I agree. I heard recently a lot of kids under 20 grew up in an iPhone, iPad, and chrome world and never learned “folder” or directory concepts so it’s a tough transition in the work world. Paper organizers are not nearly as ubiquitous as they once were.
i think in that case your should first click on a "folder with arrow going out" (move out) icon before given this one to move into another directory. so the context is clear.
Makes sense. Then you can add some kind of index to the file so you can jump to the parts you want. Just track a list of chunks, so they don't have to be contiguous.
Yeah, and we could give that huge file some kind of internal and logical structure to find those chunks, maybe something hierarchical with human readable names!
Yea replace the 90s tech icon for the filing cabinet paper folder , from who knows when. It's actually a good suggestions this technology still hasn't disappeared. But it will soon, as foretold by the paperless office prophecies. So I think a half buried treasure chest icon would be better as a forever lasting icon.
Is there an icon that expresses the default cloud save location as well as the circuitous GUI you need to navigate yo select your desired location on local storage?
I reject the question. That's not a picture of a floppy disc, that is the glyph that means save
You literally called it the save symbol. And that's what it is...100 years from now, if we're still around and still have computers, the save icon will still be some stylized glyph based on the floppy disc
The existence of the floppy disc is already just a bit of trivia about the save icon
It's like asking what we should change the Bluetooth symbol to? Why do you yearn for the world to burn?
An icon can be any random glyph, but it has to stay recognizable and consistent in meaning, that's the entire concept here
In the dystopia of outer-worlds-esque orwellien-surveillance corporate feudalism it looks like they will have to endure, I think we can afford to lighten up on them 😂
every letter in the alphabet started as a symbol of something 2500-6000 years ago, "A" for instance is an upside-down Ox head. people in future generations will continue using the floppy symbol, cuz they learned that means saving, despite floppies not being relevant to their lives
I think we should just keep the floppy disk symbol at this point, because it doesn't matter what it was originally based on or whether that exists any more--everyone knows what that symbol means, and it can't really be confused with anything else.
There's no point making an icon that looks like any other particular kind of storage device since those are changing all the time. So we either have to pick some real world thing like a safe or warehouse or grain silo or whatever. or invent some completely new symbol that's not related to anything and then everyone would have to learn it. Which takes us back to just keeping the floppy disk symbol.
Honestly probably the most universally recognizable save symbol in the end, certainly if I had to go back in time and establish contact with an ancient people and teach them Intuit Quickbooks or other tax accounting software to run a cutthroat tax accounting operation using timetravel to access low cost labor that would be the icon I would choose for saving.
I agree. I made this jokingly, but a number of people seem to actually like it. I also started thinking on how to improve it immediately after I made it lol.
I said none of that. I don't know why you'd assume any of the above from an obviously simplified laymans' explanation of the concept of a download. I'm well aware of this, but my target audience may not be. Write for your audience, not for you.
But why are you focusing on the download aspect? The subject at hand is an icon for saving, and saving can happen as in those several scenarios, if not more.
So, do you think a download icon like that fits them all? Especially those that don't involve your local disk at all?
Let's stick to the subject, above injecting tangential technical correction asides. 👍
If the floppy disk was no longer the save symbol for software, and I had to chose one, I'd chose the floppy disk symbol.
But you worded your question wisely to avoid that loophole, so I'm not sure what to use instead for an otherwise unique and ubiquitous symbol, already known as "the save file icon" for two generations that have not seen it.
While we're at it, let's also replace the phone icons with a rectangle, as to not confuse anyone.
Ouuh this is a fun one. I find that floppy disks look somewhat similar to SD-cards. Do you think the majority of kids (18 and younger) would recognize SD cards?
Down arrow pointing to a line, box, folder, or similar. Icons like that are what I've seen most commonly in software that has an icon for saving over the last few years.
In a lot of cases, the distinction doesn't really matter. If it does in a particular application, I'd probably prefer words to make the nuance clear -- but an arrow to cloud + arrow to disk/folder may be appropriate for some of the cases if an icon is required too.
In GIMP 2.10 on my system, there's a small difference between Save and Save As's icons. I think they added a pen over the hard disk the arrow is pointing towards -- presumably to indicate re-labeling? The difference is just barely visually distinguishable on my screen though. There's also an Export option (which has no icon, despite it being something I use a fair bit more than many of the other File menu commands) and a "Send by Email..." option with pencil over some paper with lines on it (presumably lines of text that's too small to be distinct).
xed on my system has an arrow pointing at a line for Save and an arrow with a line plus 3 dots over it for Save As. Only the Save icon is on the toolbar; the other is in the File menu. I've actually never noticed that distinction before, and if I weren't actively looking for save icons in the software I have installed right now, I don't know if I'd have ever noticed...
LibreOffice still has a (very stylized) floppy disk on the toolbar for Save and no icons whatsoever in the file menu on my system.
KolourPaint uses an arrow pointing into the drawer of a filing cabinet in the toolbar, and a much more squashed version of that in the File menu -- along with something additional (a partially filed in text box to indicate relabeling?) above the Save As variant in the File Menu.
Not sure if I have any other software that I still use regularly which has a Save icon... (My browser just uses text without any icons for save from File menu or via right click menu.)
There’s a good reason that these two icons are currently different.
Not really, it's just legacy, the same reason the save icon is still a floppy disk in most programs. That's what it's always been.
You may make the distinction between saving a document and downloading a document, but most people don't pay anywhere near that amount of attention, and don't care about specifics.
Downloading data and saving data are two separate and distinct functions that describe a different process. While they may have a similar result, they are not the same thing.
