9 ms·

The "don't use icons, use words" rule resonates with me. I really dislike android drawing(and other similar) apps that present a cluttered interface with a doze

The "don't use icons, use words" rule resonates with me. I really dislike android drawing(and other similar) apps that present a cluttered interface with a dozen of cryptic icons.I much prefer words. Also having each widget take a lot more space forces the designer to really think about the value of adding one vs hiding it. Multilevel menus are IMO definitely better. If the app is a real productivity app people will spend ages in adding an ability to add "shortcuts" to some most often items will provide power users with ability to reach them quickly.

zasdffaa 4y ago
Icons are used for a very good reason; us humans have a remarkable visual memory. Also we can distinguish icons by appearance faster than by words. Also words are language specific, icons... it's more complex... I can't provide evidence of this ATM but I did do a degree in a related subject. (I'm ignoring significant visual impairment here)
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I once designed an app with a lovely iconic interface. The customers hated it. The next release had a lot more text. For one thing, icons tend not to translate well. We're best off using ISO icons[0], but designers hate them, and always insist on reinventing the wheel. [0] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#home https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#home
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    > We're best off using ISO icons Hm, first time seeing this and not getting any good results. Here are the results for "save" https://i.imgur.com/UC4H3jE.png https://i.imgur.com/UC4H3jE.png. Are you sure any of these are meant for a technical context?
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      The first one is "to indicate the entered data is saved" and it's been registered since 2004. I think it's more in the context of forms and less about saving a modified file. Never seen it before either.
    - samatman 4y ago
      If you enter "data" instead, you'll get the full context of the only one of those four which is applicable. I could quibble with some details of how these icons are designed, but I like that read and write point in the same directions as the carets in Unix redirects. That leaves up for "make data leave this device and go elsewhere", with down for "make a local copy of this data", aka upload and download. I must confess, however, if I saw the ISO icons in the wild, I wouldn't understand them. This is while already being aware of their existence.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      Yeah, their browser sucks. I have a few collections that I downloaded, that have software-relevant ones.
    - guenthert 4y ago
      icon #6177 was bewildering. Apparently it is for "use on equipment" in the "eltrotechnical" domain. Without too much of a stretch of imagination, I can see a graph on an oscilloscope there, but why for 'save' and not for 'print' or selecting the time domain in a multi-function device?
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    > The customers hated it. Sigh. You screwed up. You gave the users what you wanted to give, not what they wanted. You must always test & iterate. > The next release had a lot more text. Yes, I was too general - different interface needs must get different interfaces. Sometimes icons aren't appropriate, sometimes icons + text is better, sometimes you have to get creative. > For one thing, icons tend not to translate well I said that. > We're best off using ISO icons[0], but designers hate them, and always insist on reinventing the wheel. That's a flaw in the designers, not the icons then. Are you blaming the icons for that failure? Edit: those icons don't seem to have anything to do with standard computer desktop UIs AFAICS, am I missing somethign?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      I don't understand the hostility. I simply told a story about one of the many "bad judgment" stories that I have encountered, and the lessons learned, therein. I wasn't asking for judgment.
      - zasdffaa 4y ago
        Was intended as blunt, not hostile (how does it come across hostile?). WRT 'giving the users what you want not what they want', that's a classic mistake I've made several times and finally learnt from. Hopefully you can get there faster than I did.
        ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        I did, many years ago. The story is from about 1993.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > Icons are used for a very good reason; us humans have a remarkable visual memory. That's why since some 10 years they change it regularly.
jpe-210 4y ago
But users can grow accustomed to what an icon means over time right? It happened with the floppy disk icon, the notification bell, open folder, etc. If you start it out as [icon][description] for the first few iterations wouldn't the user eventually learn to associate the icon for the action?
- alxlaz 4y ago
