[OSX-Users] Re: Mystery Icon

[Steve Harris]

On 2011-03-28, at 15:12, Philip Boulain wrote:
> 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.

In 1984 Psion did something similar too. It didn't get really good at it until 1991 though.

Though, AFAICT the "save" button on google docs for e.g. doesn't actually do anything, I think it's just there to make pre-cloud people feel more comfortable.

- Steve