scummos wrote:

Uri_Herrera wrote:I pushed the floppy.



But I'll be clear, I hate the icon and I hate that it is still in use.

... but, sorry to say, in contrast to all other suggestions I have seen I immediately know what it does. And in the end, that's what counts most, doesn't it?

Of course you know, because you've seen the same icon (metaphor) for the same action for the amount of time you've been using computer software with a graphical interface, which I'm pretty sure it's been a lot.

Repetition.

veqz wrote:I didn't particularly like the suggested folder-with-a-small-arrow as the save icon, but Uri's explanation made a lot of sense. If the arrow was more prominent and pointing into the folder, it would have been much better IMO.

Other than that, I really like the downloady save icon:



I don't really like the floppy icon either. As a legacy icon it's simply not abstract enough for my taste...

It can't be anymore prominent because otherwise it's not going to follow the same size of the other objects in all the other icons and we'll have icons with different size elements.



By the way, that's the icon I used for Nitrux, needless to say no one has come to say anything about not knowing where is the save button.

prosmaninho wrote: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.

You didn't, I'm not satisfied with it. But I can't see what's any more obvious than a folder to get rid of it.

jstaniek wrote:@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)

But even then though, all of it, databases, documents, emails, end up in a folder one way or another. Whether it's in the cloud, or a removable USB drive, an SD card, an SSD or.. dun dun dun (suspense)... a floppy.

luebking wrote:

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?

To me:

Downloading equally means saving, but downloading means saving an external file. If otherwise the file is locally, as in, not in a network but specifically within the file-system of my device then it's just save. If I then, move that file that's locally in my device to an external device (cloud, LAN, USB drive) then I'd be uploading that file.

Uri_Herrera wrote:But even then though, all of it, databases, documents, emails, end up in a folder one way or another. Whether it's in the cloud, or a removable USB drive, an SD card, an SSD or.. dun dun dun (suspense)... a floppy.

Whether it finds its way to a folder (not always: I can save a stream to a folder-less filesystem ), it's an implementation detail. Just like this extreme example: transistor is used in the process too but wouldn't help users if we draw it on the icon. Using folder in the icon suggests that folder, as known by user, is somewhat important in the action. It's not. We've seen that: using HDDs, SSDs, SD cards, clouds instead of folders have been discussed here. All these items are equally visualization of a concrete storage. The floopy, after all the years that passed, is something more: a metaphor. BTW, thank you for drawing the beautiful ones! Kexi's action bar immediately started to look readable.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Downloading equally means saving, but downloading means saving an external file.

Downloading means saving a copy or even so often of an inaccurate snapshot (examples for some web services: download some data in a PDF file --> noneditable anymore, download a grid of data as a spreadsheet file -> unstructured data).

The example you show suggests me that there's implicit limitation to a directory service, where we operate at file level, with contents that are never altered during the process of saving. This is special case if we look further. For example database objects are not associated with files or any filesystem objects, neither their containers are not folders. (that's Kexi's world for example). Saving database objects is an act of saving state/data of part of the database, and we do not even know if it's single database or mutliple saves are triggered in the process, at more physical level.

That is also why I think it's important to use texts for such more complex actions, not just icons. Or dropping icons. (But if icons are used, save icon with a floppy metaphor fits to different cases equally)

Uri_Herrera wrote:If otherwise the file is locally, as in, not in a network but specifically within the file-system of my device then it's just save. If I then, move that file that's locally in my device to an external device (cloud, LAN, USB drive) then I'd be uploading that file.

If you use the download action, then the original location of the file isn't important, it's still a process of downloading (e.g. from localhost in your case to a location that is local to you/your device). If the action doesn't alter contents of the file (it might, eg. changing encoding), it's like save-as.
To make things complicated semantically, uploading can be considered as saving if uploaded file replaces the original one.

A lot depends where the storage to which we're saving, is located. And whether there's "local" space and "storage" space defined.

Yeah but passing by all the technicalities, all a user see is files and folders, and this thread is going borderline philosophical-technical about it, the floppy much to my disliking is there, and so the problem was solved. I'll continue my exploration on my own themes then.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Yeah but passing by all the technicalities, all a user see is files and folders, and this thread is going borderline philosophical-technical about it, the floppy much to my disliking is there, and so the problem was solved. I'll continue my exploration on my own themes then.

