About a month ago, as I was instructing the beginner computer class at the library where I intern, one of the (older) students asked why the "save" icon looked like it did. I had not thought about that until he pointed it out: we use a now almost-obsolete image to represent one of the more important functions in many software programs. Then I came across this article about the very same topic! David Friedman discusses why we should use a different icon to symbolize saving a document/file/whatever. He proposes that we use a home base as the icon to symbolize that the document/file/whatever is safe. It would then become increasingly dirty as the document/file/whatever went longer without being saved.
As many commentators on this article suggest, baseball is only really popular here in the US, so the symbol would largely be lost on most of the world (like the floppy symbol may be lost on young'uns or anyone just starting to use computers). Personally, I think the floppy is cute, and there are tons of symbols that aren't directly relevant to their use. I do like the idea of the symbol, whatever it may be, changing as it becomes less safe.
No comments:
Post a Comment