Timeless save and open icon suggestion

[paulm]

Breeze icons still use the outdated floppy disk icon – to many people, unlike me, who didn’t grow up in the ‘80s this will not be familiar. The open icon is also a manila folder which does not clearly indicate opening.

I therefore propose the following replacement icons as timeless alternatives.

Save icon:

The save icon is an arrow pointing downwards into a closing box. The arrow is green to indicate a constructive action.

Open icon:

The open icon shows an opening box with an arrow pointing out of it.

I think these icons are clearer to a newcomer and simpler to understand than the current icons.

Below are 16x16 SVG source files which I used to create these images:

[skyfishgoo]

in another generation or two they will be asking what are these “boxes” that we are saving things into and taking things out of?

was this some covid trauma or leftover amazon crud?

[olivierbelleux]

I agree that the floppy disk is a relic that younger people cannot understand.

Your idea with the arrows seems good.
The problem is the box, which does not clearly convey the idea of recording.

Perhaps a disc with a green arrow pointing outwards to the right, or a blue arrow pointing inwards from the left, would be clearer to express the actions save (to disk) and open (from disk)

Sorry, I’m not good at drawing.

[paulm]

Boxes are containers used to store things. Real world boxes aren’t going anywhere and more obvious to the layman IMO than a disc.

Computer storage will also no-longer resemble discs with the advent of solid-state storage. That said, there would indeed be an analogy with the standard red record icon or flowchart database icon being circular.

[Cynob]

The only thing that has remained the same over the years is that data is still stored on small black chips and that there is something like a display or monitor that we humans look at.
So here’s my suggestion with a chip that I quickly put together.

[ngraham]

In the abstract, I really like these icons. There are two problems, unfortunately:

• They look a lot like “upload” and “download” icons, which these days are upward and downward-facing arrows coming out of or going into a box or line
• The floppy disk icon is so ubiquitous that even if a new icon comes along that’s better, many people will fail to understand it because their brains have been trained to look for a floppy disk icon (even if they’ve never seen an actual floppy disk lol). I have a distinct memory of Apple trying a skeumorphic version of this exact iconography that you’re proposing back in the early 2000s, for exactly the same reason. They ended up backtracking.

[frdbr]

I do see your point but that is not a floppy disk anymore, it is just a symbol used for the save button. At least that is how I see it.

[paulm]

Download is a very similar concept to save, so it might be expected that the icons would be similar. Perhaps the download and upload icons could also be changed to something similar such as the following so that they indicate that they are from/to a remote source/destination:

Download:

Upload:

Source SVGs:

As for your second point, I think as time goes on the floppy disk is only going to look even more out of date. Users have adapted to changes as user interfaces evolve. Indeed, the save icon I proposed is very similar to similar changes already made such as in Gnome and Inkscape - there seems to be some momentum to changing save to some kind of down arrow. The difference in what I am proposing is that I am trying to make save and open directly analogous to each other by resembling a box closing and opening, and not have the same unobvious and unrelated folder-open icon for open.

Some save and open icons from Gnome and Inkscape for reference:

Old Gnome Tango save icon:

Gnome Adwaita save icon:

Gnome Adwaita open icon:

Inkscape save icon:

[mghackerlady]

I disagree that it wouldn’t be familiar, using a floppy disk as a save icon is so ubiquitous that it’s arguably become better known as the save icon than the storage medium. Young people still recognise the floppy disk, they just recognise it as an abstract idea of saving instead of the physical act of writing data to a floppy disk it used to represent

[sydney]

as save is more “timeless” than any replacement ever could be.
Just look at this utility bar from a program I clipped out of context:

You probably don’t know what this program is or does, but that doesn’t matter: you already know how to save in it.

Hypothetically, if I weren’t already familiar with concepts like bold and italic text, what exactly is that “B” icon supposed to mean to me? The “I” one kinda looks like the mouse indicator for setting a new typing location, does that find or select text? The chain link icon is especially egregious in this regard; I could never expect an unfamiliar user to arrive at the conclusion that it inserts a link (what’s a link?), but for a familiar user it’s very obvious in its context.