You may not understand that, even after I’ve explained it a second time, but they’re not the same thing. They work differently, occurring different contexts, and a single icon should not be used to communicate two distinct concepts. That’s why there are two separate icons.
Whether the save icon is that of a floppy disk or not, doesn’t change that.
And your argument basically amounts to that people are too stupid to care.
But you raise a good point: why would it need to be changed? It’s everywhere, everyone already knows it, it works. Why change it? After all, you seem to think that people are too stupid to care.
You may make the distinction between saving a document and downloading a document, but most people don’t pay anywhere near that amount of attention, and don’t care about specifics.
Covering "Most people" but not all cases is where most software goes awry. We should probably try to avoid that for something as universal as saving a file.
One could make the same argument about creating a more complicated solution when a simple one solves it for 99% of users. Especially when the remaining 1% will know the difference based on what they're doing, regardless of the icon used.
(See, I can simplify stuff too. Now there's a chance that a certain amount of people are wondering if I'm having a stroke instead of linking it to a well-known English saying.
That's why you're not actually "simplifying" anything.)
When you’re working on a document in the cloud you have the option to save it (in the cloud) or download it (to your device). Those are two actions that can exist at the same time.
I wonder if we would would really "expect" a new safe icon. Most modern software has auto-saving. Games for example often just use a spinning circle to indicate it's saving. Word and google docs just say "don't worry, we're continuously saving your work" when you hit Ctrl + S.
I imagine if you want to save something locally you have the downward arrow for downloading, or some other icon for moving and copying files.
Idk, I guess SSDs/flash media is pretty prevalent nowadays, especially in gaming context. That said, it doesn't leave much in the way of a universally identifiable icon, or animation. So maybe an exposed hard disk, with the disk spinning and the arm moving, if you can picture what I'm describing.
depends - the capactiy changed over the years. My floppies were 90k, while 8 inch at the time was a full megabyte. 5.25 floppies did reach 1.2 megabytes on other systems but they were never available to me - even if I could afford it the drives were never compatible with my atari while the 8 inch drives were (with adapters I only ever saw in magazines)
I'd like to think it won't even be necessary with a save icon as autosave becomes more prevalent. If I'm wrong, one option the icon could be is something like a "snapshot"
Probably an arrow pointing down inside of a circle, like the download icon. Most of the software I use just has text saying "Save file" and no icon, and I usually press control + S anyways so I don't have much of an opinion regarding this
Nothing. Why do I need to manage storage myself? Everything i do should just be automatically saved. Each doc should essentially be version control so you can intelligently step back and fork if you need to.
An arrow pointing up at a line. Preferably with each being a different colour.
The arrow indicates movement. The line is abstract. But with the colour coding it carries the idea of 'putting the thing into the other thing'.
The rest is learned pattern recognition. A download is a down arrow in a circle because you are taking the thing from the other thing. So saving is an arrow to a line because you are putting the thing in the other thing.
LibreOffice on Ubuntu has a down-arrow "save" icon, and every time I look at it I think "that's a download icon". Up arrow versions of that are upload icons. Neither really conveys "save".
There should be no save button. All software should auto-save continuously while you work. There should be a "duplicate"-type menu item or button that allow you to make a copy of the document into a new file.
Almost all cloud software already works like this.
"Saving" is a legacy that was introduced because of limitations related to storage in the early days of computing and makes no inherent sense within the metaphors most software operate. Broken metaphors makes things difficult to learn.
When was the last time you scribbled onto a physical document and the changes "didn't save"? Do you also hate "autosave" in the physical world?
Comparing to the physical world makes no sense because a computer is an enhancement that does things differently.
I want way to make trial and error scenarios and test ideas and scribble notes without being forced to keep the changes or retain a document. I also prefer to know where it is going.
I have some software that crashes and leaves me in this weird state where: auto save, recovery file, test sceberio. Which one was I using? Which will it choose to restore and how fucked am I now that the original is lost if I choose wrong?
Edit: I am going to say that on the other hand, in business it is wild that we give people a desktop computer when we should be giving them programs that they use. They should have metadata attached, be relative to their work, and have auto save. I am not always against auto save, it just needs to be in the appropriate places.
Comparing with the physical world makes sense when we have built these applications on physical world metaphors: "documents", "folders", "desktop", etc. We use those words precisely because they convey meaning based on the similarities with their real-world counterparts. Broken metaphors are both more difficult to learn and tend to trigger incorrect assumptions leading to operator error ("Didn't you save your document? What does that mean?").
What is worse is that, like it or not, the world is increasingly moving towards cloud services. The "edit + save" paradigm is less suited to that environment, so there we almost exclusively see the "you edit the doc itself (no need to save)" paradigm. It is difficult to see the gain of insisting on keeping both these quite different paradigms around, when the "you edit the doc directly" is no problem to implement also offline.
Now, about the practicalities: I also get fundamentally annoyed when presented with the "document recovery" dialog that brings me out of my flow. However, I interprete the situation differently. Had the software used a "you edit the doc, no need to save" paradigm, there would never be a need for "recovery". The edits I did are stored in the file I edited.
As for "I just want to scribble". Why don't you just scribble in a file called "Scribbles"? Why is that concept so offensive? You'll be happy the day your computer loses power while you are in the midst of scribbling, since you will be able to pick up exactly where you were.
Didn’t you save your document? What does that mean?
It means I want to keep it. I don't think that is a broken metaphor at all.
As for “I just want to scribble”. Why don’t you just scribble in a file called “Scribbles”?
