280

I'm working on a project where the user is able to save their work (most likely to the HDD but also possibly any other media, including floppy disks). Sure, the popular File > Save option is there but what about a toolbar button?

By far the most popular icon is the floppy disk. However, the chances the user will write to the floppy are pretty slim. Still, I think the floppy is more representational than literal.

In the end, I'll probably stick with the floppy disk icon to keep the convention most users are familiar with but... anybody have any ideas on how to update this old icon?

alt text

Jonathan Hall
  • 75,165
  • 16
  • 143
  • 189
Travis
  • 12,001
  • 8
  • 39
  • 52

31 Answers31

209

The floppy disk icon has become the standard for saving files. It's a highly recognizable icon and there's no reason to change that. Consistency between applications is a wonderful thing.

I suspect that over time the icon will grow more stylized and less like an actual floppy disk once people start forgetting what they look like (or never knew). The icon nowadays represents the concept of saving more than it represents floppy disks anyway.

Welbog
  • 59,154
  • 9
  • 110
  • 123
  • 6
    It's a fair point, though. Sure, users presently recognize the floppy disk, but are we headed to an era where people click on the square thing to save, but have no idea what it is? – Pesto Jun 19 '09 at 19:12
  • 61
    @Pesto: Why not? You already click a fox that somehow knows how to browse the Internet. You click a printer icon when you need to create PDF. E-mail has a little picture of an envelope, usually. Icons are just icons. – Welbog Jun 19 '09 at 19:15
  • 20
    When users see that icon, they don't think "Floppy disk", they think "Save". It's a symbol for that now, it's been burned into the computer using concscience for the past twenty years. I doubt we could come up with a new that is just as obvious now. – Michael Jun 19 '09 at 19:16
  • 10
    @Welbog: Yeah, but people in the future will still know what an envelope or a fox is. While they know presently what the save icon represesnts and why, there will come a time when they don't. Someday, 50 years from now, there will be people writing into some "The Answer Man" column with the question "What's the deal with that little square that means save?" – Pesto Jun 19 '09 at 19:19
  • 3
    @Pesto: Do you honestly think kids these days are asking this question today? They have never had a need for floppy disks. They just know this icon means "save" and probably don't care why, because it doesn't matter why. – Welbog Jun 19 '09 at 19:21
  • 1
    @Welbog: I'm not advocating a change. I'm just pointing out that, while presently just outdated, it'll eventually be something completely unknown to users. – Pesto Jun 19 '09 at 19:23
  • 1
    Maybe someone will change it to look like a thumb drive. – Spencer Ruport Jun 19 '09 at 19:35
  • 3
    Better yet would be a memory card. Something like an SD-Card or Sony memory stick... then again those look alot like a "floppy" disk. – Matthew Whited Jun 19 '09 at 19:43
  • 3
    Pesto, are you sure people will recognize an envelope or a fox for that matter? How many people recognize a slide rule? or a drafting square? If you showed picture of a fox, a wolf, and wolverine to a bunch of city kids how many could pick out the fox? It is not that they are dumb, they just have not seen them. Icons will change, become more abstract, and yes people will forget what they stand for. Now where is old rotory dial corded analog telephone. – Jim C Jun 19 '09 at 19:44
  • 115
    I tried this on my 9 and 13 year old nephews. I asked what does this button mean? "Save" they both answered immediately. Then I asked what the image looks like? They had no idea - not even a suggestion (which is fair since they haven't ever seen a disk). So I guess the meaning has overriden the image itself in the icon so we're stuck with it. – Ostemar Jun 20 '09 at 05:33
  • 4
    @Marpe @Welbog, that is why I suspected that Chinese is the superior human language. Our brains naturally map abstract symbols to meanings anyway. Who cares what it used to look like 1,000 years ago? – JasonSmith Dec 06 '09 at 11:17
  • Users know that the disk icon is to save. I guess it all depends on how much training that you want to perform later. – joek1975 Jan 26 '10 at 15:49
  • Who cares whether the users know what a 3,5" floppydisk was anyway? The important thing is that they know it means "save", just like Marpe showed. – Jonta Apr 12 '10 at 10:56
  • 6
    Open Office?? I've been using Open Office on Ubuntu lately and it actually confused me for a second when I didn't see the standard floppy disc save icon. Being a computer savy individual I managed to figure out that the giant arrow pointing to a hard drive meant save, but it makes me wonder why they changed it to begin with. – Peter Jul 28 '10 at 19:22
  • 1
    @Michael: A CD, DVD, or even a USB flash drive could be a replacement for the icon, but I agree, nothing wrong with it. Consistency is good. – CMircea Aug 16 '10 at 20:36
  • 4
    @Patricker: And that begs the question of how many users know what a hard drive looks like. – Joey Sep 08 '10 at 13:57
  • 3
    In the future, say 50-100 years, the concept of save would probably be obsolete because everything auto-saves and is synced to the cloud. The average end user may not ever need to explicitly click a button to save. – airportyh Oct 07 '10 at 14:12
  • 3
    In secondary school, a teacher told us to "click on the little picture of a television" to save. I think I burst out laughing. – TRiG Mar 02 '12 at 12:06
  • 4
    Sure, we can use a USB stick or SD card... then in another few years, we'll be asking why we still use _those_ obsolete things in our icons. (And I think a USB stick would be harder to recognize than a floppy disk at 16x16 pixels, especially since they come in all shapes and sizes and colours...) – Rena May 10 '12 at 05:17
  • Truth is that explaining how save icon looks to a person that never seen a floppy disk before can be very problematic. It is always a good idea to have a standard text menu saying clear "Save" & ofc a CTRL+S for shortcut lovers. We are sure to hear hilarious descriptions of how save icon looks like in the future. – Dave_cz May 30 '16 at 22:14
  • Google gave us the solution. Now you guys know the Google's download icon: `a flat line under an arrow, and the arrow is pointing to the line`! – Константин Ван Jul 12 '16 at 10:18
159

