On 9 Sep 2003, Enrique ArizÃn Benito wrote:
- I don't like the "Hand" name either. It gives place to many subconscient meanings in diferent countries as is usual with other parts of human body ( in some arabian countries showing your hand can mean a big insult !!!).
An interesting point.
And drawing a good mini hand icon is hard difficult. The only "Hand" advantage, from my point of view, is that of beeing an standard tool in Acrobat Reader, one of the most used software these days. - The "Scroll" word is too much computer literate (I'm spanish and I had troubles with the scroll word the first time I saw it in a book).
Indeed, the verb form is not in my English-Danish dictionary. Merriam-Webster dates it back to 1973, and calls it "to move text or graphics up or down or across a display screen as if by unrolling a scroll", so very computer-specific. Of course, the translators are free to apply the most appropriate word or phrase in their language. There's the word "pan", but I think that's even more technical and definitely not as widespread.
What about "Travelling around the diagram" instead of "Scrolling the diagram"?. I think the "Travel" word gives not possible confussion and is extremely intuitive.
Hmmm... gives more the impression of following a route from one place to another. "Move" would be closer to what it actually does, but that's also used for moving files, so suddenly "Move diagram" would have two very different senses. And generally, "move" implies a change of contents (like in moving an object), whereas "scroll" implies exactly what's going on here, a change in the displayed area. I think it's better to stick with "Scroll".
Another suggestion is that of changing the continuous crossing arrows with 4 independent ones. I think it gives more impression of movement. (See the attached diagram).
I like the look of that. Made a version of the scroll icon with that, and it does look more "moving". Now does it look so much better that it's worth breaking with the general usage? Attaching two PNG's of the old and new icon. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HÃrdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I |---------------------------- will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket?
Attachment:
scroll-old.png
Description: Old scroll icon
Attachment:
scroll-new.png
Description: New scroll icon