Wait a minute: in the real world I do not need to name anything to make scribbles. I also do not have a paradigm where there is a fork between versions and create a new document that goes off in one direction while the other document goes in another. At the end of the other documents time, why can't I just get rid of it if my what if scenario didn't work out? Oh I have to now find the thing and take even more time to figure out how to get rid of it. I also have to choose where to keep something if it is going to auto save, and I work on multiple computers all around the world so it makes no sense for me to expect it to "save somewhere".
Also, when I am working on what if scenarios, they are not scribbles. They are taking a document that sometimes can take several minutes to load, and might take many minutes to process. They might be excel sheets, they might by python pandas projects, they might be painting projects or 3d renders.
I have no need for cloud services either, that sucks as well. I have my own server, my own world wide storage locations. I would like to decide when I where I put stuff.
Didn’t you save your document? What does that mean?
It means I want to keep it. I don't think that is a broken metaphor at all.
It will not come natural to people who are used to work with physical documents that you need to remember to "save" an edit, or the document reverts back to the state it was when you opened it.
in the real world I do not need to name anything to make scribbles.
No, but you need to have a physical document to scribble on, which, after you have scribbled will remain in the state you left it until you take the active decision to throw it away.
I also do not have a paradigm where there is a fork between versions and create a new document that goes off in one direction while the other document goes in another.
Have you never used a copy machine?
At the end of the other documents time, why can't I just get rid of it if my what if scenario didn't work out?
Just throw it in the recycle bin? Another real-life metaphor. Do you often find objects in your physical world disappearing without no action from you?
I also have to choose where to keep something if it is going to auto save
Following the typical cloud implementation, you do not. Just start editing. It will be placed in a default folder under a default name until you rename it / and or move it somewhere else. (These operations are usually provided in more convenient ways than in "save paradigm" software, e.g., the name is shown as a title, just click to change it)
They are taking a document that sometimes can take several minutes to load, and might take many minutes to process. They might be excel sheets, they might by python pandas projects, they might be painting projects or 3d renders.
All of these -- except the Python Pandas project (see below) -- could still (and probably should) work according to a "you edit the doc itself, no need to save" paradigm. The larger the underlying file, the less sense does it make to forcibly have to work on a copy; either in RAM (if it fits) or if it doesn't fit, the software has to create an on-disk copy of your huge file behind your back, in case you decide to not save. Leading to all these messy "recovery semantics" that no one likes.
Now, the context of this whole thread is IMO GUI software. When it comes to programming/programmatic tools, e.g. Python Pandas, R, Matlab, etc., that is a different thing. There you have a choice to work in RAM or on disk depending on your needs.
It will be placed in a default folder under a default name until you rename it / and or move it somewhere else.
What a nightmare.
Why don't we just let things default to not auto save but you can turn it on at anytime.
I personally hate it. Absolutely hate it.
I want to put things where I want them the first time when I am ready. I don't use cloud services, I have my own network and cloud file shares. I don't want some program choosing when and where to save something for me, because it is extra work finding all these garbage files I didn't ask for.
"Saving" a file should already be obsolete.
Filesystems should automatically retain history, so whenever you edit something it's already saved, with the ability to go back to any previous state.
No, please. I NEVER want a computer to take a decision for me (like save or discard changes). I turned off auto saving on Microsoft Office on my work computer after I unknowingly made some changes in a presentation from another team I was just looking at, and it saved those changes without my knowledge nor consent.
I work with several screens, have several windows of different programs open and, unfortunately, sometimes a keystroke doesn't go where I thought I was sending it (I'm probably getting old). Also sometimes windows from a different program come to focus unannounced and capture whatever you were typing or clicking.
re: keystroke focus - you're not just getting old, programs are getting shittier about pulling focus when they shouldn't
I work on several screens on several tasks at once typically as well, and it's infuriating when one program pulls focus as I'm typing a sentence into something else, and worse when it does so and accepts the input of my rapid keystrokes to do whatever the fuck all those hotkeys are on the thing that pulled focus
Oh hell no... You want the computer to decide where your files live??? Autosaving and saving are different things, you do need both
And version control on a filesystem is neat, but you'd still have to save it to a place. Perhaps you save it to a version controlled place, so you're not version controlling things that don't need to be tracked and filling up your entire disc when steam games update
It's your responsibility as the human to make decisions like this. It can be made easier with tools and clean workflows, but if you let the computer do it automatically you're giving up control and understanding
I mean... You can autosave everything temporarily under a temp filename. The program should treat it as unnamed, and then when you go to save it you then give it a location and a name
It's probably the best workflow, it's pretty common for code editors
An arrow pointing into a folder, similar to this. Sidesteps the tech issue altogether.
I mean, you're just replacing one archaic symbol with another.
I still use folders to organize paper documents. Taxes and medical stuff mostly.
Which predate computers and floppy disks
I agree. I heard recently a lot of kids under 20 grew up in an iPhone, iPad, and chrome world and never learned “folder” or directory concepts so it’s a tough transition in the work world. Paper organizers are not nearly as ubiquitous as they once were.
It connects it to another computer symbol, the folder which is seen plenty of times as the thing containing files. It's a solid solution.
Isn't that used as an icon for moving a file from one folder to another?
i think in that case your should first click on a "folder with arrow going out" (move out) icon before given this one to move into another directory. so the context is clear.
Yeah, if an open folder icon means ‘open a file’, then this inversion means saving the file.
That's a good one for local storage.
Some software uses that arrow with a cloud to say it's saved into the cloud.
We should do away with directories. Just one big block of files.