As others have said, keep the floppy icon and don't worry. Where I live, this is the warning sign for train crossing:

A warning sign for train crossing

There haven't been any steam locomotives for 50 years or so, but everyone still knows that this is the symbol for trains. And in the same way, 50 years from now, when your files are stored on Google servers in orbit, everyone will know that the floppy is the symbol for saving your data.

its_me
  • 10,998
  • 25
  • 82
  • 130
Thomas Padron-McCarthy
  • 27,232
  • 8
  • 51
  • 75
  • 1
    looks like a model from the 1830's!! – JoelFan Jun 19 '09 at 19:36
  • 13
    Even when there were steam trains, they never had wheels like that - they had little ones at the front, big ones in the middle, and more little ones at the back! 4-4-0 and all that! – Tom Anderson Jun 20 '09 at 00:36
  • 3
    @twic steam locomotives definitely had theses kind of wheels, at least thoses in North America did. – Mathieu Pagé Jun 22 '09 at 16:52
  • 8
    Whilst you are correct, it would be fair to point out that children are taught about steam trains (Thomas the tank engine for my two) where as they are not taught computer history. – Phil Hannent Jul 16 '09 at 11:56
  • 15
    And this is the standard symbol for an electronic speed camera http://www.freefoto.com/images/904/02/904_02_1347---UK-Speed-Camera-Sign_web.jpg – Martin Beckett Sep 02 '09 at 18:23
  • 9
    The one on the sign is clearly an 0-8-0 train. Have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0-8-0 – Ryan Lundy Mar 19 '10 at 15:09
  • 3
    In much less than 50 years, "save" won't be a distinct operation anymore. Everything will become persistent the moment you type it. On smartphones, autosave on quit is already the prevailing model. – Seva Alekseyev Sep 07 '11 at 23:41
  • 2
    +1 for everything but the "orbit" part. In 50 years, the servers won't be in orbit because it's still too risky and you have an even greater heat issue. Buried in Antarctica is much more likely. – NotMe Apr 23 '12 at 17:32
96

Consider the fact that you're using the term "floppy" when in fact the 3.5" disks were not floppy at all. It was just a term that carried over from 5.25" disks because everyone got used to it. The "disk button is save" concept is also what everyone is used to. Stick with it.