  That only works if icons remain consistent and reasonably detailed over long periods of time. Nowadays all icons are abstract, monochrome shapes. They are similar enough to each other, and vary enough from one application to another, that one application's "back" or "new" buttons can look pretty similar to another's "undo" or "copy" buttons. With most apps on my phone I have no idea what the buttons do unless I press them, even if I'm perfectly familiar with the function.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  But users can grow accustomed to what an icon means over time right? Only if you use the same program all the time, and only if that program never changes. I use Adobe Illustrator a couple of times a year. There's no way I'm going to remember how to do very much from the ten minutes I used it in March to the next time I need it in October. And by then, the process is likely to have changed because the program got auto-updated by the Almighty Cloud™.
- wruza 4y ago
  I can only learn colorful icons. B&W ones I cannot recognize even after a long time. E.g. right now I'm looking at my opera sidebar and cannot quickly decide which icon is history. Much easier to open O-menu and navigate from there, which is what I always do to erase that last hour. Same for downloads - I know where they are at the top-right corner and I click "Show more" there instead. Can't find it in sidebar without thinking twice. Btw, I have no trouble using Paint.NET. I just made a screenshot of its UI and turned B&W. Icons instantly became less discernible, and that still with correct shades of grey. If they were this modern outline-abstract bullshit, I couldn't use it at all and would look for an alternative.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
andrepd 4y ago
And if it's not cryptic icons it's undiscoverable actions or swipes... How come all the lessons of UI design that were known in the 90s got so completely forgotten? I wonder how the standard is at these sort of software shops. If the SV dev/designer can navigate through the app then it's good to go? I don't know...
twoodfin 4y ago
And to be fair, the 1984 Macintosh relied on text far more heavily than icons. The trash can even said “Trash” underneath it! What Jobs wanted to build was indeed radically different from Raskin’s vision. But many of the underlying ideas and principles (“No modes!”) were preserved to valuable effect.
- rileyphone 4y ago
  “No modes” was Larry Tesler, not Raskin.
  - twoodfin 4y ago
    I know, but it’s a principle that Raskin endorsed & you also see in the Cat.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Icons reinforced with text are amazing, because people can learn what the icon is, and then you can reference without text at times when there isn't enough room.
samatman 4y ago
It's almost an irony, given where they're deployed, but icons are an interface which favors the expert over the beginner. iOS has terrible discoverability, you'd think Apple could afford to release a detailed manual, but once you've figured out what all the icons and gestures mean and do, it's fluid. A better example is any photo or vector editor you've ever used. They all have tons of icons, all over the place, and if you want to use them, you do need to figure out what they mean. Even with keyboard shortcuts, the selected tool is indicated with the icon. Programmers are heavily biased towards using words for everything, it's a strength in the context of the profession. The "any text can be selected and run as a command" interfaces are a dead end, but I'm in favor of revival, it's a great match for the kind of work we do. But if you give an artist a drawing tool with only "Tool→Lasso→Magic Lasso" as an interface, they just won't use it.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  iOS has terrible discoverability Absolutely. I really don't understand how people think that making controls invisible is in any way useful, or user-friendly. To me, the worst is "We just showed you this big screen of options. But we're not going to show you that you can search the options if you drag the screen downward to reveal a search bar. But you wouldn't think to do that anyway, because pulling down on a screen is the Refresh function in other places." you'd think Apple could afford to release a detailed manual It does: https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 but once you've figured out what all the icons and gestures mean and do, it's fluid Yep. How to do something in iOS n is not how to do something in iOS n+1. By the time you read through Apple's 74 page manual, you have a new version of iOS and have to start over again. I'd rather spend time with my cat and my family than re-learn every piece of tech from every giant tech company over and over again.
  - samatman 4y ago
    > It does: https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 I wish I was joking: my first iPhone was a 4, and you're telling me this for the first time. Did I mention that discoverability is terrible? I'm sure that URL was printed in tiny gray text on that tiny piece of paper you always throw away first... On the bright side, I'm going to read it. Thanks.
reaperducer 4y ago
I really dislike android drawing(and other similar) apps that present a cluttered interface with a dozen of cryptic icons.I much prefer words. Or at least give me a choice. I like how many macOS programs let you have both the icon and the name of the icon under it in the toolbar. It's especially helpful when I'm new to a program and learning its functions. But opening something like Photoshop or Affinity Photo or Illustrator that I only use maybe once every few months, and it's all hieroglyphics. And Photoshop makes it worse by piling multiple functions into one icon. So flood fill and gradient are the same icon, and box and circle are the same icon; so the tooltip is useless.