Screw multiple files, just use one big one. Just append anything you want to add and you'll have everything in 1 spot
Makes sense. Then you can add some kind of index to the file so you can jump to the parts you want. Just track a list of chunks, so they don't have to be contiguous.
Yeah, and we could give that huge file some kind of internal and logical structure to find those chunks, maybe something hierarchical with human readable names!
Yeah! Now we're cooking! I bet we could really improve resiliency and seek times with different data structures, too. B trees?
Or maybe we could keep the flat structure and have some kind of syntax for querying the data... some kind of structured language.
You've basically invented OneNote
Crap, I was hoping to invent file systems.
Easy to find saves time
PalmOS actually did that. Programs had records saved in a central database, not files.
Yes look everything up by
keyworddescribing its contents to AI agent.Yea replace the 90s tech icon for the filing cabinet paper folder , from who knows when. It's actually a good suggestions this technology still hasn't disappeared. But it will soon, as foretold by the paperless office prophecies. So I think a half buried treasure chest icon would be better as a forever lasting icon.
Is there an icon that expresses the default cloud save location as well as the circuitous GUI you need to navigate yo select your desired location on local storage?
I reject the question. That's not a picture of a floppy disc, that is the glyph that means save
You literally called it the save symbol. And that's what it is...100 years from now, if we're still around and still have computers, the save icon will still be some stylized glyph based on the floppy disc
The existence of the floppy disc is already just a bit of trivia about the save icon
It's like asking what we should change the Bluetooth symbol to? Why do you yearn for the world to burn?
An icon can be any random glyph, but it has to stay recognizable and consistent in meaning, that's the entire concept here
By OP's logic, this
#A
is a drawing of an ox head.
Hope you are right.
But really the Save icon will become: ✨
thats's the Google AI icon
"All your base (data) are belong to us" -Google AI
Why you want to save file if you can just feed if you ai and let it hallucinate if you want to read it
... Why is the generative llm glyph here? nervous
What till people find out what "dashboard" originally meant.
You can't just jump to the future, so use this one for the next decade:
... but platter drives are old hat, SSDs are the new hotness?
Can't skip a generation, gotta go from the floppy disk icon to the HDD icon for a while first.
Forgot about Zip drives.
Meh, just a hard floppy. Although I really did appreciate my Zip 100 drive for that storage space before writable CDs came along.
That's the joke.
But hard drives came first.
Well it's not a very good one.
Isnt this just a hdd platter?
Oh wait im dumb its a 75 record
Hard drives pre-dated floppy discs by 15 years.
I bow to thy argumentation. This be-eth the way
SD card. Half us old timers won’t even realize it’s not a floppy disk.
Yet 90% of young people won't know what it is because digital cameras have been replaced by phones and phones no longer have microSD lol
Gotta give the next gen something to complain about.
In the dystopia of outer-worlds-esque orwellien-surveillance corporate feudalism it looks like they will have to endure, I think we can afford to lighten up on them 😂
Digital cameras are in style again. I've seen screenless ones for sale at several places these past few weeks.
I would also accept any other recognizable, removable media. Even a generic USB stick would be more relevant than a floppy disk.
every letter in the alphabet started as a symbol of something 2500-6000 years ago, "A" for instance is an upside-down Ox head. people in future generations will continue using the floppy symbol, cuz they learned that means saving, despite floppies not being relevant to their lives
A crucifix...
...because Jesus saves.
And takes half damage
When jesus saaaay "yes", nobody can't say "you don't have the permissions to write on this volume" 🎶
Early, and often.
And saves you from swearing...
I think we should just keep the floppy disk symbol at this point, because it doesn't matter what it was originally based on or whether that exists any more--everyone knows what that symbol means, and it can't really be confused with anything else.
There's no point making an icon that looks like any other particular kind of storage device since those are changing all the time. So we either have to pick some real world thing like a safe or warehouse or grain silo or whatever. or invent some completely new symbol that's not related to anything and then everyone would have to learn it. Which takes us back to just keeping the floppy disk symbol.
This is a hilariously awkward suggestion. At the scale of the average save icon, what do you think a grain silo symbol would look like?
like this?
drawing a grain silo doesn't mean you have to draw the grains.
Honestly probably the most universally recognizable save symbol in the end, certainly if I had to go back in time and establish contact with an ancient people and teach them Intuit Quickbooks or other tax accounting software to run a cutthroat tax accounting operation using timetravel to access low cost labor that would be the icon I would choose for saving.
This makes me think "new file"
Timeless. Ubiquitous. Mandatory for all of K-12 and often beyond. Perfect.
This gives Calibre FOSS vibes.
A scroll and quill is a pretty good idea, but it'd be better as something more squarish than irregular, I think.
I agree. I made this jokingly, but a number of people seem to actually like it. I also started thinking on how to improve it immediately after I made it lol.
Nobody else immediately thought of this?
Incremental save needs to be Buddha
A squirrel, as in to squirrel it away
Best answer, but the save button should save the file somewhere random each time on the storage if the icon is a squirrel.
So, like my work computer then
Doesn’t everybody save stuff somewhere in the mess that is their desktop?
Kind of just sounds like OneDrive.
They'll get it for you if you want it, but you don't get to know where it's actually stored (or who else is accessing it).
Best answer! Btw, have you seen my file?
Where's your file dude?
Sorry for not submitting my homework on time. The squirrel took it away, never to be seen again.
Something completely abstract, like this
That's a download button
To download is still to save to one's disk.
Not if you're saving to the cloud...
That's called an upload, literally the opposite
A download is an upload viewed from the other end.
If you're not on either end - saving cloud to cloud... It makes less sense.