Spencer Ruport
  • 34,865
  • 12
  • 85
  • 147
  • 123
    3.5" disks were indeed floppy, they were just protected inside a hard plastic shell. Open one up. This contrasts with hard disks where the platters actually are hard, even once you open it up. – derobert Jun 19 '09 at 19:15
  • 7
    They were floppy if you removed them from the hard protective shell. Also, I suspect the naming was more of a contrast against 'hard' disks, without being able to use 'soft' since that might be confused with software/virtual disks. – Peter Boughton Jun 19 '09 at 19:16
  • 1
    "Floppy" doesn't strike me as the kind of term that would be applied by someone trying to be technical. Seems like something a layman would have called a 5.25" disk. Besides, the actual disks hardly had the rigidity to be called "floppy"... "limp" would be more appropriate. – Spencer Ruport Jun 19 '09 at 19:32
  • 15
    "limp" "disk"... oh the humor – Matthew Whited Jun 19 '09 at 19:37
  • 2
    Not sure about other countries, but in South Africa most people called the 3.5" disks "stiffies"! – Kevin Newman Jun 22 '09 at 00:43
  • 2
    It started with 8" floppies, which are even floppier, and all of them are floppier than a removable disk pack. – Ronald Pottol Oct 21 '09 at 03:40
  • 2
    A friend of mine coined the term 'flimsy' for 3.5" disks. – GreenMatt Jul 28 '10 at 19:08
  • 3.5" disks, while not ''that'' floppy, were clearly floppier than 3" disks (but greatly outlasted them anyway). – Medinoc Sep 01 '14 at 08:14
90

Chapter 17: "Rethinking Files and Save" of About Face covers this. Alan Cooper is well-known as a usability expert and his writings are influential. His argument is essentially that when we force the user to think about the implementation, we get ourselves into trouble. Here's a brief excerpt:

In the world of digital technology, the place where implementation-model thinking most strikingly rears its ugly head is the management of files and the concept of "save." If you have ever tried to teach your mother how to use a computer, you will know that difficult doesn't really do the problem justice. Things start out all right: You start up the word processor and type a couple sentences. She's with you all the way -- it's like writing on paper. But when you click the Close button, up pops a dialog box asking "Do you want to save changes?" You and Mom hit a wall together. She looks at you and asks, "What does this mean? Is everything okay?"

This problem is caused by software that forces people to think like computers by unnecessarily making them confront the internal mechanisms of data storage. This isn't just a problem for your mother; even sophisticated computer users can easily become confused or make mistakes. People spend thousands of dollars on hard- ware and software just to confront impertinent questions like "Do you really want me to save this document that you've been working on all afternoon?" and must remember to use to the Save As... command when what they really want to do is work on a copy of the document.

It's worth thinking about ways to simplify or eliminate the "save" metaphor.

Here on Stack Overflow we can "Post an Answer" or "Add Comment" or "Ask your Question" for example. Each time we really are "saving" to the database, but the metaphor is slightly different each time. Posting, adding, asking. I think of software like iTunes which I believe does not have the concept of "saving to disk" for the music. You simply add music to it and it's saved. Depending on the type of tasks your software carries out, there may be different metaphors which are more apt than save.

I should mention that I've not really answered your question, I myself have used the floppy icon, or a big button that just says "Save" on it in my web applications. For the time being we're stuck with it for many cases, but it gets more and more ridiculous as floppy drives die out. But then, we also say we "dial" phones, when dial-interface phones have not been in popular use for decades.