None of this phases me as a fairly tech proficient user, but anyone who didn’t already know still doesn’t know just from looking at them. They’ve gotta click things and find out, or learn about tooltips existing. I argue the effort expended to learn may as well be identical across iconography, but you already have most users recognising the icon, so why change it? People who get it still get it, people who don’t get it were going to have to learn anyway, and they may as well learn this one in its nigh-universal form.

[luk]

I’d be surprised and annoyed if there’re some strange new meaningless save icons … (not like the only true 3.5” FDD icon).

[Mario_Lawrence]

Your suggestion isn’t bad. And your reason for drawing new save and load icons is sound.

However, I would consider that the floppy disk does the job better than new icons would.

A handset icon still represents Phone call functionality on your cell phone. Most children today have NEVER operated a dedicated handset.

A letter envelope icon still represents Messaging, even though most young people have never sent snail mail.

A clock icon still represents time. Even though (astonishingly) there are young people that actually cannot properly read time on a clock that uses hands.

They KNOW what these things mean, even if they don’t know about the object that inspired the creation of the Icon.

The floppy disk is probably more important—and better known—now as an abstract concept than it ever was during the height of its actual use.
I say publish your icons if this is truly critical to you.
But stick with what works.

UI design is about simplicity, ease-of-use, and consistency.

(We shouldn’t even be using QWERTY keyboards anymore. The letter arrangement was designed to preserve old typewriter hardware, iirc. But here we are.)

[styx971]

my thoughts sorta eco mario_lawrence above who worded it better than i ever could. maybe i’m bias since i’m only 35 and grew up using floppies but i agree its sorta timeless already in its current use.

a disc or cartridge based gaming system didn’t have a floppy drive the way an old PC would have back when i was a kid in the 90s , but aLot of games still use the floppy or a similar shape to denote saving for the very reason its just easily identifyable and know to be used for it, my neice and newphews understand this just fine even tho they’ve never seen a floppy disc in person far as i’m aware having been born in the late 00s or after. same can be said for a cd/disc symbol for things loading , a spinning disc still makes sense even tho at this point alot of PCs don’t have an optical drive and recent consoles are using digital downloads instead. at the end of the day its just an inherent understanding ppl have gotten used to over the years.

that said i Do think your points are a valid one to make cause its definately food for thought as time goes on , i just don’t think i agree that change is needed. and while i think your suggested design would apply just as well i’m more in agreement with ngraham that it looks more akin to a upload/download icon and i’d likely mistake it for that

[bunnikyuube]

i could see this. only thing is i’m not 100% on how readable i think these icons are. maybe utilising arrows with a 90 degree turn to minimise white space might work, or maybe swapping the container would make it more obvious, but it’s a tiny bit hard to tell in this concept what it is without context

[paulm]

For those saying to keep the floppy icon, I would say that I would be against changing things for the sake of change/fashion if they work. The problem is that I really don’t think the floppy icon works, nor is it a good icon for save, even if we did still use them. The concept of save is independent of the storage medium.

I think some of you need to get into the mind of people who aren’t computer nerds. An anecdote from just this week: in a completely random conversation, and unaware that I had any opinion on this, my sister said she met someone who didn’t know what a floppy disk was, and that they did not understand the save icon!

Floppy disks were also rubbish. I don’t know how anyone normal can think fondly of them. They were flimsy, unreliable, noisy, slow, and stored very little. They belong in the dustbin of computer history in a museum, not to be immortalised forever in the save icon.

As for a distinct download icon, here is another suggestion that I saw in a mobile game - I think it’s good:

[paulm]

I don’t think any of your examples are the same, and I would argue that the floppy disk is actually less important than any of your given examples. Each case needs to be judged on its individual merits.

Floppy disks aren’t used any more, are no longer useful, and are no longer seen. As, I said in the post above, they belong in the trash, only to be seen in museums.

If we can redesign things to be objectively better, then change them.

Landline, phone box/booth, and DECT handsets are still visible. They haven’t disappeared yet. But, indeed though, I would also re-design the “Phone”/“Call” icon on modern handsets too – a more human-centric pair of lips with a sound wave coming out would be a better icon for a voice call (sound wave for a voice call, speech bubble with lines for typed text messaging). For example:
Voice call:

Text message:

Envelopes will exist and be used for many centuries to come. Young people might not have sent one, but I doubt anyone in the developed world hasn’t received or seen a letter in an envelope.