Saving can be either upload or download... Saving is saving.
By your argument, saving to a nas is uploading too just because the storage isn't local.
Then it points up.
You upload to save to the cloud
From where to where and how is that uploading from your perspective? What if you save from cloud to a local nas or a remote nas.
Saving is saving. Download and upload are relative.
You have multiple scenarios. Save...
You think these all apply to the concept of "download"?
I said none of that. I don't know why you'd assume any of the above from an obviously simplified laymans' explanation of the concept of a download. I'm well aware of this, but my target audience may not be. Write for your audience, not for you.
But why are you focusing on the download aspect? The subject at hand is an icon for saving, and saving can happen as in those several scenarios, if not more.
So, do you think a download icon like that fits them all? Especially those that don't involve your local disk at all?
Let's stick to the subject, above injecting tangential technical correction asides. 👍
*Because *I replied to a comment that says "that's a download button".
I made no other comment, and what I said is correct.
I'm blocking you to stop you from wasting any more of my time because you can't read.
lol, but when they said "that's a download button", they meant that it doesn't make sense as a save button, for those reasons I mentioned.
You can't read.
Downloading is specifically not saving in this metaphor. That's essentially making a record copy, not overwriting the source.
I've seen something like that used, and I think it fits the bill just fine!
Agreed, but make the bottom bit look like a drive or server (e.g. a rectangle with a dot or two).
Chrome uses that for "download".
Which is essentially what saving is.
Mmm ... not exactly. If I'm creating a document in a local application, "download" is not applicable there, where "save" is.
For 99% of users, the specifics make no difference at all.
It's closer to reality than a floppy disk icon, that's for sure.
They meant that downloading is a type of saving.
A CD image. Got to move with the times.
Isnt it the glorious zip disks turn first?
What a save!
Chat disabled for 3 seconds.
Okay.
Wow!
Let's be real, when some shitty company (MS) gets around to it, it will be: ☁️⬆️
A cassette tape.
Hahahaha, dammit you win
A safe or vault symbol as an indicator for safe keeping
I've already seen it replaced in some applications. Don't like that.
I know it's "if you have to", but if I have any choice at all, the floppy icon stays.
What even is the point in changing it? Like sure we don't use floppies anymore, but it's a well established symbol for saving.
What did they replace it with?
An arrow pointing down.
I've seen a hard drive.
A quill
We’re going even more old fashioned.
An elegant solution indeed
If the floppy disk was no longer the save symbol for software, and I had to chose one, I'd chose the floppy disk symbol.
But you worded your question wisely to avoid that loophole, so I'm not sure what to use instead for an otherwise unique and ubiquitous symbol, already known as "the save file icon" for two generations that have not seen it.
While we're at it, let's also replace the phone icons with a rectangle, as to not confuse anyone.
Just change one pixel and call it new.
You could make it a zip drive. No one would know the difference...
Han solo frozen in carbonite
Ouuh this is a fun one. I find that floppy disks look somewhat similar to SD-cards. Do you think the majority of kids (18 and younger) would recognize SD cards?
I do not!
Down arrow pointing to a line, box, folder, or similar. Icons like that are what I've seen most commonly in software that has an icon for saving over the last few years.
how do you seperate that from downloading? I had a similar idea.
In a lot of cases, the distinction doesn't really matter. If it does in a particular application, I'd probably prefer words to make the nuance clear -- but an arrow to cloud + arrow to disk/folder may be appropriate for some of the cases if an icon is required too.
In GIMP 2.10 on my system, there's a small difference between Save and Save As's icons. I think they added a pen over the hard disk the arrow is pointing towards -- presumably to indicate re-labeling? The difference is just barely visually distinguishable on my screen though. There's also an Export option (which has no icon, despite it being something I use a fair bit more than many of the other File menu commands) and a "Send by Email..." option with pencil over some paper with lines on it (presumably lines of text that's too small to be distinct).
xed on my system has an arrow pointing at a line for Save and an arrow with a line plus 3 dots over it for Save As. Only the Save icon is on the toolbar; the other is in the File menu. I've actually never noticed that distinction before, and if I weren't actively looking for save icons in the software I have installed right now, I don't know if I'd have ever noticed...
LibreOffice still has a (very stylized) floppy disk on the toolbar for Save and no icons whatsoever in the file menu on my system.
KolourPaint uses an arrow pointing into the drawer of a filing cabinet in the toolbar, and a much more squashed version of that in the File menu -- along with something additional (a partially filed in text box to indicate relabeling?) above the Save As variant in the File Menu.
Not sure if I have any other software that I still use regularly which has a Save icon... (My browser just uses text without any icons for save from File menu or via right click menu.)
Why does it need to be separate? The end result is the same, the file on your device. Where it is coming from makes no difference.
99% of users won't care at all.
It's infinitely more accurate than a floppy disk icon.
They need to be separate because saving and downloading are two separate things.
When I’m in Photoshop, I don’t download the file I’m working on. I save it.
There’s a good reason that these two icons are currently different.
Not really, it's just legacy, the same reason the save icon is still a floppy disk in most programs. That's what it's always been.
You may make the distinction between saving a document and downloading a document, but most people don't pay anywhere near that amount of attention, and don't care about specifics.
No, that’s not it at all
Downloading data and saving data are two separate and distinct functions that describe a different process. While they may have a similar result, they are not the same thing.
You may not understand that, even after I’ve explained it a second time, but they’re not the same thing. They work differently, occurring different contexts, and a single icon should not be used to communicate two distinct concepts. That’s why there are two separate icons.
Whether the save icon is that of a floppy disk or not, doesn’t change that.