artlung
  • 33,305
  • 16
  • 69
  • 121
  • 15
    Wow, thinking about it now, having to "save" work all the time is silly. When you write on paper you're saving as you write! ;) No reason why it can't be done automatically and seamlessly in software. – DisgruntledGoat Jun 20 '09 at 00:46
  • 6
    Some web applications like Gmail got it right by saving automatically and keeping version history. Network latency is higher than disk latency, so there is no excuse for desktop applications not doing the same. – Roberto Bonvallet Sep 22 '09 at 13:56
  • 10
    @DisgruntledGoat: and a typewriter is like a laptop computer with a built-in printer! – D'Arcy Rittich Jan 11 '10 at 15:36
  • 1
    One of the reasons I love OneNote since I can just type or draw away and I don't have to care about saving. Side note: Others have made the same point, including at least Jef and Aza Raskin, iirc. – Joey Sep 08 '10 at 14:00
  • I would assume the reason early word processing programs required you to hit Save was because of limited disk space. After that saving carried on because people don't think about the reasons. – jhocking May 25 '11 at 19:52
  • 1
    This is a very good comment. That is where the future of application is taking us slowly. But even though it is easy to implement on text documents for instance, it becomes really hard and not trivial to implement on artistic software for example, photoshop, animation software, movie editing, etc – oberthelot Dec 14 '11 at 16:32
  • 5
    @jhocking Not so much limited disk space as limited disk performance. When you hit save in the old floppy days, you'd hear the disk make puffing noises for anything up to a minute. – Richard Gadsden May 11 '12 at 13:16
76

Use an icon containing two characters:

:w
Tom Anderson
  • 46,189
  • 17
  • 92
  • 133
37

Look at your brand new cell phone's voicemail icon. There's a good chance it's still the 'tape rollers' icon from magnetic tape based home answering machines.

EDIT:

Okay, not all phones use the icon, but how about the word 'rewind'? I'm sure a few people out there have devices which allow you to 'rewind' a digitial audio or video media file.

Paul
  • 6,188
  • 1
  • 41
  • 63
31

If you think about it, mail has no "modern" representation either and is still represented by a paper letter.

http://cdn.baekdal.com/2008/metaphor.jpg

(image from "It's Time to Change that Metaphor")

As mentioned in the blog entry "The end of an icon"

It’s dangerous to base a visual analogy on a moving target. Technology will change. What’s clear and obvious today won’t be in 10 years; so what’s nebulous today will be totally obscure in 10 years. The problem with the floppy icon (beyond the iffy analogy) is the generation gap.

Still, as long as the underlying action is clear, that icon will survive.

http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3d-model-of-the-save-icon.jpg

(image found in many places, including in this blog post)

VonC
  • 1,262,500
  • 529
  • 4,410
  • 5,250
19

Why do we even need a "save" function? Anything I write should be automatically saved, and in fact Microsoft Word does that already--if it crashes and haven't saved, your data is still recoverable. Google saves drafts automatically. Why do we still use the "save" paradigm?

Vladiat0r
  • 595
  • 3
  • 6
  • 14
    So we know where the file is and can find it later. – Matthew Whited Jun 24 '09 at 16:49
  • I understand the concept of naming and organizing files in folders, but that should be separate from "save." A file should be not have to be "manually" saved and it can remain "unnamed." – Vladiat0r Jun 25 '09 at 04:42
  • 16
    For written documents an auto-save is perfectly awesome to have on, but when I'm editing images I never want it to auto-save. I want to save it as a new file and only save when I want it to. – Marjolein Jun 25 '09 at 12:47
  • 1
    Well, photoshop keeps a history of every change already and you can go back to any time. So how is that not already working pretty much as auto-save? – Vladiat0r Jun 25 '09 at 22:27
  • 8
    Most user us save as undo / delayed branch mechanism. – peterchen Oct 11 '09 at 12:41
  • 2
    I do lots of (mostly?) "one-off" items that I don't want saved and cluttering up my workspace. – Brian Knoblauch Oct 28 '09 at 16:27
  • 1
    I work in animation. I need to be able to sketch stuff and determine when I save the work....Having to do thousands of undo in order to find the previous revision that was working is not a desired workflow ;) Hence the need to 'Save" – oberthelot Dec 14 '11 at 16:39
18

Tango icon set have an arrow pointing down to a harddrive:

alt textalt textalt text

LiraNuna
  • 64,916
  • 15
  • 117
  • 140
13

How about a reel tape drive like they had in the old Sci-Fi movies:

+-----+
|() ()|
| \ / |
|  W  |
+-----+

This icon would be timeless!

jrcs3
  • 2,790
  • 1
  • 19
  • 35
9

So long as most applications continue to use the floppy icon, most users will be familiar with it and your application will benefit from a familiar interface. In economics, this is known as a network externality.

