The clock metaphor is not bad imho, thing is, it's new and it requires people to get used to it.

The clock metaphor has been used before, but I like it.

https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/297918 ... _undo_icon

Since the latex beamer presentation at the akademy I saw the beamer icon for undo/back and redo/next slide. I like it and I think the icon does also fit to the plasma-next-icon theme. the elements are from other icons.

AGuiFr wrote:One of the commenters from the blog post on Breeze usability test suggested to use a clock metaphor. I think it makes a lot of sense. Undo is like going back in time, so something like this could be used :

(source)

[…]

Anyways, this clock metaphor would solve the issue as it would be obvious that counter-clockwise is for going back in time, and clockwise for going forward.

Exactly.

I guess this anti-clock-wise motion might be also what makes the circular arrow seem a better fit than a straight one

If the metaphor would be changed, this is the one I would prefer. The only issue with the current curved arrow metaphor is that undo and redo can be mixed up. I am not sure it is really an issue because for the redo action to be possible, you had to click undo before. Redo is disabled before clicking on undo.

For redo, we could maybe use an icon that negates the clock metaphore – to interpret the redo as remove or cancel undo.

Except for the fact that we're not dealing with clocks, or anything related to the context of time. We're dealing with documents, documents don't travel back and forward in time, they are edited, they're saved and they're loaded.

Quoting Wikipedia for a definition: "Undo is a command in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state. The opposite of undo is redo. The redo command reverses the undo or advances the buffer to a more current state."

Which is why I said before that I treat documents (and therefore the icons) as being in saving states not as time-traveling objects.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Except for the fact that we're not dealing with clocks, or anything related to the context of time. We're dealing with documents, documents don't travel back and forward in time, they are edited, they're saved and they're loaded.

Quoting Wikipedia for a definition: "Undo is a command in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state. The opposite of undo is redo. The redo command reverses the undo or advances the buffer to a more current state."

This is a good point. The clock might indeed lead to thinking that for instance the settings of an app, or the toolbar placement, would be reverted to their previous states, which, to my knowledge, is not the case. In any case I can think of, undo only affect the document, never the settings.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Which is why I said before that I treat documents (and therefore the icons) as being in saving states not as time-traveling objects.

This is not completely unrelated either. You want to revert the document to its previous state, which was in the past. Anyways, I think the best way to proceed now would be to make a survey with the different alternatives suggested here. In my opinion, an icon which is recognised by most people will always be better than another one which may be describing more accurately the action associated, or which would better integrate with the rest of the icon set. Nobody is using a floppy disk any more, yet the floppy icon performs better than any other. I think Björn mentioned he intended to do such survey for the Paste icon.

Hello,

I installed the Breeze icons from git (from NitruxSA repo on Github). After using them for a few days, these buttons do actually make sense in context. Great job on the icons. I also love Flattr!

Still, I made two different icons for redo and undo.

The set on the right side is a normal refresh icon but squared off. In fact, I made it entirely by copy and pasting parts of icons and connecting them with lines. In this set, two dots represents a newer state while one dot represents an older state.

The set on the left represents state diagrams. A state diagram is used to represent how digital systems can behave and what path(s) the system can follow (it maps inputs to outputs). Three dots represents the newest state ("state n"), two dots represents the second newest state ("state n minus 1"), and one dot represents the third newest state (or "state n minus 2").

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j52pjoqqi9leo ... s.png?dl=0

edit: I made the state diagram one more Breeze like by making the boxes' borders wider and noticed that there is too much detail in those icons; so I tried to reduce the detail. I cannot believe people can make thousands of these little icons! You have an insane amount of patience, so thanks a lot to the icon makers, especially to you Uri for your many icon themes.

Here these icons are shown against the Breeze icons from the Mockup Toolkit:
PNG , SVG

While undo and redo are about states, at least technically, they are not really suitable for normal people.

After a small survey at akademy (3 ppl), the icons in icon_compare.png went as follows:
- first group - only one person guessed they are undo and redo, explaining that they look like the current ones (oxygen - the circular arrows)
- other groups - nobody guessed any of them - the answers were either 'have no idea', or more fun ones like 'database replication', 'revision merging' and similar.

IMO, even if I agreed that a state machine is a good representation of the undo/redo mechanism, the proposals have too many details to actually work on 22px size.

ivan wrote:While undo and redo are about states, at least technically, they are not really suitable for normal people.

