In Defense of Floppy Disks: The Vocabulary of the Interface

http://boxesandarrows.com/icon-survey-results/

by vectorbunny • 13 years ago

57 48 13 years ago

yuhong3• 13 years ago

My personal favorite is the word "chipset" from PC hardware.

I always thought that referred to the "set of chips" that were integral to motherboard operation -- during my enthusiast years these were the bios and cmos, HDD controllers, then northbridge and southbridge controller, and eventually audio and network integrated circuits.

yuhong3• 13 years ago

It generally only included the northbridge and southbridge.

csense3• 13 years ago

I'm not really a hardware person, but I always thought "chipset" meant the on-board non-CPU chips that don't drive external hardware, but are nonetheless an essential part of the PC architecture expected to be present by all OS's, like the 8253 timer [1], the PIC [2], or the DMA controller [3].

By contrast, I'd say hardware like the 16550 UART [4] isn't part of the chipset, rather it's part of the serial port which it drives.

northbridge and southbridge controller

Yeah, memory and I/O control is part of the chipset too, since a CPU without I/O or memory is just an expensive paperweight (or, if powered, an expensive heater).

HDD controllers, audio and network integrated circuits.

I'd consider these to be more like devices or device drivers.

bios and cmos

This is kind of a special case. If you ask a CPU guy, it's not a part of the chipset, they're just memory modules with different properties from normal RAM. If you ask a motherboard guy, it is part of the chipset. It depends on who you ask.

I can't really cite these distinctions anywhere, it's more along the lines of the intuitions I've picked up from spending decades around computers.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8253

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Interrupt_Controll...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550

Timothee• 13 years ago

Do you mind to elaborate? Because I've never heard anything about that and my (admittedly short) googling didn't bring up anything relevant.

yuhong3• 13 years ago

Remember the original IBM PC and PC AT motherboards that used discrete chips like the 8259 and 8254?

boneheadmed• 13 years ago

I'm always a bit frustrated that Google Docs doesn't have a save icon. It simply says "All changes saved in drive". But you see this doesn't stop my habitual compulsion to press the save icon (or at least do :w in Vim).

stephengillie5• 13 years ago

After using the autosave plugin for notepad++, the need to manually press ctrl+s in excel or word annoys me. Why can't I tell these programs to autosave when they lose focus? Instead, I get weird "autorecover" options that usually take several minutes to restore my file.

After using an autosave plugin for minecraft server, I'm annoyed by the need to unfocus notepad++ to get it to save. I would almost rather have my changes written directly to disk automatically. I don't want to have to think about if my file is saved or not.

scarecrowbob• 13 years ago

Do you not find use cases where you do -not- want the document saving?

I spend a lot of time editing code that is being served by a local development server, and much of the time I do not want my changes saved until they are a complete set simply because I don't need it to start feeding me a bunch of errors from half-finished code.

Similarly, there are a lot of times when I will open a document, modify or reformat part of its contents in preparation for copying them somewhere else with different requirements, and then close the document without saving it.

So aren't there any times in your workflows where you don't want the files saved unless you explicitly want to commit some changes?

Dylan168073• 13 years ago

Excel and word have a proper autosave that runs in the background and writes to a hidden file. That is the way every program should work by default. I have no idea what you mean about minutes to restore, but if so that's a bug, not a flaw in the idea.

seanmcdirmid5• 13 years ago

This is quite the future right? The problem isn't the save icon, it is the notion of "save" itself, which is completely unnaturalistic; i.e. the floppy disk icon is not anachronistic, the floppy disk itself is! When I write into a physical notebook, I don't have to "save my work", this just happens automatically...you've probably heard this before.

What we really need is a good icon for "bookmark version", and there aren't many good time travel analogies to leverage to come up with good metaphors.

jlgreco6• 13 years ago

The problem is that there really are times when I don't want to write out changes. Discrete saving isn't an anachronism, it is a feature.

asperous3• 13 years ago

What I've always found fascinating was that how much easier I've always found words to find and use than images.

You'd think little pictograms would be quicker but whenever an interface focuses on using lots of little icons I find it a mental workout to find which one I'm looking for.

For example, many people dislike the new gmail layout, but the biggest ux stumble I have is clicking the attach pictogram instead of the the link one. I thought it was interesting that in the results in the article 21% of people reported the reverse, they associated attach with the link pictogram.