Uri, great to hear. I really hope you will prove me wrong! Personally I do not like this conservative "keep attitude" and I really would like to see massive experiments and improvements in icon language, but I feel that for our products the more conservative approach in this case is the right choice. So again, great to hear you will continue the explorations, and I hope you will prove me wrong. I am even willing to help you to optimize your ideas. The icon test is an indicator you can always use and we will support you as much as we can with it!

Concerning the Save icon: I actually hope it will start to widely disappear, as there actually is only little need for explicit saving anymore

bjoernbalazs wrote:Concerning the Save icon: I actually hope it will start to widely disappear, as there actually is only little need for explicit saving anymore

Yes, as I mentioned in this thread I'd like to see implicit saving in KDE apps. Example: autosave in editor or email app. Could we have such behavior discussed here and eventually addressed in the HIGs?

jstaniek wrote:Yes, as I mentioned in this thread I'd like to see implicit saving in KDE apps. Example: autosave in editor or email app. Could we have such behavior discussed here and eventually addressed in the HIGs?

Let's have a quick picture first. I disagree with removing the explicit save function. Because I want to determine when, where and how stuff is stored. It's a matter of trust and control. Am I the only one?

PS: There is no objection from my side to have a function for autosave. But please temporarily only.

Uri_Herrera wrote:

By the way, that's the icon I used for Nitrux, needless to say no one has come to say anything about not knowing where is the save button.

I really like that icon. I just don't understand why something like this can't be used to represent Save and Save as... There's no icon similar to it on the survey, so why not do a survey to see if people can recognize this icon as a save icon?

prosmaninho wrote: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.

You didn't, I'm not satisfied with it. But I can't see what's any more obvious than a folder to get rid of it.

[/quote]

To me:

Downloading equally means saving, but downloading means saving an external file. If otherwise the file is locally, as in, not in a network but specifically within the file-system of my device then it's just save. If I then, move that file that's locally in my device to an external device (cloud, LAN, USB drive) then I'd be uploading that file.[/quote]

Well, the download icon is usually an arrow pointing downwards but with the advent of cloud storage, most people with cloud account associate the upload/download symbol as a way of saving files in their personal cloud drive. So what's the difference between saving in one or another?
IMO, the save icon should be shared between both. The difference is the location of the saved file...

Just my 2 cents here, but I think Uri's original idea to have similar open/save symbols did make sense. The fact the save icon wasnt properly identified was not because it looked like the 'open' icon, but rather because it was looking like what has been used as open icon for 20 years (i.e. a folder).

So I think both open and save should be redesigned together as 'mirror' actions for clarity. After all they can be seen a couple, a bit like redo/undo.

This example is perfectly clear (to me) and gets rid of all obsolete metaphor (ignore cut/copy/paste):


http://oceancohen.tumblr.com/post/47390 ... ave-symbol

tl;dr: keep icons similar but get rid of the folder as well.

Heiko Tietze wrote:I want to determine when, where and how stuff is stored. It's a matter of trust and control. Am I the only one?

I 100% agree that you should have control over when & if you choose to save or not!

AElfwine wrote:So I think both open and save should be redesigned together as 'mirror' actions for clarity. After all they can be seen a couple, a bit like redo/undo.

This example is perfectly clear (to me) and gets rid of all obsolete metaphor (ignore cut/copy/paste):

They look great and i completely agree that a 'family' of icons (New, Open & Save etc), should be designed together - and IMHO any testing / questionnaires should be done showing the icons together, not just saying 'can you tell which one is Save from all of these?'. I also agree that we'd be better off trying to come up with a brand new metaphor that works (like yours) than basing any icons on the existing folder icon.

I also agree (i'm doing alot of agreeing today) that the whole Open & Save icon thing could do with a fresh new metaphor and that we should see this as a first attempt that maybe wasn't the most successful, learn from it & try again, not just give up & revert to 'the way things have always been'!!!!

I comment on the load and save icon with the arrows from the previous post: For my taste, these icons look too similar. The casual user would remember them as "something round with an arrow". I doubt that the brain can easily remember at which side the arrow is placed or in which direction it is pointing.