- perardi 4y ago
  Oh, no, Adobe does it even worse than just a tooltip. Rich tooltips! Big fancy full-color tooltips! That still don’t really show you how the feature works, and also doesn’t explain there are more features under that icon menu. That obscure huge chunks of the icons next to them, and are patronizing and annoying to seasoned users. https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/rich-tool-tips-photoshop-cc-2018/ https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/rich-tool-tips-ph...
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
Words in interfaces are terrible unless a lot of thought goes into localization. For example, consider an American UI designer creating a 'Save' button. Now, translate the button to Dutch ('Opslaan'). What you'll see very often is that the button is only wide enough for the English text ('Save'), so 'Opslaan' gets rendered as something like 'Ops...', which is obviously a terrible experience. I just set my computer and phone interfaces to English to sidestep this problem, but not everyone wants to do this.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  On any Apple platform, that would be considered a serious bug. It shouldn’t ever be a problem in SwiftUI, and you can achieve the necessary dynamism without too much trouble by using layout constraints in both AppKit and UIKit.
  - code_duck 4y ago
    Apple's own products do this often. For instance, an instrument in one of my tracks in iOS GarageBand is listed as "Kind...ass". It's supposed to be "Kindergarten Bass". https://i.redd.it/0ncp6hgad7v91.jpg https://i.redd.it/0ncp6hgad7v91.jpg
- 0x445442 4y ago
  Why does the word “save” need to be in a button? The claim that natural language is an inferior interface is up for debate.
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    I'm pretty confident that "save" is only one of many examples where this issue can happen. >The claim that natural language is an inferior interface is up for debate. They only said that it requires much more thought, not that the debate is finished with their comment.
- afandian 4y ago
  It's been a decade since I did any app development on MacOS. But I do recall having to create a separate dialog box XIB resource for each language, with different sized buttons.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Multilevel menus, like drawers in a workshop, hide tools. At least keep the square, block plane and pencil within easy reach.
tablespoon 4y ago
> The "don't use icons, use words" rule resonates with me. I really dislike android drawing(and other similar) apps that present a cluttered interface with a dozen of cryptic icons.I much prefer words. Yeah. I've used a Mac for the last few years at work, and I think the Windows task bar is unambiguously superior to the dock. A big part of that is how it integrates text, which just seem to take far less cognitive load to process. With the dock, I frequently have to pause for a couple of seconds and try to remember which inscrutably-styled circle I need to find to open the app I want. Though a dock interface would probably be better if each app picked a distinct object to use as its icon, rather than the design-collapse we've had where all icons are either some circle or rounded square (often with a circle inside).
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > design-collapse we've had where all icons are either some circle or rounded square (often with a circle inside). ive noticed this myself, now that almost all icons after bigsur have the same shape it takes me a lot longer to find anything in the dock / applications folder this is really frustrating and disappointing to see things like this deteriorate like this and nobody seems able to stop it...
- gcanyon 4y ago
  I find your interpretation of the dock interesting, especially because I've never used the dock. - I don't use it to launch applications, I use launchpad for that. - I don't use it to open files in a given app, I right-click and use the contextual menu for that. - I don't use it to delete files, I use command-delete for that. - I don't use it to get to downloads, I use the Finder for that. - I don't use it to switch applications, I use command-tab for that. - I don't know what else it's good for, or what I do instead. I say this as someone who has used Mac OS X since it launched: the dock is useless to me; I have it hidden, and if there were a way to permanently kill it, I absolutely would.
  - tibanne 4y ago
    Same, I make it quite small, put it on the right, and autohide it, and it still annoys me.
kbr2000 4y ago
The exmh E-mail client frontend used this: https://rand-mh.sourceforge.io/book/exmh/thexmdi.html https://rand-mh.sourceforge.io/book/exmh/thexmdi.html
guenthert 4y ago
Yeah and don't get me started on "swipe up/down for volume" (VLC on iPad).
Jiro 4y ago
The fewer words you use, the easier it is to localize for other languages, which I suspect is why a lot of things are like this. And a lot of things that don't need localization are probably designed by people who saw all the ones that were created that way and copied them without understanding.