Sinan Ünür
  • 116,958
  • 15
  • 196
  • 339
9

When there's a problem with some code we say there's a 'bug' in it, even though the last time that actually happened was over 60 years ago!

Alex
  • 1,581
  • 2
  • 18
  • 31
8

You know, in 50 years, icons won't be needed. If you want to save your work, blink twice, or stand on your head, or just say "Save" in the language of your choice, and voila - it's saved... no need for a visual anymore :)

I vote using the standard 3.5" icon. When the day comes that it's confusing to users, developers will get plenty of complaints from users saying it's not "user-friendly" enough. As for now, we've been conditioned to look for that disk icon. I used an app once that used a CD icon instead, and it took me a few days to realize that it was used to save. It's all about design consistency and fulfillment of expectations.

Eddie
  • 359
  • 4
  • 11
8

If you deviate from the common icons for operations like save, your users are going to say your programs is hard to use. Even if you simplify everything so that you think it's perfectly intuitive and much better than what everyone else is doing, they'll say it's hard to use, just because it's not what they're used to and not what they expect. Remember, to your users, whatever Microsoft and the other big guys do is "correct," so if you're doing something different, you are, by default, wrong.

Besides, even if your user takes 5 or 10 seconds to figure out where the save button is, that's 5 to 10 seconds of easily avoidable frustration you could have saved them, and it's just one more barrier preventing them from being able to use your app. Obviously, they're not using your app to revel in the joy of clicking a chronologically relevant save icon. They simply want to avoid losing their work and get on with more important things in life.

Stick with the 3.5" disk; it's a financially sound, if creatively poor, choice.

mandaleeka
  • 6,577
  • 1
  • 27
  • 34
7

Not really. As long as it looks likes the more modern "stiffy" rather than floppy.

Memory stick don't really have the same nostalgia. However as more and more modern systems don't include a physical stiffy drive, users of the future may not know what a "stiffy" stand for. As a teenager what a vinyl was and they might think your having a senior moment.

Picture of a Safe might imply that you are encrypting with some internal password and storing it so safe it won't be retrievable.

Picture of Server again givies the impression that its to be copied elsewhere.

Stick with the stiffy for the next 5 years

Cheers

kingchris
  • 1,677
  • 22
  • 29
  • 1
    I am sure they provided much amusment for comedians when they first came out. Guy palms a new style floppy. Walks up to the office blond and asks innocently "Where may I insert my stiffy ?" – kingchris Jun 19 '09 at 19:44
  • 3
    One important difference is that some people still say vinyl is better. When was last time you hear anyone say they missed using their stiffy? – gillonba Jun 19 '09 at 19:57
  • 1
    @rotard: lol. I hope that was intentional. – rmeador Jun 19 '09 at 20:11
  • 2
    I have only *ever* heard the word "stiffy" being used to refer to one thing. And it had nothing to do with saving files. – Justin Morgan - On strike Jul 25 '11 at 14:11
7

I think this approach is on to something:

Helveticons excerpt, showing a forked arrow pointing down into a 3/4 circle for Save

peterh
  • 11,875
  • 18
  • 85
  • 108
Tyler
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 13
    If you saw that icon on its own, with no explanation, would you know what it meant? I sure wouldn't. – Justin Morgan - On strike Jul 25 '11 at 14:13
  • 2
    This is awesome - an icon that represents a verb or a relation instead of a noun. This is the way to go. It is easy to remember and just says "put something in". In what? the circle represents "the whole". It's more readable than http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-still-a-floppy-disk I wanted to recommend. – naugtur May 10 '12 at 11:45
  • It means flush your work down the toilet right? – Alex C Sep 28 '15 at 20:25
6