And your argument basically amounts to that people are too stupid to care.
But you raise a good point: why would it need to be changed? It’s everywhere, everyone already knows it, it works. Why change it? After all, you seem to think that people are too stupid to care.
Then why do you care?
Covering "Most people" but not all cases is where most software goes awry. We should probably try to avoid that for something as universal as saving a file.
One could make the same argument about creating a more complicated solution when a simple one solves it for 99% of users. Especially when the remaining 1% will know the difference based on what they're doing, regardless of the icon used.
You could make that argument, but you’d be wrong.
I really shouldn’t have to keep explaining why.
Something something assumptions, asses, etc.
(See, I can simplify stuff too. Now there's a chance that a certain amount of people are wondering if I'm having a stroke instead of linking it to a well-known English saying.
That's why you're not actually "simplifying" anything.)
When you’re working on a document in the cloud you have the option to save it (in the cloud) or download it (to your device). Those are two actions that can exist at the same time.
Arrow pointing to cloud
Arrow pointing down to a stylized container
I like this one, it makes sense. And if you're saving something to the cloud it could be pointing up instead, maybe towards a cloud.
Thats for downloading though.
I'm not downloading when I save a file I edited locally on my computer.
But like, what if, you're like ... "downloading" the file .. from memory .. to disk? .. man?
You take an online thing and make it local.
I understand how some younger folk might not see as stark a contrast in saving v downloading.
I'd say if you're 30+, you prolly do.
Aaahhaha. I didn't even read that bit before writing my first lines, and that only confirms my doubts.
Never seen these, eh?
What are we doing to the file? ****Ing it?
Need to disambiguate between saving locally and saving directly to cloud storage.
If Windows gets their way you don't!
They aren't censoring swearwords. 5they are blanking it out to make a point about the word save.
To me this means download
the final fantasy 7 save crystal. because just look at it. LOOK AT IT!
It's so goofy looking lol
Probably an arrow pointing to a hard drive.
Why a hard drive? Storage is moving to solid state. That icon would also be obsolete in a few years.
Because solid state drives can look like anything but a hard drive has the distinct arm and platter.
A Jesus icon.
Jesus saves.
What about Valhala tho? Kinda seems like superior religious imagery to me.
i want software to be easy to use. I don't want to die in battle using my software
Admit it, we all die in some small way every time we use a computer, why not seek glory in it?
I've seen HDD icons as a replacement for the floppy.
HDD or a folder is open, floppy is save, surely?
In calibre, HDD icon is for "save to disk", but I'm sure I've seen icon sets or other apps where HDD was used to save.
I choose a labeled, icon-free button that says
save🗄 or 🗃 come to mind.
Yes let's make it even more archaic
that would rather be icons for a file manager or an archiver
Given the impermanence of any storage medium today, I'm thinking a puff of smoke would convey the sentiment with the right level of user expectation.
💨
A dark souls campfire/site of grace
I think the download icons will become synonymous with saving. It's functionally the same, move thingy to a location on your computer.
What about saving on a cloud service? Very misleading.
Up arrow on top of a cloud, I think that one is standard now
Gotta go with an even older symbol, the ring buoy.
A rotary pay phone powered by a steam engine.
But I like the floppy disk save symbol
It actually does, just not modern technology. It's a simplified drum memory unit, the predecessor to the hard disk drive.
How is that a predecessor? It's just the same tech but bigger? (I know this could be said for pretty much anything but still.)
You'd have your answer if you spent half a minute reading on how the tech worked in the above-linked article.
I think it does look like an idealised stack of spinning magnetic disks. At least that's what I have always read it as.
That's already the symbol of a data store, so if you hit it I'd expect it to bring up the connection configuration
What if we coupled the cylinder symbol with a 'going to' arrow ⤵️ above it?
I would assume that would mean either choosing between database profiles or uploading a database export
What’s a hard drive? Is that like iCloud or something?
It's an ancient device that replicates the cloud on your computer
But why don’t you just use iCloud?
Ice cube, because you're freezing it in whatever working state you're in.
probably a safe.
You’ll get “but why don’t you just put everything in the cloud?”
Ask me how I know
Go older: a punch card being inserted into a tray
Core memory. It's non-volatile.
5.25"floppy disk
The one true floppy
9"
Nine? I swear the floppy was EIGHT inches
You are right. I still have a box with programs I wrote
Something like this ?
Pen and paper? What's that?
Nah, thats for "new'
That would be an empty page...
Hmmmm
scurries off to check word
Fuck.
that's a text editor
I like it because saving is writing. Like in ed(1) or vi(1).
:wq
I wonder if we would would really "expect" a new safe icon. Most modern software has auto-saving. Games for example often just use a spinning circle to indicate it's saving. Word and google docs just say "don't worry, we're continuously saving your work" when you hit Ctrl + S.
I imagine if you want to save something locally you have the downward arrow for downloading, or some other icon for moving and copying files.
I dont trust word to save anything if I don't hit CTRL S
I don't trust word to save anything even if I hit Ctrl S
Correction, without hitting Ctrl+S about a half dozen times in rapid succession
Yeah and even if you save it, good fucking luck finding it again.
Even worse now that all docs are saving to "Office 365". No you stupid bastard, I want to save the file to my hard disk on the computer I fucking own!
Yeah it's not saved on the cloud here, it's sensible medical government data
A PSX Memory Card, because that would be awesome.
You mean the vending machine?
Well, vending machines are for bytes I suppose.
Bill Gates eventual tombstone.
Can't wait to impress someone by jumping over it in one clear hop.
