4 ms·

I understand the save icon might be out dated since no one uses floppy disks anymore, but what icon would you use instead?

midoridensha 4y ago
We could have an icon of a stack of platters, with an arrow pointing down towards them. The platters, of course, represent the platters in a hard drive. Sure, this is becoming obsolete now with SSDs, but mechanical HDs are still very commonplace in many applications, especially for storing large amounts of data (they're cheaper per GB than SSD). Even if everyone stopped using mechanical HDs tomorrow, this icon would still be much more current than one with a floppy disk, which almost no one has used for a decade or more. People will still remember mechanical HDs for a while, but younger people now have never used a floppy disk.
- pmontra 4y ago
  A hard disk will buy us some time but 1) everybody knew how a floppy disk is made inside because you can peek inside the opening and see the disk. I think not everyone saw a photo of an open hard disk. 2) Almost nobody born today will hold a hard disk in their hands. We'll be back to the floppy disk problem soon. The correct solution should be an icon about the very idea of persisting data or making it safe.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >I think not everyone saw a photo of an open hard disk. Maybe not, but it does have the word "disc" (misspelled "disk"), so I think most computer users (and I mean people who would actually use a "save to disk" button; most mobile-only users probably never do now) would make the connection. >Almost nobody born today will hold a hard disk in their hands. We'll be back to the floppy disk problem soon. Depends on your definition of "soon". Seems to me my solution would buy us another 20 years at least. >The correct solution should be an icon about the very idea of persisting data or making it safe. That's much easier said than done. If there was an easy way of depicting this with a graphic icon, I think it would have been done in the last 40+ years. This thread, and surely countless like it over the years in various places, show that no one seems to have any good ideas for a simple graphic icon to express this concept.
pmontra 4y ago
Floppy disks are a very unreliable storage. Let's use something that has proven to resist the passage of time: chisel, hammer, stone /grin Or do without technology. The idea is that we want to have those data available in the future. So anything that hints about the future. No idea what.

midoridensha 4y ago

We could have an icon of a stack of platters, with an arrow pointing down towards them. The platters, of course, represent the platters in a hard drive. Sure, this is becoming obsolete now with SSDs, but mechanical HDs are still very commonplace in many applications, especially for storing large amounts of data (they're cheaper per GB than SSD). Even if everyone stopped using mechanical HDs tomorrow, this icon would still be much more current than one with a floppy disk, which almost no one has used for a decade or more. People will still remember mechanical HDs for a while, but younger people now have never used a floppy disk.

pmontra 4y ago
A hard disk will buy us some time but 1) everybody knew how a floppy disk is made inside because you can peek inside the opening and see the disk. I think not everyone saw a photo of an open hard disk. 2) Almost nobody born today will hold a hard disk in their hands. We'll be back to the floppy disk problem soon. The correct solution should be an icon about the very idea of persisting data or making it safe.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >I think not everyone saw a photo of an open hard disk. Maybe not, but it does have the word "disc" (misspelled "disk"), so I think most computer users (and I mean people who would actually use a "save to disk" button; most mobile-only users probably never do now) would make the connection. >Almost nobody born today will hold a hard disk in their hands. We'll be back to the floppy disk problem soon. Depends on your definition of "soon". Seems to me my solution would buy us another 20 years at least. >The correct solution should be an icon about the very idea of persisting data or making it safe. That's much easier said than done. If there was an easy way of depicting this with a graphic icon, I think it would have been done in the last 40+ years. This thread, and surely countless like it over the years in various places, show that no one seems to have any good ideas for a simple graphic icon to express this concept.

pmontra 4y ago

Floppy disks are a very unreliable storage. Let's use something that has proven to resist the passage of time: chisel, hammer, stone /grin Or do without technology. The idea is that we want to have those data available in the future. So anything that hints about the future. No idea what.