The result of the usability test is on the first page of this thread.

andreas_k wrote:

new - open - open recent - import - export - save - save as - save all

Designers love arrows
(The difference between functions is indicated in your example(s) by only the decoration.)

Considering the results of the usability test it seems that there are icons that escaped the dreaded floppy disk metaphor: the Tango and Humanity icons don't use a floppy and also got good recognition results with the arrow pointing towards the hard drive.

So why not do a breezefied version of an arrow pointing towards a hard-drive? If Breeze has such a neat printer icon, making a recognizable hard drive should be a piece of cake...

prosmaninho wrote:Considering the results of the usability test it seems that there are icons that escaped the dreaded floppy disk metaphor: the Tango and Humanity icons don't use a floppy and also got good recognition results with the arrow pointing towards the hard drive.

So why not do a breezefied version of an arrow pointing towards a hard-drive? If Breeze has such a neat printer icon, making a recognizable hard drive should be a piece of cake...

Wouldn't that be a change towards the dreaded hard disk, again? It's going to extinct like the floppy. Going further, a hard disk symbol in my KDE app on a mobile device would be a bit ridiculous.
I don't know why the results are like that, Tango and humanity use colours and details, that may count. We have a kind of super-simplified mono geometric shapes in Breeze.

This "arrow pointing towards the hard drive" is taken i Breeze theme already, BTW, by the forldr-download icon (again, as I mentioned before download can be perceived as opposite to saving - upload, when internet/network services are used).

The hard drive isn't too much like an metaphor, it's like a box or brick or book (asked around).

I thought we have a conclusion?

You mean this "conclusion"?

Uri_Herrera wrote:I hate the icon and I hate that it is still in use.

When you have people saying that they hate the floppy and hate that it is still in use I don't think we have a conclusion and it is quite lame to force a decision in a certain direction (the floppy) to the dissatisfaction of the majority of contributors.

As for the hard-drive, it's not falling in disuse. All PCs and even smartphones have and will have physical memory for years to come. Maybe not HDDs but SSDs definitely and physically they aren't that different. If you have a problem with a stylized HDD then I propose a stylized SSD or maybe a microSD card since it can represent saving in the mobile world maybe it could be also adopted in the PCs since it's easy to argue for microSD cards as the new floppies since most people with Android phones or digital cameras get a card.

So I propose to NOT use the floppy disk as the icon but a more modern storage method as the metaphor: a HDD/SSD or microSD/SD card as symbol.

Here's a site with plenty of examples of microSD card as symbols. http://www.shutterstock.com/s/sd/search.html
Here's the search result with HDD http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?l ... or=&page=1

Actually, since there's a creative block here, look at that site. It has hundreds upon hundreds of icons. Look for variations of terms related with storage devices and "Save File". There's some really cool icons popping up that can be used as inspiration

Heiko Tietze wrote:

andreas_k wrote:

new - open - open recent - import - export - save - save as - save all

Designers love arrows
(The difference between functions is indicated in your example(s) by only the decoration.)

The first Icon I made for save was like this (also for redo and undo) all of them were removed and replaced because of the same reasons.

prosmaninho wrote:Considering the results of the usability test it seems that there are icons that escaped the dreaded floppy disk metaphor: the Tango and Humanity icons don't use a floppy and also got good recognition results with the arrow pointing towards the hard drive.

So why not do a breezefied version of an arrow pointing towards a hard-drive? If Breeze has such a neat printer icon, making a recognizable hard drive should be a piece of cake...

It is an issue because to make an icon for that the perspective would be different from the rest of the icons, and, at that size, and, with only 1 color to be used the icon would need a lot of detail which would be hard to distinguish and more than 1 color for the different elements to be recognized as a hard-drive and an arrow. It would end up looking like the mail-receive icon.

jstaniek wrote:Wouldn't that be a change towards the dreaded hard disk, again? It's going to extinct like the floppy. Going further, a hard disk symbol in my KDE app on a mobile device would be a bit ridiculous.
I don't know why the results are like that, Tango and humanity use colours and details, that may count. We have a kind of super-simplified mono geometric shapes in Breeze.

Yes and yes.

The results are like for the very simple reason that those icon themes have been around for ages, specially Tango. It would have been great if I had collected the usability data of the themes I've made since they were released to a broader audience not just Plasma users, and that have been around for a longer time.

jstaniek wrote:I thought we have a conclusion?

Yes. The floppy is there. I hate it, but it's there.

prosmaninho wrote:When you have people saying that they hate the floppy and hate that it is still in use I don't think we have a conclusion and it is quite lame to force a decision in a certain direction (the floppy) to the dissatisfaction of the majority of contributors.