Bonfire from Dark Souls, because you don't want to lose your soul by failing to save progress.
Oooh I was going to say the ff7 save point but this is good
A cloud. Just to let them know they don’t own anything anymore.
Idk, I guess SSDs/flash media is pretty prevalent nowadays, especially in gaming context. That said, it doesn't leave much in the way of a universally identifiable icon, or animation. So maybe an exposed hard disk, with the disk spinning and the arm moving, if you can picture what I'm describing.
5.25 inch floppy as homage to my childhood. Or maybe 8 inch - but while I lusted after that much space I never used one.
As I recall, 8 inch store no more data than 5.25
depends - the capactiy changed over the years. My floppies were 90k, while 8 inch at the time was a full megabyte. 5.25 floppies did reach 1.2 megabytes on other systems but they were never available to me - even if I could afford it the drives were never compatible with my atari while the 8 inch drives were (with adapters I only ever saw in magazines)
Memorize like IOMEGA Zip drive?
Symbol of "the cross" with hover-over text in which Microsoft writes "pray I don't amend it further."
For that future timeline when the meaning of Save becomes "stop working, let Copilot perfect it, and close"
I'd like to think it won't even be necessary with a save icon as autosave becomes more prevalent. If I'm wrong, one option the icon could be is something like a "snapshot"
In Canada, a goalie's hockey stick.
What? Not a Maple Syrup Spile?
A tombstone.
Because you think that you have it fixed now to a certain place.
And you think it has got a name plate in front of it.
But you don't want to think about all the dark details of what's really happening down below!
A circle with a check/tick in it
The three disks thing that symbolizes database, with a down arrow on top.
Or if we’re really going for the abstract, a knight in armor fighting a dragon with a lady behind him.
Probably an arrow pointing down inside of a circle, like the download icon. Most of the software I use just has text saying "Save file" and no icon, and I usually press control + S anyways so I don't have much of an opinion regarding this
Reel to reel tape? Ahahaha
Animated Save Album from Mario and Luigi Partners in Time:
I cant find a gif of this, but the rainbow section is supposed to be animated, and the book opens when you hit (click) it.
Okay so hear me out.
The only solution here is Peter
Need to head out ? Oh ok lemme peter this document real quick.
Arrow to disk.
Why a disk? Storage isn’t even disk shaped anymore.
"Disk" means a memory chip here.
Pirate flag or dollar sign, depending on how the file is obtained.
A hand placing a book on a shelf
Or placing something more modern on a shelf
I'd finish my idea but I'd have to charge you 50 million dollars for it so yea...
A box that's closing? as in something being packaged?
C90 cassette.
My company designer erroneously uses a cloud icon.
An SSD or HDD disk lol.
Something like the symbol Mac uses/used for external storage
Nothing. Why do I need to manage storage myself? Everything i do should just be automatically saved. Each doc should essentially be version control so you can intelligently step back and fork if you need to.
I hate this. No auto save please.
I meant fork, in the git sense. Scroll back to a previous point and take a different path. But yes, also back and forth
What would the symbol be for that function then?
There should be no such function. A scroll back/forward in time, and a map/flow graph but no save
An arrow pointing up at a line. Preferably with each being a different colour.
The arrow indicates movement. The line is abstract. But with the colour coding it carries the idea of 'putting the thing into the other thing'.
The rest is learned pattern recognition. A download is a down arrow in a circle because you are taking the thing from the other thing. So saving is an arrow to a line because you are putting the thing in the other thing.
LibreOffice on Ubuntu has a down-arrow "save" icon, and every time I look at it I think "that's a download icon". Up arrow versions of that are upload icons. Neither really conveys "save".
Maybe like a stop sign. That would signify that you’re purposely stopping to save.
Yes but what’s the difference between :q and :w and even :wq
I like: Cylinder, Snowflake, Vault, or Piggy bank
Maybe 3 stacked cylinders
The record symbol from every phone camera
But that is for recording, not saving.
Potato, potato
AM.
Text that says "Saving..."
Just remove it all together and use only keyboard shortcuts
( ) )======D~~~
There should be no save button. All software should auto-save continuously while you work. There should be a "duplicate"-type menu item or button that allow you to make a copy of the document into a new file.
Almost all cloud software already works like this.
No, please no. I hate auto save. I don't mind choosing to turn it on, sometimes it's warranted, but to have it forced on? Fuck that.
"Saving" is a legacy that was introduced because of limitations related to storage in the early days of computing and makes no inherent sense within the metaphors most software operate. Broken metaphors makes things difficult to learn.
When was the last time you scribbled onto a physical document and the changes "didn't save"? Do you also hate "autosave" in the physical world?
Comparing to the physical world makes no sense because a computer is an enhancement that does things differently.
I want way to make trial and error scenarios and test ideas and scribble notes without being forced to keep the changes or retain a document. I also prefer to know where it is going.
I have some software that crashes and leaves me in this weird state where: auto save, recovery file, test sceberio. Which one was I using? Which will it choose to restore and how fucked am I now that the original is lost if I choose wrong?
Edit: I am going to say that on the other hand, in business it is wild that we give people a desktop computer when we should be giving them programs that they use. They should have metadata attached, be relative to their work, and have auto save. I am not always against auto save, it just needs to be in the appropriate places.
Comparing with the physical world makes sense when we have built these applications on physical world metaphors: "documents", "folders", "desktop", etc. We use those words precisely because they convey meaning based on the similarities with their real-world counterparts. Broken metaphors are both more difficult to learn and tend to trigger incorrect assumptions leading to operator error ("Didn't you save your document? What does that mean?").