After a small survey at akademy (3 ppl), the icons in icon_compare.png went as follows:
- first group - only one person guessed they are undo and redo, explaining that they look like the current ones (oxygen - the circular arrows)
- other groups - nobody guessed any of them - the answers were either 'have no idea', or more fun ones like 'database replication', 'revision merging' and similar.

IMO, even if I agreed that a state machine is a good representation of the undo/redo mechanism, the proposals have too many details to actually work on 22px size.

Thanks for the input. Yeah, I guess those icons do have to much detail. Also, if anyone can find a suitable place for them, they are more than welcome to do so.

Still, I think a squared off redo/undo could work, it's just someone else has to design them!

CTown wrote:Still, I think a squared off redo/undo could work, it's just someone else has to design them!

nice idea some examples.



the svg file https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/164 ... -undo2.svg

Let me be clear: I do not like it, I do not think it's a good idea, concept, or metaphor, I think it looks incredibly silly (if not a harsher word). But here I made it (the clock one) and this is how it looks in Kate. It'd look great in a clock plasmoid or similar application though, but not here, definitely not here.



What I will do instead is add this icon, which if anything looks better, makes sense and it's an improvement over the current one.

Just a quick mockup of an idea that fits in with avoiding using curves:

http://element-6.deviantart.com/art/Und ... 1410506606

The current state of the document is represented by the dot in the middle and the 'Undo' & 'Redo' by the arrows. This is a really quick mockup, it's just supposed to get over the basic idea - ignore any details!

The problem that i can see is how to stop it getting confused with the other forward & back arrows in the toolbar already, maybe smaller 'solid' arrow heads so they don't look like the existing arrows?

Uri_Herrera wrote:
What I will do instead is add this icon, which if anything looks better, makes sense and it's an improvement over the current one.

I agree! And I don't see any strong aliasing there, either. How did you manage to prevent aliasing?

ken300 wrote:Just a quick mockup of an idea that fits in with avoiding using curves:

http://element-6.deviantart.com/art/Und ... 1410506606

The current state of the document is represented by the dot in the middle and the 'Undo' & 'Redo' by the arrows. This is a really quick mockup, it's just supposed to get over the basic idea - ignore any details!

Hm, interesting idea!

The problem that i can see is how to stop it getting confused with the other forward & back arrows in the toolbar already, maybe smaller 'solid' arrow heads so they don't look like the existing arrows?

That is indeed a real problem. I've seen in usability tests with other where undo/redo was represented by straight horizontal arrows thatz most users interpret them as "previous/next" instead.

The problem that i can see is how to stop it getting confused with the other forward & back arrows in the toolbar already, maybe smaller 'solid' arrow heads so they don't look like the existing arrows?

I have no idea how well this would work out, but could we standardize the location of the back and forward buttons in apps, keeping them always aligned to the far left? If we did that, and kept the undo/redo feature far away (to the right, for instance), users would then have more consistency and would be better able to separate the two.

I think Uri's icons above work just fine, not to say that we shouldn't keep thinking.

I decided to take another stab at this. I factored in the fact that Uri hates that the round arrows do not align to the grid. I also tried to make it "more like the Oxygen arrow" after reading Ivan's feedback. Finally, I took inspiration from andreas_k's last attempt.

http://i.imgur.com/Q2m6nOK.png

I feel the 45 degree angles help the icon align to the grid more as shown in this svg. It's in the third row, second to the left.

Uri_Herrera wrote:...It'd look great in a clock plasmoid or similar application though, but not here, definitely not here...

Does this mean that the clock plasmoid finally gained the often requested feature to rewind time?

Uri_Herrera wrote:...What I will do instead is add this icon, which if anything looks better, makes sense and it's an improvement over the current one.

Looks good. Definitely more obvious as to what these icons are for.

ken300 wrote:Just a quick mockup of an idea that fits in with avoiding using curves:

http://element-6.deviantart.com/art/Und ... 1410506606

The current state of the document is represented by the dot in the middle and the 'Undo' & 'Redo' by the arrows. This is a really quick mockup, it's just supposed to get over the basic idea - ignore any details!

The problem that i can see is how to stop it getting confused with the other forward & back arrows in the toolbar already, maybe smaller 'solid' arrow heads so they don't look like the existing arrows?

I also think it is an interesting idea but would that not call for a widget that is more complicated than a button?