick access to gaining your christmas and valentine present collecting.