What is worse is that, like it or not, the world is increasingly moving towards cloud services. The "edit + save" paradigm is less suited to that environment, so there we almost exclusively see the "you edit the doc itself (no need to save)" paradigm. It is difficult to see the gain of insisting on keeping both these quite different paradigms around, when the "you edit the doc directly" is no problem to implement also offline.
Now, about the practicalities: I also get fundamentally annoyed when presented with the "document recovery" dialog that brings me out of my flow. However, I interprete the situation differently. Had the software used a "you edit the doc, no need to save" paradigm, there would never be a need for "recovery". The edits I did are stored in the file I edited.
As for "I just want to scribble". Why don't you just scribble in a file called "Scribbles"? Why is that concept so offensive? You'll be happy the day your computer loses power while you are in the midst of scribbling, since you will be able to pick up exactly where you were.
It means I want to keep it. I don't think that is a broken metaphor at all.
Wait a minute: in the real world I do not need to name anything to make scribbles. I also do not have a paradigm where there is a fork between versions and create a new document that goes off in one direction while the other document goes in another. At the end of the other documents time, why can't I just get rid of it if my what if scenario didn't work out? Oh I have to now find the thing and take even more time to figure out how to get rid of it. I also have to choose where to keep something if it is going to auto save, and I work on multiple computers all around the world so it makes no sense for me to expect it to "save somewhere".
Also, when I am working on what if scenarios, they are not scribbles. They are taking a document that sometimes can take several minutes to load, and might take many minutes to process. They might be excel sheets, they might by python pandas projects, they might be painting projects or 3d renders.
I have no need for cloud services either, that sucks as well. I have my own server, my own world wide storage locations. I would like to decide when I where I put stuff.
It will not come natural to people who are used to work with physical documents that you need to remember to "save" an edit, or the document reverts back to the state it was when you opened it.
No, but you need to have a physical document to scribble on, which, after you have scribbled will remain in the state you left it until you take the active decision to throw it away.
Have you never used a copy machine?
Just throw it in the recycle bin? Another real-life metaphor. Do you often find objects in your physical world disappearing without no action from you?
Following the typical cloud implementation, you do not. Just start editing. It will be placed in a default folder under a default name until you rename it / and or move it somewhere else. (These operations are usually provided in more convenient ways than in "save paradigm" software, e.g., the name is shown as a title, just click to change it)
All of these -- except the Python Pandas project (see below) -- could still (and probably should) work according to a "you edit the doc itself, no need to save" paradigm. The larger the underlying file, the less sense does it make to forcibly have to work on a copy; either in RAM (if it fits) or if it doesn't fit, the software has to create an on-disk copy of your huge file behind your back, in case you decide to not save. Leading to all these messy "recovery semantics" that no one likes.
Now, the context of this whole thread is IMO GUI software. When it comes to programming/programmatic tools, e.g. Python Pandas, R, Matlab, etc., that is a different thing. There you have a choice to work in RAM or on disk depending on your needs.
What a nightmare.
Why don't we just let things default to not auto save but you can turn it on at anytime.
I personally hate it. Absolutely hate it.
I want to put things where I want them the first time when I am ready. I don't use cloud services, I have my own network and cloud file shares. I don't want some program choosing when and where to save something for me, because it is extra work finding all these garbage files I didn't ask for.
Goatse
The concept of saving is itself antiquated. Your data should always be saved.
The word 'save.' Never understood why software moved on from words.
Not having to translate symbols would be one reason.
Yeah. Pictograms exist in part because they work in most languages
They just force their users to translate their dumb symbols they use because there are so many illiterates out there.
🤔 do illiterate people even use computers?
can they??
Look around you.
it's times like these I wish I could read...😞
It's never too late if you set your mind to it.
what?!
You can read a pictogram faster than text, so you can find the button you're looking for faster when they're symbols once you know those symbols
"Saving" a file should already be obsolete.
Filesystems should automatically retain history, so whenever you edit something it's already saved, with the ability to go back to any previous state.
No, please. I NEVER want a computer to take a decision for me (like save or discard changes). I turned off auto saving on Microsoft Office on my work computer after I unknowingly made some changes in a presentation from another team I was just looking at, and it saved those changes without my knowledge nor consent.
I work with several screens, have several windows of different programs open and, unfortunately, sometimes a keystroke doesn't go where I thought I was sending it (I'm probably getting old). Also sometimes windows from a different program come to focus unannounced and capture whatever you were typing or clicking.
re: keystroke focus - you're not just getting old, programs are getting shittier about pulling focus when they shouldn't
I work on several screens on several tasks at once typically as well, and it's infuriating when one program pulls focus as I'm typing a sentence into something else, and worse when it does so and accepts the input of my rapid keystrokes to do whatever the fuck all those hotkeys are on the thing that pulled focus
Oh hell no... You want the computer to decide where your files live??? Autosaving and saving are different things, you do need both
And version control on a filesystem is neat, but you'd still have to save it to a place. Perhaps you save it to a version controlled place, so you're not version controlling things that don't need to be tracked and filling up your entire disc when steam games update
It's your responsibility as the human to make decisions like this. It can be made easier with tools and clean workflows, but if you let the computer do it automatically you're giving up control and understanding
It's how we lose tech literacy
I mean... You can autosave everything temporarily under a temp filename. The program should treat it as unnamed, and then when you go to save it you then give it a location and a name
It's probably the best workflow, it's pretty common for code editors
Most people already do this lmao, they just trust the program to find the file
That's called tech illiteracy... It's a bad thing
Wouldn't that take a huge amount of space?
yes