zasdffaa 4y ago

Icons are used for a very good reason; us humans have a remarkable visual memory. Also we can distinguish icons by appearance faster than by words. Also words are language specific, icons... it's more complex... I can't provide evidence of this ATM but I did do a degree in a related subject. (I'm ignoring significant visual impairment here)

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I once designed an app with a lovely iconic interface. The customers hated it. The next release had a lot more text. For one thing, icons tend not to translate well. We're best off using ISO icons[0], but designers hate them, and always insist on reinventing the wheel. [0] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#home https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#home
- lelandfe 4y ago
  > We're best off using ISO icons Hm, first time seeing this and not getting any good results. Here are the results for "save" https://i.imgur.com/UC4H3jE.png https://i.imgur.com/UC4H3jE.png. Are you sure any of these are meant for a technical context?
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    The first one is "to indicate the entered data is saved" and it's been registered since 2004. I think it's more in the context of forms and less about saving a modified file. Never seen it before either.
  - samatman 4y ago
    If you enter "data" instead, you'll get the full context of the only one of those four which is applicable. I could quibble with some details of how these icons are designed, but I like that read and write point in the same directions as the carets in Unix redirects. That leaves up for "make data leave this device and go elsewhere", with down for "make a local copy of this data", aka upload and download. I must confess, however, if I saw the ISO icons in the wild, I wouldn't understand them. This is while already being aware of their existence.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    Yeah, their browser sucks. I have a few collections that I downloaded, that have software-relevant ones.
  - guenthert 4y ago
    icon #6177 was bewildering. Apparently it is for "use on equipment" in the "eltrotechnical" domain. Without too much of a stretch of imagination, I can see a graph on an oscilloscope there, but why for 'save' and not for 'print' or selecting the time domain in a multi-function device?
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  > The customers hated it. Sigh. You screwed up. You gave the users what you wanted to give, not what they wanted. You must always test & iterate. > The next release had a lot more text. Yes, I was too general - different interface needs must get different interfaces. Sometimes icons aren't appropriate, sometimes icons + text is better, sometimes you have to get creative. > For one thing, icons tend not to translate well I said that. > We're best off using ISO icons[0], but designers hate them, and always insist on reinventing the wheel. That's a flaw in the designers, not the icons then. Are you blaming the icons for that failure? Edit: those icons don't seem to have anything to do with standard computer desktop UIs AFAICS, am I missing somethign?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I don't understand the hostility. I simply told a story about one of the many "bad judgment" stories that I have encountered, and the lessons learned, therein. I wasn't asking for judgment.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      Was intended as blunt, not hostile (how does it come across hostile?). WRT 'giving the users what you want not what they want', that's a classic mistake I've made several times and finally learnt from. Hopefully you can get there faster than I did.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        I did, many years ago. The story is from about 1993.
hulitu 4y ago
> Icons are used for a very good reason; us humans have a remarkable visual memory. That's why since some 10 years they change it regularly.

jpe-210 4y ago

But users can grow accustomed to what an icon means over time right? It happened with the floppy disk icon, the notification bell, open folder, etc. If you start it out as [icon][description] for the first few iterations wouldn't the user eventually learn to associate the icon for the action?

alxlaz 4y ago
That only works if icons remain consistent and reasonably detailed over long periods of time. Nowadays all icons are abstract, monochrome shapes. They are similar enough to each other, and vary enough from one application to another, that one application's "back" or "new" buttons can look pretty similar to another's "undo" or "copy" buttons. With most apps on my phone I have no idea what the buttons do unless I press them, even if I'm perfectly familiar with the function.
reaperducer 4y ago
But users can grow accustomed to what an icon means over time right? Only if you use the same program all the time, and only if that program never changes. I use Adobe Illustrator a couple of times a year. There's no way I'm going to remember how to do very much from the ten minutes I used it in March to the next time I need it in October. And by then, the process is likely to have changed because the program got auto-updated by the Almighty Cloud™.
wruza 4y ago
I can only learn colorful icons. B&W ones I cannot recognize even after a long time. E.g. right now I'm looking at my opera sidebar and cannot quickly decide which icon is history. Much easier to open O-menu and navigate from there, which is what I always do to erase that last hour. Same for downloads - I know where they are at the top-right corner and I click "Show more" there instead. Can't find it in sidebar without thinking twice. Btw, I have no trouble using Paint.NET. I just made a screenshot of its UI and turned B&W. Icons instantly became less discernible, and that still with correct shades of grey. If they were this modern outline-abstract bullshit, I couldn't use it at all and would look for an alternative.
JKCalhoun 4y ago