IMO, icons are useful because they're constant symbols we can associate with different actions. In that sense, the floppy is very appropriate simply because it is nearly universal. Never once in my life have I seen an interface with unfamiliar icons (no text at all) and been able to figure out what it does (I'm looking at you, Mac OS). I think even if you come up with an image that is more true to what is actually going on, such as a picture of a hard drive, you'll cause far more confusion than if you left it alone. Even if people such as myself can identify the icon as a hard drive, that doesn't tell us what you're going to do, it just means a hard drive is somehow involved...

rmeador
  • 25,504
  • 18
  • 62
  • 103
5

Unfortunately this floppy disk icon has become the universal symbol for saving a document. It is even used in Microsoft Word 2007, virtually untouched. Change it in any way, an it is likely that you will make it unrecognizable to your users as a save symbol.

Robert Harvey
  • 178,213
  • 47
  • 333
  • 501
3

It's still in Windows' standard toolbar image list.

Nobody has seen a hard-drive, but that doesn't stop the icon from being one. To most users: a hard drive is that box on the floor.

It's the stylized symbol that is important. The picture can be a red cricket - as long as everyone associates that red cricket with saving.

Ian Boyd
  • 246,734
  • 253
  • 869
  • 1,219
3

Microsoft did a pretty good job of throwing out standard menus and icons in its 2007 office suite. Just about every average/beginner user just hates it for that...

Gad
  • 41,526
  • 13
  • 54
  • 78
  • 8
    That's funny. I have found users with little to no experience with office find it very easy to use and find new features. (I will admit I hated it when I first saw it, but having used it for 2 years I find it to be a great interface) – Matthew Whited Jun 24 '09 at 16:49
  • 3
    I think it's a great testament to Office 2007's usability that my Mom is able to get into a word document and feel empowered to do things she thought were impossible. – スーパーファミコン Aug 18 '09 at 23:09
  • I think it was mostly the experienced users that hated it – nafg Aug 27 '15 at 03:07
3

To be honest, the floppy icon never made much sense to me. It means "disk activity", and it could be Save but Open as well.

The problem is that there is a new generation of users that have never seen a floppy disk (e.g. my 11 years of nephew) and he had to learn that that weird squared thing was Save.

I like the icon of a folder with an arrow pointing towards it. Maybe an arrow pointing to a cylinder (a la DB)?

I don't really like the other ideas a lot, so keeping the floppy icon is the default solution. Also, I hate the non-MS big low quality floppy icons some apps use.

Other solution could be a small version of the app icon with a hard drive and the arrow from the first to the second, but that won't look fine on a 16x16 icon.

What's clear is that icon design is science and art. I have a lot of respect for good icon designers.

Olav
  • 11
  • 2
  • 6
    So you want to replace the floppy disk—an icon representing a storage technology used in the 1980s—with a cylinder, an icon that represents the giant IBM storage drives used in the 1950s? – phenry Nov 03 '09 at 23:53
3

Have you ever used HLSS? They use an image of a SD card as a save icon, yet most of the time, I can't pick it out on the toolbar and have to go to File -> Save to save.

So, they present an alternative modern equivalent, yet it doesn't work as well as the ol' 3.5" floppy icon.

MiffTheFox
  • 21,302
  • 14
  • 69
  • 94
2

Users using your application will find it more usable if you use a floppy disk icon. For consistency, if it makes you feel better. It's ubiquitous.

2

I think the nostalgia is neat - everybody knows what it means. I just took a quick look and Outlook still uses an old-school honkin-huge handset icon to make a call.

n8wrl
  • 19,439
  • 4
  • 63
  • 103
2

Great question. Of the 4 computers I actively use, only 1 even has a 3.5" drive. It is an antiquated technology that I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing replaced even in icon form.

Possible replacements:

  • a vault icon. Easily recognizable and symbolic of saving.
  • a compact disc symbol. More modern but still capable of being outdated soon.
  • ???

