[OSX-Users] Re: Mystery Icon

[Philip Boulain]

On 28/03/2011 15:00, Sina Samangooei wrote:
> So why not something like... putting stuff in a box? 
> http://www.mricons.com/store/png/2240_3294_128_arrow_box_download_wooden_icon.png

Because that's already---is your filename indicates---been fairly 
strongly associated with "download" by now. Green downward pointing 
arrows pull things down from the Internet. There's one in my Thunderbird 
"Get Mail" button right now.

Once upon a time there was the odd program which used a pair of folders 
with green/red out/in icons for load/save, but that never seemed to 
catch on and suffered from being a somewhat abstract metaphor and having 
very little to clearly differentiate the pair (once you throw out colour 
information it's just a few pixels showing the side and direction of the 
arrow).

If you want to get really wacky I'd rather ditch saving entirely. PalmOS 
got file management right years ago by modelling it after physical 
artifacts: you don't have to worry about explicitly persisting something 
you've worked on any more than you have to save something you've written 
on a piece of paper. The correct way to let people experiment with 
unsaved changes is better version management and forking.

-- 
| Philip Boulain   PhD student |  _`._  |        Reality is the        |
| IAM, ECS, Uni of Southampton | /  K \ |      original Rorschach.     |
| http://zepler.net/~lionsphil | \__-_/ |       -- Principia Discordia |