andrepd 4y ago

And if it's not cryptic icons it's undiscoverable actions or swipes... How come all the lessons of UI design that were known in the 90s got so completely forgotten? I wonder how the standard is at these sort of software shops. If the SV dev/designer can navigate through the app then it's good to go? I don't know...

twoodfin 4y ago

And to be fair, the 1984 Macintosh relied on text far more heavily than icons. The trash can even said “Trash” underneath it! What Jobs wanted to build was indeed radically different from Raskin’s vision. But many of the underlying ideas and principles (“No modes!”) were preserved to valuable effect.

rileyphone 4y ago
“No modes” was Larry Tesler, not Raskin.
- twoodfin 4y ago
  I know, but it’s a principle that Raskin endorsed & you also see in the Cat.
bombcar 4y ago
Icons reinforced with text are amazing, because people can learn what the icon is, and then you can reference without text at times when there isn't enough room.

samatman 4y ago

It's almost an irony, given where they're deployed, but icons are an interface which favors the expert over the beginner. iOS has terrible discoverability, you'd think Apple could afford to release a detailed manual, but once you've figured out what all the icons and gestures mean and do, it's fluid. A better example is any photo or vector editor you've ever used. They all have tons of icons, all over the place, and if you want to use them, you do need to figure out what they mean. Even with keyboard shortcuts, the selected tool is indicated with the icon. Programmers are heavily biased towards using words for everything, it's a strength in the context of the profession. The "any text can be selected and run as a command" interfaces are a dead end, but I'm in favor of revival, it's a great match for the kind of work we do. But if you give an artist a drawing tool with only "Tool→Lasso→Magic Lasso" as an interface, they just won't use it.

reaperducer 4y ago
iOS has terrible discoverability Absolutely. I really don't understand how people think that making controls invisible is in any way useful, or user-friendly. To me, the worst is "We just showed you this big screen of options. But we're not going to show you that you can search the options if you drag the screen downward to reveal a search bar. But you wouldn't think to do that anyway, because pulling down on a screen is the Refresh function in other places." you'd think Apple could afford to release a detailed manual It does: https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 but once you've figured out what all the icons and gestures mean and do, it's fluid Yep. How to do something in iOS n is not how to do something in iOS n+1. By the time you read through Apple's 74 page manual, you have a new version of iOS and have to start over again. I'd rather spend time with my cat and my family than re-learn every piece of tech from every giant tech company over and over again.
- samatman 4y ago
  > It does: https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 https://books.apple.com/book/id6443146864 I wish I was joking: my first iPhone was a 4, and you're telling me this for the first time. Did I mention that discoverability is terrible? I'm sure that URL was printed in tiny gray text on that tiny piece of paper you always throw away first... On the bright side, I'm going to read it. Thanks.

reaperducer 4y ago

I really dislike android drawing(and other similar) apps that present a cluttered interface with a dozen of cryptic icons.I much prefer words. Or at least give me a choice. I like how many macOS programs let you have both the icon and the name of the icon under it in the toolbar. It's especially helpful when I'm new to a program and learning its functions. But opening something like Photoshop or Affinity Photo or Illustrator that I only use maybe once every few months, and it's all hieroglyphics. And Photoshop makes it worse by piling multiple functions into one icon. So flood fill and gradient are the same icon, and box and circle are the same icon; so the tooltip is useless.

perardi 4y ago
Oh, no, Adobe does it even worse than just a tooltip. Rich tooltips! Big fancy full-color tooltips! That still don’t really show you how the feature works, and also doesn’t explain there are more features under that icon menu. That obscure huge chunks of the icons next to them, and are patronizing and annoying to seasoned users. https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/rich-tool-tips-photoshop-cc-2018/ https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/rich-tool-tips-ph...

