Re: [Usability] Save Icon

Sarah Berry wrote: 
Thank you for your responses to my other suggestions.  Another
thought that has occurred to me is that the "Save" icon in GEdit and
other applications may no longer be appropriate.  As floppy disks are
rapidly becoming archaic and are no longer included on many systems,
perhaps a new icon could be created?  Unfortunately, I cannot offer
any constructive criticism in the form of what a suitable replacement
image might consist of.

Sarah,
We've been debating this issue over at the Tango Project [1]. For now, the best alternative we've come to is an arrow pointing into a hard-drive.

Here is a summary of some of the issues we have been considering:

1) The floppy disk isn't common anymore. There are lots of younger people who will have grown up using a PC and have never seen a floppy disk.

2) The floppy disk is a very common save icon - people are used to it (probably - I don't know of any research).

3) Is a hard-drive icon any better? Do people know what a hard-drive is or what it looks like? We don't always know you are saving to a hard-drive.

4) Is a folder better? It removes to direct reference to hardware, which is nice

5) Arrow-into-folder is a common "download" icon. Is saving a different action than downloading? They are fundamentally similar - especially when done from a web-browser (download a picture or save it to disk - same thing). However, I doubt people think of "downloading" their document from memory to disk (saving).

6) "We shouldn't have to save at all." Probably/maybe. Doesn't mean we should try to find a better icon in the meantime.

These are just my collection of thoughts - I don't have any research behind any of this (maybe BetterDesktop.org could help?).

Cheers,
Steven Garrity

[1] http://tango-project.org/
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