Clocks still exist and are seen everywhere. I actually also do find clocks with hands slower to read than digital, and I actually do happen to also have a design of a hybrid clock/watch that is easier to read for a modern audience. That is a whole other discussion for another day though…

English language QWERTY keyboards are indeed a difficult one to change because keyboard usage relies far heavier on trained muscle memory more than any of the other examples. If you are going to redesign the keyboard layout then it would need very strong evidence that the alternative is significantly better. Some people say Dvorak etc. is faster, but I think if you were designing this properly you would need to do a lot of scientific analysis, perhaps including AI tools, to analyse the language and prove that a new layout were significantly more optimized than QWERTY.

A higher priority prerequisite to optimising QWERTY would actually be first to globally standardise the English language itself to be better (other languages like French or German have continuously revised official standards). People are now trying to use English language to write software using AI, and I can foresee this creating many problems due to English not being precise enough. A properly revised standard would have very precise grammar, next to no homonyms and be as near phonetic as possible. Americans like Webster made less than a half-baked go at this, and its half-baked nature just created a mess of different dialects without global consensus and little benefit [insert infamous xkcd comic here ]. It would need decades of consultation, global consensus building and AI analysis to improve and standardise English properly though! Webster couldn’t even get “color” right - it should be “culor” or “kulor”! “Center” I sort of agree with, but might have been better as “senter”. Anyway, this is a long separate discussion that is getting off-topic…

[Marata]

@paulm

As for a distinct download icon, here is another suggestion that I saw in a mobile game - I think it’s good:

This works if you know what “Cloud means”, a new user may do not know the concept of cloud. Same argument as with floppy disk. But the real issue is something else: While you can change the download icon to make the current download icon the new save button, people still would think it is the download button.

And even worse: I would not even want to hit that button, because I want to save, not to download something. This would become a real mess. The good thing about floppy disk icons are, that they are used literately everywhere. If you use KDE products as your first PC experience it doesn’t matter much. But if you already have used any other computing device before, you are familiar with both icons and so it would make it harder to switch over to KDE products.

The good thing about floppy disk icon is, that the symbol is so unique, there will probably never be again anything looking like a floppy disk. Try to make a SSD symbol, try to make a box … you will never find a symbolic way that will be that unique and remarkable. And we can go even further, people where using floppy disks, it was an user product itself. SSDs and any kind of modern memory chip is often soldered into the devices as smartphones and laptops. Many users never build their own PC. More abstract symbols as boxes can be easily misunderstood. At this point it doesn’t matter anymore what kind of symbolic and if it has any real concept behind or is just some remarkable dots.

The discussion here reminds me about a discussion of naming conventions for games. There was a studio naming their game as XYZ online. People thought it was a MMOG and bought it and created a shitstorm, because “online” was meant as “being multiplayer over internet”. There are some things you cannot change, even if the idea itself has some values in a context of unwritten paper. But often the paper is written and million or in this case even billion of people are used to the written one.

Alone to make the download-icon free again, you need to implement the cloud-arrow_down-icon everywhere industry wide and keep it reserved for some years before you even can think about reattach it to something else. So much are people used to the download-symbolic. And even then you may fail doing it.

And btw, the main usage of symbols are not to understand the symbol, but to remember it. For instance I do not know what Element (matrix chat) symbol means, I do not know what Kate symbol means and even TOR is very abstract that I may not realize it is an quarter cut onion. LibreWolf is a Wolf, but I do not know it is a browser, KeePassXC has a key, but for a new user which does not know the concepts of passwords or encryption it is may not as clear as for me. It is more important to remember it than to understand it. Even 1000 years later the floppy disk could be a great symbolic while nearly no one knows any longer what the symbol represents.

[paulm]

people still would think it is the download button

I don’t think that is such a big problem, as download and save are almost the same concept. People would also eventually adjust. I have randomly seen a cloud download icon in a couple of other places since posting, so it seems to be getting more common.

[Marata]

@paulm

I don’t think that is such a big problem, as download and save are almost the same concept.

They are completely different concepts. One just saves my stuff, the other one can potential harm my PC and me.

[paulm]

I see Microsoft also use the cloud download icon in the Windows Store