Tijdreiziger 4y ago

Words in interfaces are terrible unless a lot of thought goes into localization. For example, consider an American UI designer creating a 'Save' button. Now, translate the button to Dutch ('Opslaan'). What you'll see very often is that the button is only wide enough for the English text ('Save'), so 'Opslaan' gets rendered as something like 'Ops...', which is obviously a terrible experience. I just set my computer and phone interfaces to English to sidestep this problem, but not everyone wants to do this.

KerrAvon 4y ago
On any Apple platform, that would be considered a serious bug. It shouldn’t ever be a problem in SwiftUI, and you can achieve the necessary dynamism without too much trouble by using layout constraints in both AppKit and UIKit.
- code_duck 4y ago
  Apple's own products do this often. For instance, an instrument in one of my tracks in iOS GarageBand is listed as "Kind...ass". It's supposed to be "Kindergarten Bass". https://i.redd.it/0ncp6hgad7v91.jpg https://i.redd.it/0ncp6hgad7v91.jpg
0x445442 4y ago
Why does the word “save” need to be in a button? The claim that natural language is an inferior interface is up for debate.
- ziddoap 4y ago
  I'm pretty confident that "save" is only one of many examples where this issue can happen. >The claim that natural language is an inferior interface is up for debate. They only said that it requires much more thought, not that the debate is finished with their comment.
afandian 4y ago
It's been a decade since I did any app development on MacOS. But I do recall having to create a separate dialog box XIB resource for each language, with different sized buttons.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Multilevel menus, like drawers in a workshop, hide tools. At least keep the square, block plane and pencil within easy reach.

tablespoon 4y ago

> The "don't use icons, use words" rule resonates with me. I really dislike android drawing(and other similar) apps that present a cluttered interface with a dozen of cryptic icons.I much prefer words. Yeah. I've used a Mac for the last few years at work, and I think the Windows task bar is unambiguously superior to the dock. A big part of that is how it integrates text, which just seem to take far less cognitive load to process. With the dock, I frequently have to pause for a couple of seconds and try to remember which inscrutably-styled circle I need to find to open the app I want. Though a dock interface would probably be better if each app picked a distinct object to use as its icon, rather than the design-collapse we've had where all icons are either some circle or rounded square (often with a circle inside).

andrekandre 4y ago
> design-collapse we've had where all icons are either some circle or rounded square (often with a circle inside). ive noticed this myself, now that almost all icons after bigsur have the same shape it takes me a lot longer to find anything in the dock / applications folder this is really frustrating and disappointing to see things like this deteriorate like this and nobody seems able to stop it...
gcanyon 4y ago
I find your interpretation of the dock interesting, especially because I've never used the dock. - I don't use it to launch applications, I use launchpad for that. - I don't use it to open files in a given app, I right-click and use the contextual menu for that. - I don't use it to delete files, I use command-delete for that. - I don't use it to get to downloads, I use the Finder for that. - I don't use it to switch applications, I use command-tab for that. - I don't know what else it's good for, or what I do instead. I say this as someone who has used Mac OS X since it launched: the dock is useless to me; I have it hidden, and if there were a way to permanently kill it, I absolutely would.
- tibanne 4y ago
  Same, I make it quite small, put it on the right, and autohide it, and it still annoys me.

kbr2000 4y ago

The exmh E-mail client frontend used this: https://rand-mh.sourceforge.io/book/exmh/thexmdi.html https://rand-mh.sourceforge.io/book/exmh/thexmdi.html

guenthert 4y ago

Yeah and don't get me started on "swipe up/down for volume" (VLC on iPad).

Jiro 4y ago

The fewer words you use, the easier it is to localize for other languages, which I suspect is why a lot of things are like this. And a lot of things that don't need localization are probably designed by people who saw all the ones that were created that way and copied them without understanding.