The future of Save

Hi Guys,

Last friday I was discussing with another programmer the current icon set and how the younger generation and modern IT users see the computer.

I would just about gurantee that everyone in this forum knows that the Floppy Disk is and it was once the most popular portable storage.

But very few people these days actully use Floppy Disks, so I am just wondering what your views of the future will be because we don't  hardly use floppy disks these days the younger kids won't know what a floppy disk is, so when they see one on the UI how will they know this means Save?

It was a fairly interesting conversation but I really do like the disk . What are your views and what do you think this icon and indeed other ones should be replaced with?

Rob

The F/OSS folks have preempted this. I think it's GNOME which is switching to a picture of a curved arrow pointing at a HDD. I expect Microsoft to follow suit within 5 years.

Bah.

An HDD icon is still bound to a specific storage system, and not the concept of copying to a persistent storage medium.

And - PC's should come pre-equiped with SD RAM slots.

It's like a person on a Danish newsgroup who said something close to "now that this Y2K crisis is over, we can go back to using double digit years again".

Think ahead.

The future of Save is "there is no save". You heard it here first (1).

See OneNote as an example

(1) No warranties or forward looking statements are included in this post and the author does not represent official positions from Microsoft Corp.

It might work for OneNote, not sure I'd like similar functionality in something like Excel. A lot of the time I open spreadsheets to tool with some numbers, but if it started autosaving my changes I'd be slightly annoyed.

i dont think we should be concerned with modernizing icons, just like language like where we have a lot of idioms which refer to things that are obsolete or aren't common anymore. I think that treating icons like idioms is the right way to look at things.

in the world of icons even, old-style microphones, old-style speakers, and even old-style phones are still used. I think the reason is because the old-style versions of these technology are more iconic. The important thing for icons is to be iconic, not modern. To be a picture that is recognizable and memorable based on its currency as a symbol or picture in the culture, and not based on a real thing in use.

I think if we move away from that basic fact about icons, that they are about iconicity, then we'll be start to be adopting really horrible icons that dont work

and we even use castle walls and shields (windows defender) and payprus scrolls (for scripts) don't we? if all movies are digital in the future will we get rid of the film strip icon for movies? Even though it nicely represents the fact of moving pictures..

i dont think it matters much since a disk could also be a representationfor a memory card

TimP wrote:

It might work for OneNote, not sure I'd like similar functionality in something like Excel. A lot of the time I open spreadsheets to tool with some numbers, but if it started autosaving my changes I'd be slightly annoyed.

Perhaps if file versioning were universal and comprehensible to normal people it might be feasible. I can also see how some files shouldn't be auto-saved. Documents and spreadsheets are typically less "spur of the moment" than notes.

As far as an icon goes, why do you even need one? In The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin argued that if your having trouble coming up with an image that adequately communicates a function, you're better off using text. His son reiterates this point in a blog post, but the site seems to be down at the moment.

Soon, teenagers will go to the museum, see a floppy disk and say "Hey, that looks like the save-icon!"

TimP wrote:

A lot of the time I open spreadsheets to tool with some numbers, but if it started autosaving my changes I'd be slightly annoyed.

Just because you don't have a "Save" button, doesn't mean you couldn't have an "Forget" button. The problem with modern software is that it's all the wrong way round. After typing a document for the last four hours, the default should be to keep a copy and it ought to take effort to lose it. We only keep Save as a throwback to the days when storage was expensive.

OneNote is the future.

Hmm, interesting point.

While save may still be necessary in some cases, I suspect that in a lot of cases it will disappear, or that saves will be pre-empted and done automatically.  Like Paolo mentioned, OneNote is an example, but also Vista's Photo Gallery, where you can alter the image, but still revert to the original at any time. With bandwidth and disk space increasing, I suspect that we'll see more and more of this, although save will probably never go away entirely.

AndyC wrote:


Just because you don't have a "Save" button, doesn't mean you couldn't have an "Forget" button. The problem with modern software is that it's all the wrong way round. After typing a document for the last four hours, the default should be to keep a copy and it ought to take effort to lose it.

++

PaoloM wrote:

The future of Save is "there is no save". You heard it here first (1).

See OneNote as an example

(1) No warranties or forward looking statements are included in this post and the author does not represent official positions from Microsoft Corp.

If there is no save, does that mean that there is a spoon or not?

rahsoftware wrote:

What are your views and what do you think this icon and indeed other ones should be replaced with?

They use it because people recognise it and know it. Even people who may never see a floppy disk will grow up with this icon, and recognise it as save, even if they do not know what it is.

BBC wrote:

Interestingly, software giant Microsoft seems to be keeping the flame alight for the floppy.

Its newly-released package Office 2007 still pays homage to it by continuing to use a floppy disk as the icon for saving a document in Microsoft Word 2007.

rahsoftware wrote:

But very few people these days actully use Floppy Disks,

They still used them last time I went up north. (no offence meant if you live in northern England:p)

rahsoftware wrote:

so I am just wondering what your views of the future will be because we don't  hardly use floppy disks these days the younger kids won't know what a floppy disk is, so when they see one on the UI how will they know this means Save?

They will know it's save becaues it always has been. It will become one of these images who's relavence will fade into oblivian and have most people will have no idea what it is, but people will know it means save because it has done all their lives. People don't question things.

Long live the floppy disk

I don't really think that it matters. People will learn that the "Floppy Disk" means save, and by changing this it just makes it harder for the less savvy users who know the original.

It doesn't matter if you know what it was/is, as long as you are taught, or learn that it means save.

Why change it? It works well.

Angus Higgins

How many printers actually have the paper still coming out the top? I don't think we should change the printer icon each time printers change style. Why is the Search icon a magnifying glass? Do you use a magnifying glass if you're searching for something? Or binoculars? They're symbolic. They're icons. Nothing more, nothing less. You could use any icon for a particular function. You could use a teddy bear for the save function, and it would still work. Just tell people to click the teddy bear to save their document. The function of an icon can usually not be deduced from the icon itself, it has to be learnt. Once you know the little square thingy will save your document, you're good to go. Just look at the universally accepted RSS-icon. It's something you recognize because someone explained it to you.

Save always reminds me of these:

http://images.google.nl/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=nl&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=floatation+device&spell=1

Save the USERS! They are drowning,..

Store is a much better word.

Store == shop. Maybe we should call it Serialize, or Persist, or Hydrate. Then Open could be replaced by Deserialize or Dehydrate. No, just kidding. What about 'Write'?

TommyCarlier wrote:

Store == shop. Maybe we should call it Serialize, or Persist, or Hydrate. Then Open could be replaced by Deserialize or Dehydrate. No, just kidding. What about 'Write'?

Well if you wanted to give it a better name, how about 'Keep', as in:

"Would you like to keep this document?"

But it'd still be better to remove it all together.

rahsoftware wrote:

But very few people these days actully use Floppy Disks

Says who?



Ok, I'll admit that I never use them for anything except transferring flash drive drivers to win 98 pcs, and most of them are duff. Some of the do have old data on that I may one day want, but can't be bothered to transfer though.