As for the hard-drive, it's not falling in disuse. All PCs and even smartphones have and will have physical memory for years to come. Maybe not HDDs but SSDs definitely and physically they aren't that different. If you have a problem with a stylized HDD then I propose a stylized SSD or maybe a microSD card since it can represent saving in the mobile world maybe it could be also adopted in the PCs since it's easy to argue for microSD cards as the new floppies since most people with Android phones or digital cameras get a card.

So I propose to NOT use the floppy disk as the icon but a more modern storage method as the metaphor: a HDD/SSD or microSD/SD card as symbol.

Here's a site with plenty of examples of microSD card as symbols. http://www.shutterstock.com/s/sd/search.html
Here's the search result with HDD http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?l ... or=&page=1

Actually, since there's a creative block here, look at that site. It has hundreds upon hundreds of icons. Look for variations of terms related with storage devices and "Save File". There's some really cool icons popping up that can be used as inspiration

The HDD requires a lot more detail than most icons in the theme. The SD card would only make sense on a mobile device even if there's PCs with adapters and Laptops with slots, they still count as PCs not mobiles.

The SSD while in use would look like a rectangle, which they are, since they don't have the distinguishable plates in the middle like HDDs. And an arrow pointing towards it would be even more confusing than what was the most obvious representation to me (a folder).

andreas_k wrote:The result of the usability test is on the first page of this thread.

*cough* yes. Right.

On the alternative storage devices (basically supporting Uri):

- HDD:
* soon as dead as floppies =)
* looks like a washingmachine w/o details
* there's no guarantee that the user ever has seen one at all
- SSD:
* it's just a brick
* there's no guarantee that the user ever has seen one at all
- SD
* actually looks like a stretched floppy in its basic shapes (big rect and tiny inner rect on one side but other aspect)

I'd stay away from storage devices to indicate "save".
When the floppy was chosen, it was basically the thing you'd safe (personal) stuff on, but today there's a pleathora of storage systems (inc. remote ones)

@luebking +1

There's not reason to think about hard disk (or SSD, whatever) differently than about, say, a transistor. These are all part of black boxes, out of interest of our user base (99% of that I say informally). In addition they failed to become metaphors probably in part because too close similarity to bricks or washing machines...

Whenever I propose any symbol I am looking at what associations they may have. For example I wouldn't even mention the SD card symbol to express 'saving' because prompt research shows me that it'd taken by actions such as "insert/remove card".

Similar approach shows that using folder as a base for the save action isn't the best also because it's not always the folder that contains the item that we actually saving. Folder is associated with well defined entity on our computers and phones and so on, perhaps it's not as much as a general metaphor of the storage container.

BTW, Sometimes we really don't care what's the container, for example: when cloud is the storage; sometimes we do not even explicitly save - see how GMail emails automatically saved to drafts, or database apps such as Kexi where saving happens at very find-grained level - record.

(BTW2, I am kind of fan of trashing explicit saving action for simple work processors and alike in favour of more natural autosaving, versioning and reverting! - any feedback for this belongs to other thread though)

Uri_Herrera wrote:

jstaniek wrote:I thought we have a conclusion?

Yes. The floppy is there. I hate it, but it's there.

Why don't you consider to make it a little bit abstract? Anyway, you are the expert and I always trust in your decision regarding the design.

prosmaninho wrote:So I propose to NOT use the floppy disk as the icon but a more modern storage method as the metaphor: a HDD/SSD or microSD/SD card as symbol.

Please read "How designers think about ‘Save as…’" http://user-prompt.com/de/how-designers ... t-save-as/ (and do not use any physical object except the floppy which is iconic).

Well, I misunderstood that Uri was really unsatisfied and wanted another option. That's why I was just throwing ideas.
If he accepts the flopppy then I don't have an issue either.

I really liked the arrow pointing into the folder.

The arrow below looks more like "download" (and no, save and download are two different things!) and a floppy is just urgh, as far as Breeze is concerned, that is.

I'd like to apologize for my expression of frustration in an earlier comment. It was not meant to deprecate the excellent work on the icon tests that Björn and Heiko have done. While I was somewhat concerned about the misuse of the results of those tests to conclude that only some version of a floppy icon could ever be appropriate for the save action, upon reviewing the thread, it appears several folks here were open to the possibility of a new metaphor than I may have suggested in my comment.

So I'm sorry if my comment caused anyone to disengage or, worse, regard those icon tests in anything less than the excellent, high-quality work that they are.

Much respect.

kbroulik wrote:save and download are two different things!

A download does imply a save, does it?
So download would be some special case of saving?
When I open a remote file in okular and save it to disk - do I download or do I save it?
Is downloading then a special case of saving?

Does it make a difference when I "save" on or from nfs/smb/webdav?
Do I save, upload or download the file? Or any of them?

tl;dr: if they're different, then what's the difference?