Probably I have missed the point in the general discussion when was decided not to use any icon colors for the new standard theme.

That's a matter of design, breeze has specific use of very few colours.

Is there a reference which colors these are? Is there furhermore a good general introduction on the topic why monochromatic icons are better than colored ones for the end-user? Currently I am a bit concerned that without colors it will be harder to locate things.

Conceptually, saving a file is simply downloading bits from the memory to the permanent store, IMO. I still say the download function can replace the save function.

gregormi wrote:Is there a reference which colors these are? Is there furhermore a good general introduction on the topic why monochromatic icons are better than colored ones for the end-user? Currently I am a bit concerned that without colors it will be harder to locate things.

Sticking to monochromatic icons certainly makes it more difficult to create icons that work well. This is mostly a matter of aesthetics and design trends. The world of action icons (i.e. those on buttons) has gone flat now, you can see that everywhere. And that means that colorful icons are viewed as too "noisy" by people these days. That's the power of trends.

gregormi wrote:I comment on the load and save icon with the arrows from the previous post: For my taste, these icons look too similar. The casual user would remember them as "something round with an arrow". I doubt that the brain can easily remember at which side the arrow is placed or in which direction it is pointing.

Probably I have missed the point in the general discussion when was decided not to use any icon colors for the new standard theme.

That's a matter of design, breeze has specific use of very few colours.

Is there a reference which colors these are? Is there furhermore a good general introduction on the topic why monochromatic icons are better than colored ones for the end-user? Currently I am a bit concerned that without colors it will be harder to locate things.

Aesthetically, I wouldn't want Plasma apps to look like a child's toy with icons having a barrage of colors in their toolbars. I've done that before with my own themes, looks flashy the first time, fine for some weeks, afterwards it's just unpleasant. The color scheme for the toolbar icons is here: https://github.com/NitruxSA/plasma-next ... -in-Breeze

I don't have a 1000 page study to show you, but, I can say that the icons being monochromatic and void of any other color (in most cases) should help the user understand the symbol quicker; the brain has less information to process and reacts quicker.

And well, Design and Trends go hand-in-hand.

Also monochromatic doesn't mean gray, I just used gray. If Plasma apps could change colors to their hearts content for e.g. branding recognition and stuff that would be cool.

Just a thought - how would an 'auto-save' function work with BTRFS if it was used as the filesystem for '/home', wouldn't it just lead to loads of unnecessary copies (it's copy-on-write isn't it?) cluttering up & filling up your hard drive / SSD?

To me these would work fine (and would be great with the same icon with the arrow pointing up for Open too - although that would clash with Upload so maybe something a bit different - maybe add a cloud to the Upload icon?):

Uri_Herrera wrote:

By the way, that's the icon I used for Nitrux, needless to say no one has come to say anything about not knowing where is the save button.

prosmaninho wrote:Well, the download icon is usually an arrow pointing downwards but with the advent of cloud storage, most people with cloud account associate the upload/download symbol as a way of saving files in their personal cloud drive. So what's the difference between saving in one or another?
IMO, the save icon should be shared between both. The difference is the location of the saved file...

Continuing my agreeing streak, i agree with that too - the first time you go to save you might think 'where's the button' but i think you'd get used to it very quickly

Uri_Herrera wrote:I don't have a 1000 page study to show you, but, I can say that the icons being monochromatic and void of any other color (in most cases) should help the user understand the symbol quicker; the brain has less information to process and reacts quicker.

Apple had a *vast* discussion of that in their HIG - scratched after they started to violate it for... other reasons.
Caused some rants and you'll find a quote about the significance of shape. See eg.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2005/04/macosx-10-4/3/
http://inessential.com/2005/05/27/what_ ... ed_to_mail

Just a thought - how would an 'auto-save' function work with BTRFS if it was used as the filesystem for '/home', wouldn't it just lead to loads of unnecessary copies (it's copy-on-write isn't it?) cluttering up & filling up your hard drive / SSD?

Auto-saves are usually (hopefully) kept in /tmp and moved to some persistant location on crash or sporadically (cause of power loss or kernel crashes)
Anyway, COW can be turned off for certain files, see https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php ... _blocks.3F