I'm surprised at most of the responses here. The general consensus seems to be "keep using the floppy since that's what has always been done." Since when has the programmer mentality been to conform to everyone else's ideals? Doing something just because "That's the way it's always been" is no excuse, especially for coders.

leadingzero
  • 181
  • 1
  • 2
  • 10
  • 3
    However it is an excuse for users. It's considered a "learned behavior" - a response that intuitively makes no sense but cannot be changed since all users were raised with it. Another example would be car keys. It's not obvious or intuitive that they go under the steering wheel, but try moving them and see how your customers react. – Mike Robinson Jun 19 '09 at 19:47
  • 2
    I like this answer because it's one of the only ones that actually proposes what we might use IF we didn't use the floppy disk. However, I'm not sure the idea of a CD would make much sense. Even the thought of saving data to a CD makes me turn away from the app as a user. – Travis Jun 19 '09 at 20:05
  • 2
    @Mike - totally true. I spent an entire day stabbing the side of the steering column in a borrowed Monte Carlo, because they decided to put it on the dash... – GalacticCowboy Jun 19 '09 at 20:05
2

You could use upload and download (red up and green down arrows) icons for saving and loading. Besides, in a short time network will be most place to save files.

Kirill V. Lyadvinsky
  • 97,037
  • 24
  • 136
  • 212
2

Even though many people won't recognize what the icon actually is, they will quickly learn what it means, so I would keep it for consistency with other apps.

In the future, I think the question will become moot as more and more apps will avoid "Save" actions and save each user action automatically. Instead of discarding changes by not saving, people will use "undo" as the dominant paradigm for discarding changes.

LKM
  • 4,351
  • 3
  • 27
  • 22
2

It's funny that I found this discussion because I was looking for a standard 'save' icon I could download to replace the 'new and improved' icon that UtlraEdit started using and which was too difficult to pick out on the toolbar. Yes, it is outdated, but everybody recognizes the 3.5" floppy disk image as representing 'save'! Yes, programmers should not be doing things because 'that's the way it's always been done' but icons are language and not methodology. Don't invent a new word just because it would be cool unless your aim is to hide what you are saying from the previous generations.

1

I think in general the floppy disc icon has become the accepted save icon, even if it doesn't have much bearing any more with flash memory and DVD's being pretty ubiquitous. Frankly, if a program had an icon for saving that was something like a memory stick or HDD, most users wouldn't be able to pick it out as the save icon.

Ron Warholic
  • 9,994
  • 31
  • 47
1

As pointed out by others the floppy disk icon is embeded in peoples understanding of computer user interfaces as the standard visual representation of the act of saving something.
The use of the floppy disk icon is a reflection of the technology that was prevailent at the time and so represented something the average user could quickkly associate with the act of saving a file.

The fact that the action of saving is still visually represented by the floppy disk in spite of it's rapid demise in recent times demonstrates the strength of association between the icon and the act of saving a file. If one were to attempt tp change the icon one would need to choose an image which is

  1. Easily associatable with the act of saving as the floppy disk already is
  2. Likely to remain in use, or at least in recognition, long enough for a sufficiently high number of people to recognise it

While I do acknowlege that the floppy disk has certainly outlived it's usefulness as the primary storage media of choice, I don't see it's role as the save icon ending in the near future.

If the icon were to change I believe major OS and hardware vendors would need to support such a change, which I don't believe is likely as doing so would potentially alienate a large number of existing users

Crippledsmurf
  • 3,982
  • 1
  • 31
  • 50
1

In response to the original post, I kinda think the disk IS a literal concept. Even if we no longer use this particular kind of storage, it represents writing data to some type of memory device.

It might be better to ask "What does 'Save' mean?" than "What's a better/more contemporary icon than the floppy disk?"

When you save something, you are putting it somewhere for later use or storing it. We're getting bogged down in choosing literal storage devices that will all eventually be obsolete. The folder and arrow idea (in another post here) didn't seem right because we're used to folders being a way to organize files, not as a storage device. And of course you don't necessarily need a folder to save.

So here's one proposal using the concept of an abstract cube being placed inside another cube - or placing an object inside a box.

Thoughts? Don't bother with "thinking outside the box" jokes because I already thought of that :)

Oops, not enough reputation to post an image here. Here's a link.