In RL companies use pictograms because you don't have to localize, but the internet is dynamic and the tooltips are already localized, why not just use words?

epikur• 13 years ago

Note that Gmail includes a setting to switch the icons back to text labels (Settings --> General --> Button Labels).

jlgreco6• 13 years ago

No dice on the gmail android application unfortunately, where the icons are indecipherable.

Anyway, I am confused as to why the librarians would think college students have never seen floppies, particularly "a few years ago". Flash drives really only started to cut into floppy use in around 2003-2004 from my perspective. Before that everyone of course used CD's for big stuff, but floppies if they wanted to shuffle documents around. I remember submitting assignments to teachers on floppy drives as late as 2004.

This seems to be the modern equivalent of: "I bet you've never seen one of these before!" * points to a vinyl record *.

mmagin• 13 years ago

I think that the usability of words/pictograms/etc. depends a lot on the user. I find pictograms generally easier to distinguish at a glance, but only if the color content is different, or if the shape is strikingly different. I tend to have a problem with the way a lot of icons for programs come in a couple different shades of blue. Words only work effectively for me if the words are different lengths or at least if the first letter is different -- I tend to only notice the first letter and the shape.

richforrester2• 13 years ago

Sometimes, you don't have space, you don't want to promote use of the function or maybe it's clear enough without words.

An example of the latter one: an [x] in the top right hand corner.

Or the magnifying glass inside an input box.

asperous3• 13 years ago

I wonder if those icons are simply reinforcing your premade assumption of what clicking in that area does. I honestly do not know the answer to this question: without ever seeing it performed for them, would someone know how to close a window the first time?

csense3• 13 years ago

why not just use words

You may run out of room in the interface if the word is substantially longer in some language.

This is a particular problem if the original work is in a language like Japanese, which has short words compared to, say, English. (Japanese Kanji [1] has thousands of characters available, compared to the measly twenty-six of the English alphabet, so it's not surprising that Japanese words are shorter on average.)

Many HN readers are probably familiar with the example of video games that are English localizations of Japanese originals. Sometimes the UI or art simply doesn't have room to accomodate the longer English equivalents. (Particularly in earlier decades when localization wasn't as high a priority as it is today.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji

jjs• 13 years ago

Your mention of Kanji is particularly salient, as the blog post catches these skeuomorphic icons in the act of evolving from pictograms to ideograms...

hackmiester• 13 years ago

Phones haven't hung in decades? Does the author truly believe offices don't have phones anymore?

randallu• 13 years ago

No, they used to hang so you could "hang up".

jlgreco6• 13 years ago

Plenty of phones are still wall mounted. The most common place to see them is wherever there are red emergency phones.

seanmcdirmid5• 13 years ago

A headset connected to my computer counts as a phone? Well, it can make phone calls, but I miss having a physical phone.

mmphosis• 13 years ago

who cares because "Save" has become obsolete.

devindotcom• 13 years ago

Heh, I wrote about this: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/

The reflection of the real world in the virtual world has to do with abstractions, usually going back to among the earliest of concepts that had a similar function at the time but not necessarily for the current age. Which is why we still have pencils, clouds, houses, and arrows instead of ... try to think of something better.

jaysonelliot• 13 years ago

Icons are mnemonics, not signposts.

Icons alone are never sufficient when someone encounters an interface for the first time, you should always include a text label.

New users to an interface will read the text labels, and after time, the icons become a quick mnemonic for them to locate functions they've accessed before.

Even more important than visuals or text is location. Our spatial memory has a higher priority than either. In repeated user tests, I've observed that once people become used to a button resting in, say, the top left corner of a UI, they will click there again for the same function, even if the button itself has changed.

Don't worry too much about the exact semiotics of your icons. Just keep them reasonably meaningful, clearly distinct from one another, include text labels, and be consistent with where you put them.

Mithaldu• 13 years ago

This is really the most important point. When i use a new app i do not look at the icons and try to figure out what the images mean. What i DO is look for icons that are in similar places, or look like icons i'm used to in other applications. When i can't immediately find what i'm looking for, i use tooltips to search further and once found will easily remember which little picture does what i wanted, or at least roughly where the little picture was.

What the picture shows does not matter, only that i can remember it.

teh_klev• 13 years ago

Scott Hanselman wrote a similar article last year [1]

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14Oth...

In Defense of Floppy Disks: The Vocabulary of the Interface

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